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In Reply to: RE: Not really. posted by rbolaw on November 22, 2014 at 14:32:02
To quote Woody Allen (Love and Death, I believe):
All men are mortal.
Socrates is a man.
(therefore) All men are Socrates.
QED! ;-)
Follow Ups:
Unfortunately that's by far the best post of this dubious thread.
there is nothing dubious about the thread. That such a simple question could ruffle so many feathers may tell us a thing or two about some folks participating in the thread. But that hardly makes the idea of doing blind auditions of classical recordings dubious.
I have no problem with blind auditions of classical records. In fact, back in the day WQXR in New York had a program where a panel of critics listened to classical records blind and gave their critiques, and it was a fun show. Also back in that golden age of classical radio, I'd tune in and sometimes hear something that especially interested me, so I'd listen to the end to find out who and what it was. That was how I found most of my favorite music AND performers. So blind listening has served me well.
What is of dubious use is the study you cite to in your opening post.
it was merely one of many studies about the effects of sighted bias in our perceptions of music and sound. What makes the study or my citation of it dubious?
The conclusion of the study you cite, according to the article you link to: "Participants were more likely to identify the world-class orchestra correctly when shown video-only footage than when played [six second] audio clips".
My response is, "No sh#t, Sherlock". For at least two reasons: These days, many regional and even some university orchestras are very close in caliber to those so-called "world class" orchestras. In fact, many of the top players from those world-class orchestras came directly from those regional orchestras. Take a look at their bios. (Please do not ask me to do it for you.)
Second, though I think most careful listeners at full concerts could detect a difference between two orchestras (not that the so-called "world class" orchestra would necessarily always sound better), a six-second audio clip would most likely establish nothing.
In short, the fame of the Berlin Philharmonic does not mean it is so dramatically better than a good regional orchestra that the difference is obvious in a few seconds. In fact, the regional orchestra may sound just as good or even better at times.
Also, (and this part is just my opinion, but based on a lot of listening to world-class and regional orchestras, in rehearsal as well as performance), the main reason world-class orchestras often do sound better than regional orchestras is that they have longer seasons and perform and rehearse together more often. And that is because there is more money behind them.
So you find the study dubious because you think the results were too obvious? And you also take issue with the clips being 6 seconds long? Personally I would have to read the study and see the explanation behind the choice of 6 seconds before condemning the choice. It doesn't make sense to me though to call a study dubious for getting results that one perceives to be obvious.
By the way, as a subscriber to both the L.A. Phil and the Pacific Symphony as well as a frequent visitor to the San Francisco Phil I am very well aware of the bios of those orchestras as well as many others. Why you would presume I don't know about such things is beyond me. Oh and guess what? You can't judge a musician by his or her bio. Some of the best musicians on the L.A. Phil IMO have some of the least impressive bios.
That's fine, I was just answering your question. If it doesn't make sense to you, so be it. And I wasn't presuming anything about what you do or don't know. But it does look like you're the one with the ruffled feathers. No matter.Edit: OK, I've read the study itself, and imho it is bullshit. Here is why: In the experiments, "the top three finalists in each of 10 prestigious international classical music competitions were presented to participants." The participants more accurately predicted the winners by viewing video clips than sound clips. From this, the authors rather pompously conclude:
Professional training may hone musicians’ technical prowess
and cultivate their expressive range, but in this last bastion of the
realm of sound, it does little to shift our natural and automatic
overweighting of visual cues. After all, sound can be neglected
while trained “ears” focus on the more salient visual cues. It is
unsettling to find—and for musicians not to know—that they
themselves relegate the sound of music to the role of noise.However, the authors seem not to consider the possibility that sound may still be far more important than visual clues despite their results. For example, all three finalists may sound almost equally good with only very subtle or minute differences, especially in a brief audio clip, but some performers may very obviously look vastly better than others, even in a brief video clip. That's not surprising, because those finalists no doubt got there far more because of their sounds than their looks. But when forced in the end to pick among equally good-sounding candidates, visual clues are the most easily available tiebreakers, and maybe the only ones, if the judges know nothing about the finalists' backgrounds.
Of course, if you spent many hours listening to each of those finalists, the sound differences between them might gradually become more clear. But that wasn't how these experiments were designed. In the real world, it's sometimes the competitors who finish second or third or even lower in those big competitions who end up having the major careers. So visual cues may matter less when people have more time to listen.
That make enough sense for you, Scott?
Edits: 11/24/14
Your argument fails. If you weren't so damned smarmy I'd go through the trouble to explain why. Does that make enough sense for you?
It sure does, Scott. I understand you completely.
No presumptions? Just an arbitrary suggestion that I look up bios of orchestra members? Yeah...OK....
Well, if you take that study you cited seriously, then I would have to cast aspersions on your knowledge, not of music necessarily, but of experimental design. I took the trouble to read the underlying study results, see my edited post above.
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