Mike answering me on pitch versus height:
the problem is: there is no connection (between pitch and height) any time
wasted on holding
on to such a deception, is time wasted that would be better spent elsewhere.
in the larger picture, if you are willing to hold on to one such mythology
of singing, you are probably holding on to a whole host of mythologies. if
you act on these misconceptions, you are building your singing on a house of
cards.
what's wrong with embracing reality (besides having to find a teacher
who does likewise)?
My reply:
You may be a diehard realist, "calling a horse a horse", well, it's just as
good, sometimes.. but in turn, don't let yourself be deceived by the
reality myth. Any way of "embracing reality", designing it, conceiving it,
representing it, in short, any language is but by essence arbitrary, perhaps
even not best suited for certain purposes. Name facts the way you want,
resort to gestures, coloured cards, beacons instead of speech, you can't go
away from it. Are such terms as "pitch", "sharp", "flat", or "building your
singing" less biassed than "high" or "low"? ("pitch" alone already calling
up such concepts as "throwing", "slope"...)
Imagine an ideal langage featuring as far as one distinct lexical root for
each separate fact, in the most exhaustive way (no cup "handle", because
"hand" already exists and it could mislay us into believing that only hands
can hold handles, whereas feet, paws, tentacles, armpits, pressed legs,
folded arms, clenched jaws also could in theory...). Well, even so, do you
candidly believe comparisons, analogies, assimilations, metaphors, images
wouldn't surge to mind?
So for the asking, how would you magically bypass any "misconception" in
trying to account for the "note frequency" reality without embarking on a
dull wavelength explanation?
Would you do away with speaking of different "sounds", "tones", "colours",
"bases", "vibrations", "sensations", "processes"? Or go the tautological
way, "different pitches are namely what pitch is about" ,"call notes by
their names and that's it"? Or intentionally silence all thinking on the
subject (beware: a taboo is a message too)? Sure, there must be many valid
approaches around... Let's just not hope it may one day occur to one of
those free-from-misconceptions trainees to liken a musical scale with its
degrees to a physical ladder with its rungs, the way it strangely occured to
our forebears (as shown in their linguistic legacy), some of which have
proven decent vocalists, though.
Bart
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