Vocalist.org archive


From:  Reg Boyle <bandb@n...>
Reg Boyle <bandb@n...>
Date:  Mon Oct 23, 2000  11:25 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] Empirical Science


Gee Les' you have been having an introspective weekend. : ) you wrote:
>Dear Friends,
>There seems to be an assumption among many that emperical learning is not
>scientific. I'm not so sure.

Dear Les',
Assumption? Not at all. Observation, experience and experiment
are in fact the basis of scientific theory. The beginning only.
That is, they lead to the hypothesis upon which
further research can proceed, but at each step of the progress, the contents
of that hypothesis must be objectively proven or dismissed. If you suggest
to a student, a certain line of action, and the student succeeds in achieving
the result you sought, this empirical approach does not prove that your joint
assumptions about what happened internally were correct, merely that the
result was achieved. This is not scientific, it's the application of the
hypothesis without the perceived need to prove it, which is why there are so
many vocal training hypotheses. This unproven hypothesis is made the more
confusing by attempts to communicate it to students who have their own
unproven views.
Many definitions of efficiency are based on value
judgements of the users. For example, is all the expenditure of effort and
lives
in the development of this technology you see in front of you, really worth it?
Another nagging one for me is the concern expressed about environmental
waste and pollution, yet for every megawatt of energy that leaves an
alternator,
exactly the same is dissipated within that encapsulated device, with no
effort whatever made to recycle it because it's just too easy to discard it
into
a cooling tower or river, and heap the responsibility on the innocent
consumer.
Winter warmth brings a stimulus to the brain which
indicates that
pain has been replaced with comfort. So is the stimulus that brain feels
from the
performance or reception of a beautifully performed piece of music, really
that
different? And is it efficient? : )
May I suggest that efficiency has a time component that is
usually ignored.
Most people don't want to know about the beauty of style and
design incorporated in a computer chip, they just want to use it for what is
seen as a higher purpose. To play computer games, of whatever type, like this.

Brain stimulation of one person by another must surely be the
most worthy goal, it's the deviations that interpose themselves that are both
necessary and dangerous, but that's only MY value judgement though I'm
prepared to assume that it may also be that of many on this list.

Science for science' sake is rarely wasted even though
it's end
use may not be immediately obvious. I love the old WW II saying,
"Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted," I assume both sides
thought that, but their ideas of mental stimulation were concentrated on
less worthy reasons than ours, but again that's only my value judgement
coloured by the fact that German and Italian music is now totally acceptable,
which it wasn't then.
On that same theme, in that immediate situation we know that it was a critical
priority of both sides. In the medium term we know 50% were wrong and in the
long term it was 100% a waste of effort.

At the moment I'm messing with a voice analysis programme and
I'm amazed at some of the information I see. One graph indicates a 25th
harmonic
of considerable intensity. A fundamental of 119Hz at -42dB up to about 3kHz
at about -44db and everything in between. I do a double take at that. Not that
I don't believe it, just that I don't accept it at face value, yet.

Must go Reg.


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