Informal Testing

CSGnet Archive CSG1996
1

[From Rick Marken (961006.1130)]

Bill Benzon (951006) --

I've got two rather different reactions to this. One the one hand, sure.
We have to investigate and our methods have to be rigorous and we have to
distinguish between speculation and strong argumentation etc etc

I didn't mean to give the impression that I was advocating only rigorous
investigation of PCT explanations of behavior. Rigorous is good; but
non-rigorous is good too. There are opportunities for informal Tests for
Controlled Variables all over the place, including on the Net itself.

Informal Testing is just a matter of "pushing" on possible controlled
perceptions and looking for _lack_ of effect. These methods are informal in
the sense that we don't make formal measurements of the perceptions
involved -- because we can't (how do you measure the perception of the
value conventional psychological methodology, for example). In informal
Testing we use our own perceptual systems to "measure" the state of the
perceptions we think might be under control. Although the results of this
informal approach to Testing are not "scientific quality" they can
certainly be of value to those of us who are doing the Testing because they
can help us understand the nature of controlling.

Now, how does one get evidence on this [different theories of improvisation]?

If you can formulate these differences in terms of musical perceptions that
_you_ can experience, then you can Test hypotheses about the musical
perceptions controlled during improvisation. You could use something like
the approach I used with Bruce Abbott. In your case the subject might be a
bebop improvisor. You guess at a perception that is controlled in bebob
improvisation and play a riff that contains a disturbance to that
perception. If the perception is an aspect of bebob improvisation the
subject will complain that something is wrong; you might then ask the
subject to play back the riff in "true bebob" -- with a "corrected"
version of the disturbed perception. If your disturbance results in no
complaint from the bebop improvisor, then this perception is not controlled
in bebop improvisation.

This is obviously pretty simple minded stuff. I'm just trying to suggest
that it is possible to do a tad more than just speculate about PCT
explanations of any behavioral phenomenon. People are controlling all kinds
of perceptions all the time and we can experience them pushing back against
disutrbances all the time. Controlling is _not_ subtle but it can be
difficult to verbally describe the perceptions that we can tell that people
are controlling (becuase we have those percpetions ourselves). I bet you
could play a riff that would be a disturbance to any jazz musician; but it
might be difficult to verbally describe the perception you disturbed.

Best

Rick

2

perceptions controlled during improvisation. You could use something like
the approach I used with Bruce Abbott. In your case the subject might be a
bebop improvisor. You guess at a perception that is controlled in bebob
improvisation and play a riff that contains a disturbance to that
perception. If the perception is an aspect of bebob improvisation the
subject will complain that something is wrong; you might then ask the
subject to play back the riff in "true bebob" -- with a "corrected"
version of the disturbed perception. If your disturbance results in no
complaint from the bebop improvisor, then this perception is not controlled
in bebop improvisation.

Producing music that knowledgeable listeners would say contains mistakes is
not difficult. In this particular case I'm interested in certain
differences between swing and bebop. When bebop was first played, swing
musicians thought it was a perverse exercise in crowd-pleasing mistakes.
(Crowds were not, for the most part, pleased with bop; but the swing
detractors had to come up for some reason why technically talented players
would play such weird "Chinese" music & crowd-pleasing was the kind of
motive they could understand.) For the most part, folks who are
comfortable with and like bop are also quite capable of understanding and
liking swing, but the reverse is not necessarily true. One can be expert
in the understanding and judgement of swing music and be mystified by bop.

Now, I have no idea whether anyone has done some obvious kinds of things
one could do to verify this assymetry. For example, one can get folks
whose musical preferences and knowledge are known and play (unidentified)
music for them and ask for their reactions. One would have to take steps
to ensure that the experimental doesn't unwittingly provide cues, etc.

Explaining the assymetry is trickier. Given that these control systems are
implemented in the brain, the nature of that implementation might well be
such that bebop requires activation of brain areas which can remain
relatively inactive for swing. I don't know enough about current brain
imaging techniques to know whether this kind of investigation is possible.
But, if it is, it does require equipment access. And, even if I am right
about finding localization differences, that doesn't tell us what those
differences are about functionally.

Part of what has to be done is simply to provide some fairly rigorous
characterization of music. I don't have a strong sense of what that would
entail (though I do know folks are working on it and you can find such
stuff on the web without much difficulty). I've got a certain minimal
amount of music theory under my belt; I picked this up as part of the
practical craft of being an improvising musician. Twice or thrice I've
decided that I really ought to know more about music theory so I can
understand music more deeply from an analytical standpoint. But when I
look at what passes for music theory, I conclude that really mastering this
stuff will be hard work and, in the end, it is unlikely that knowing that
stuff will be very useful. Music theory is mostly a mass of little tips
and tricks and recipes (with pretensions here and there to theoretical
system). It doesn't have much to do with any usefull kind of psychology.

Without some useful characterization of musical sounds, discovering that
this or that passage is (or is not) disturbing to some listener doesn't
tell you much about how they are listening. At some point this is going to
require formal analysis and computer simulation. Whether a useful
description is possible without pushing things that far is not clear to me.

···

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William L. Benzon 518.272.4733
161 2nd Street bbenzon@global2000.net
Troy, NY 12180 http://www.newsavanna.com/wlb/
USA
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What color would you be if you didn't know what you was?
That's what color I am.
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