Does Sight affect what we hear?

[M.Marmot]

M.Marmot - That sounds to me very much like the widely hailed 'Cold Fusion' 'discovery' of several years back. Many scientists claimed to have seen it in action,but it was ultimately discredited. A good example of emminently clever people seeing what they wished to see - at least some of them had the good sense to go away & think about it,
Ivan

It might be, then again it might not... i really cannot remmeber where i dredged that half remembered anecdote from, as, i am not in the habit of reading about physics... though i'll have a looksie at this 'cold fusion' debacle and see if it jogs the old grey matter.

I am half-starting to believe that the anecdote might have been one given in a series of examples of argument types, maybe an example of argument by authority, i really cant be sure now.

But, yes, as you point out, wishful thinking can lead to many many delusions.

[Chuck Naill]

It occurred to me that the current common trend of buying online with nothing more than a photo, which may or not be a photo of the actual instrument, that many trust their visual acuity to guide their buying decisions. They use their eyes as hoping they will hear what they see. This probably accounts for the threads asking, "when can I expect my mandolin to open up".

[M.Marmot]

the mcgurk effect jim mentioned on facebook is incredible - here's an example of how it works:

I'm no expert but i do think that Otis Redding discovered this same effect before McGurk and co



Everyone sing along now, ba-ba-ba-ba...

[Markus]

I don't think the old adage `Don't judge a book by it's cover' would be so well known if we didn't naturally default to our eyes when judging things.

Thinking about it, it has me wondering about trying out my next large instrument upgrade blindfolded. While I'd need someone to wait on me to have that happen - I'd certainly be a lot more focused on feel and sound. I'd like to think I'd make the same choices as if I was looking at the mandolins, but the cynic inside says that isn't true.

[Bertram Henze]

Thinking about it, it has me wondering about trying out my next large instrument upgrade blindfolded. While I'd need someone to wait on me to have that happen - I'd certainly be a lot more focused on feel and sound. I'd like to think I'd make the same choices as if I was looking at the mandolins, but the cynic inside says that isn't true.

Sounds like a movie with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger.

Maybe the old days, when there was only radio instead of TV, were much more challenging for musicians.

[Bob DeVellis]

Is it really so bad if we're influenced to a degree by looks? The McGurk effect involves mistaking one phoneme for another that's quite close. It's not like suddenly you hear "buh" as "shhh" when the image looks like it's saying "shhh." So, my take on this is:

1. If someone explained the McGurk effect without a demonstration, most people would think that it was a bunch of baloney and that they would not be fooled into thinking that Baa was Faa just because of what they saw. Lesson: we don't always know what we will or won't perceive, which is why we benefit from real data.

2. If our instrument preferences are influenced by what we see as well as what we hear, there are probably boundaries to how far we can be misled. Those boundaries probably differ form person to person. I've certainly had the experience of being disappointed in an instrument that looked great but did nothing for me tonally. I remember seeing an F-3 copy that was just beautiful and I was really tempted to snap it up. But when I played it, I didn't care for its tone. I moved to a different corner of the shop and still didn't like its tone. As much as I thought owning that mandolin would be cool because it was so handsome, I couldn't get past the tone.

Our perceptions are clearly influenced by our expectations, and that can go either way. A small discrepancy may get resolved by "distorting" one or the other information channel to bring them into greater agreement. So, if a really good looking instrument sounds a bit less good than it might, we can resolve the discrepancy by either hearing it as a bit better than it is or by seeing it as a little less attractive than it is. Because sound is transitory, I'm guessing vision will win more often than not. On the other hand, if the discrepancy is large (a beautiful instrument that sounds terrible or an ugly instrument that sounds magnificent) I think we resolve the discrepancy by magnifying it -- the contrast effect. A good-looking, high-priced instrument that sounds quite bad may be perceived as an even bigger dog than it is. Conversely, a plain or worn instrument that sounds better than we expect may actually be perceived as sounding better than it actually does (better than we'd judge it in the absence of seeing it). I also suspect that the size of the discrepancy needed to produce the contrast effect varies from person to person, based on experience and other factors.

