How We (Don’t) Talk About Music: Cross-Domain Mapping 

*Clarifications* 0:53 Cross-domain mapping is a _cognitive,_ not explicitly _musical,_ term that describes the large-scale metaphors that are “pervasive in human understanding,” to quote Zbikowski-whose work you should _definitely_ read if you want an actual in-depth discussion of this topic: zbikowski.uchicago.edu/pdfs/Zbikowski_Conceptual_models_1997.pdf 2:01 This is a joke. Mappings are not so specific as to equate units of one spectrum with those of another.

I work at Walmart and there is a gamer I work with who one time mapped octaves as left/right instead of high/low, i.e. "Kermit's voice is an octave to the left of mine." Which is odd, given that western keyboards map pitches in the opposite direction. I sometimes find myself wondering how he came by this particular metaphor.

Oh now you’re really getting into my research field. Nice to see.

When I was very little, before I started my musical education, I thought of "high" pitch sounds as "fast sounds" and of "low" pitch sounds as "slow sounds".

Amazing video!!! There are a lot of exciting ways of musical thinking to be gleaned from non-Western music.

Re: Javanese/Balinese gamelan, at least nowadays, the large-to-small and low-to-high mappings are used more or less interchangeably. When exactly the low-to-high mapping was adopted by native musicians, I couldn't say, but the point is that there is a high degree of compatibility between the two. The more significant difference is that gamelan players tend to think in terms of relative pitch height -- meaning, a pitch is "high/small" if it is located in an instrument's upper range, even if that particular instrument produces low frequencies overall, and vice versa. In the Western tradition, we tend to describe frequencies in more absolute terms; a high pitch is a high pitch regardless of how it is produced.

“9.5% more annoying.” 😂 That sort of hurts, but I agree.

Excellent essay. 😀

Very curious to know your opinion on the things said in Adam Neely’s video: Music and White Supremacy

We use feet and inches, too (UK). Mainland Europeans tend to use centimeters, I believe.

I’m a simple person, I see gamelan, I click

Similarly, when I'm trying to conceptualize a musical texture I often use words like sharp, rough, smooth, etc. When describing how something sounds I often use taste and color. Some music sounds the way strawberry ice cream tastes. A lot of bubblegum pop. A lot of music sounds like the way bourbon tastes, or cigars. Things in the Dorian mode tend to.

Chromatic.

You not taking music persay as much as talkn bout the people, places, thing in music more specific classical music. Very in-depth and can be interesting. Dude if you can find the funding to create, probably what ever your full vision might be of doing this that’s be very cool. You could even go back and redo videos. Idk what else you might do. Visuals, which u got, idk….. vocie overs lol… when you quote one famous composer referencing another and or their own insights into a given piece or period. That could be a plus no offense. But u don’t strike me as a Franz Liszt type guy, or Ravel. Not even Janacek! But that’s ok cuase you’d need vocie overs that are those characters and great thing is, with AI you can make that happen. See AI isn’t killing music or even hurting it. Stupid thing don’t even understand basic things. Like play a C maj scale then on the fourth degree start the maj scale over again and repeat and what do you have. Lol it don’t understand these things which are at the core of our precious art form. Plus AI is a combination of what as a collective humans know and sometimes finds connections but only if one can write the prompt right and has worked with a certain bit or language model for long enough to do so. And anything else new or original. That’s on us

Great video, the Kaluli music tidbit was fascinating. I was recently commenting on an online discussion exactly on how this correlation between pitch and height can sometimes be detrimental to singers’ perception of their own instrument, given how often they’ll be scared of the “high” notes. I’ll c&p what I sad: Don’t think about pitches in terms of height, approach them for what they are: speed. Once you manage to convince your brain that there’s no up or down, that it’s just rates of vibration, the extremes become less scary/worrisome, and easier to achieve. Acknowledging that one can train the vocal folds to move faster in the same way one can train to improve in sprinting strips away a lot of the mystique.

2:02 "or whatever it is you Europeans use" - as a matter of fact, the definition of metre, SI unit for length, is based on a wavelength of very specific light. So we get back to waves and frequencies.

Great lesson, saludos desde México!

Things we don't talk about: 1. Cross-domain mapping (unique metaphors used to describe music). 2. Bruno.

I suspect that the sequence of dogmatic concepts taught in music education combined with the unwillingness to teach other information has more to do with this than anything mentioned in the video. Frequency numbers and their relationship ratios can be taught as early as one learns to do basic math, but it isn’t, and there’s no good reason why this isn’t taught unless you factor in blind dogma and historic bias.

2:02 "or whatever it is you Europeans use" Because the only other place in the whole world that's not metrically impaired is Europe. "Nothing beside remains..."

"Perfect pitch" does NOT exist. La 440 Hz is a subjective decision, and "Perfect pitch" can, at best, be relative to that frequency arbitrary design. If I decide my La is 447 Hz I screw your perfect pitch.

Thank you, Thomas🌹🌹🌹😎

Since my vision is getting much worse. I'm recognized the great dynamics of pitch, sound, and meter. It's scary losing your eyesight let me tell you. However, it does make my hearing and what I hear even more precious then it's ever been.

7 colours 7 sounds

This reminds me of topics in cultural linguistics

Language also affects the cross-doMain mapping. And the cultural milieau of a given language and place.

Very interesting!