September lectures Flashcards
What are the three most general stages of music in context of humanity
- continuity with humans and animals
- association with culture and location
- the music industry (post phonograph)
What is the euglena obtusa , and why should we care about it?
- single celled organism that rises to the surface to consume carbon dioxide when the tide goes out, and burrows into the mud consumes algae when the tide comes in
- It has an internal clock—a form of rhythm
What is biophany?
the soundscape of the animal world
What is an acoustic niche?
he sonic (frequency or timbral) bandwidth occupied by an organism’s vocalizations in their environment THE SOUNDS THE THING MAKES IN ITS ENVIRONMENT
What are the three stages of natural selection?
replication variation selection
what is Evolutionary Niche
the set of things that allows a species to survive against others - the prey it eats, the living space it occupies etc.
what is Niche Construction
the process of an organism’s impact on its environment (and other niches)
what is co-evolution
organisms evolve to exert pressures on each other’s niches (ie bees and flowers
what is feedback
mutual influence of organism and environment, or organisms on eachother
what is feedforward
disturbance of the feedback loop from an outside source like an earthquake
Four evolutionary advantages of sound as a medium of communication
1) travels fast day or night
2) can be detected at a long range
3) goes around obstacles
4) encodes complex and changing messages
What are the four uses of sound that evolved for functional reasons
1) territoriality and defence
2) mating
3) group/social cohesion
4) unknown
What is analogous function
evolved to fulfill an equivalent function
What is homologous function
evolved from a common ancestor
Humpback whale song
- taught from parents to youth
- shared within a pod or between pods
- varied and extended in each generation
- made of small repeating phrases
Gibbon (primates) music
- solo/guet songs
- monogamous male/female couples
- convey info about territory, mating, warning of danger, identity, location
- song structure differs by gender species and individual
How do stone tools suggest cultural evolution?
planning, design, technology, shared knowledge and symbolic knowledge
What is proto-music? (HMMMM)
H-holistic (complete messages)
M-multimodal (combined gesture and sound)
M-musical (rhythmic, collaborative)
M-mimetic (imitating nature)
M-manipulative (trying to get a desired behaviour in another)
Five reasons that music is adaptive (necessary for evolution and survival)
- universality
- costliness
- pleasure
- juvenile predisposition
- cultural importance
Obstetric dilemma problems
brains are big, but the birth canal was more narrow because humans walked upright. The gestation period was still a long time
Obstetric dilemma solutions
- separation of the pubic symphysis
- skull is compressible
- the brain continues to grow after birth
- infant helplessness necessitates parent-child bonding
the six strands of Dissanayake’s theory
- Obstetric dilemma
- Mother-infant interaction
- mother’s signals reinforce affinitive neurology
- Ritualized behaviour between baby and mother
- proto music from mother
- Ceremonies are derived from porto-musical predispositions
What was music for in traditional cultures?
- Social bonding
- Aposematism (warning prey)
- sexual selection
- work
- parent-infant bonding
- socialization/play
5 stages of cultural musical history
- Nomadic hunter-gatherer
- ancient agricultural
- high classical
- modern
- global