I don't know any of this to be fact because I haven't done the empirical tests (and, as I said above, there's a reason why we gather data as opposed to just speculating). But it's consistent with other findings on resolving perceived discrepancies and it's totally testable.

But, as I said at the beginning, I'm not sure it's necessarily a bad thing (except, perhaps, in the extreme) for us to make decisions based on something in addition to what we hear. If the look, the name, the smell, or any other aspect of an instrument enhanced the experience for the owner, I'm fine with that. I'm comfortable with my own judgments about instruments (which are often at odds with others', like my preferring oval holes to f-holes and wider necks to skinny necks) and don't expect that we should all agree about these things. If it makes the owner happy, that's good enough for me.

[Ed Goist]

I don't think the old adage `Don't judge a book by it's cover' would be so well known if we didn't naturally default to our eyes when judging things.

Thinking about it, it has me wondering about trying out my next large instrument upgrade blindfolded. ...snip...

Check this out:



Pretty cool...

Also, I can tell you from experience that one can sometimes be surprised when tasting/comparing wines blind. Generally, however, it's safe to say that the more experienced the taster, the harder they are to fool...I bet the same goes for musical instruments.

[frankenstein]

And sometimes you can tell an instrument is good just by looking at it. Looks fast when it's standin' still.

[Brent Hutto]

Bob has it right. I didn't wear a blindfold when I sat down to play my this morning. Choosing an instrument is all about its intended use.

If you're buying a mandolin to play on a CD then all that really matters is how it sounds when recorded.

If you buy a mandolin to play at live gigs, then how it sounds live and how it looks to the audience are salient factors.

If you buy a mandolin to take pictures of and show it off on the Internet then how it looks in pictures matters!

And if you buy a mandolin to make you happy every morning when you pick it up and play Whiskey Before Breakfast before breakfast then all that matters is whether it makes you happy. Whether by sound, feel, looks, smell or the fact that it belonged to your great-grandaddy. As long as it serves its purposes that's all that matters.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Quote from frankenstein above - "Looks fast when it's standin' still.''. I know what you mean. I had a look at the Cohen 'C' style this morning. That's a 0 - 60 mph in 3 seconds beast if i ever saw one,& one the looks of which seriously influenced my current MAS,
Ivan

[JeffD]

On theories, check out the rules on electricity. When looking at the schematics for Direct Current (DC) does the electrons flow from negative to positive or positive to negative like is written in all the books?

It is universally agreed that electrons travel from negative to positive, and that positive charges travel fom positive to negative.

It is likely that no single individual electron moves all that far at all, the charge however does.

But I digress...

[Rick Turner]

Six of us just did some blind testing at Roger Siminoff's Tap Tuning Camp, and we all came to very similar conclusions regarding five mandolins including a Loar. Four of the mandolins were reasonably close to one another, and they included the Loar, and yet we could all hear the slight differences. One mando was clearly on a different planet, and not one you'd care to go to by comparison to the others, though it may have worked in an ensemble.

[Joe Mendel]

Lots of interesting thoughts here. I'm getting the feeling that what we see might affect us much more at first than after more time passes and we get used to an instrument. I think that getting used to an instrument may play a very big part in what we percieve as opening up, also. We learn what it does and how to pull what we want out of it. Though I certainly believe instruments do "open up."
I wish I had been there Rick, it sounds very interesting.

[Albee Tellone]

A few years back, my band was an opening act for a very good bluegrass band. The mandolin player has two F model LaPlante mandolins (made in Minnesota). Very nice and very expensive. I was playing a cheap Johnson A model that I picked up in the store where I worked. They were selling for $99 at the time. I bought it strictly because I wanted a black top mando and it sounded good to my bass player who convinced me to "take the plunge" LOL. After our set I was in a dressing room during intermission and their mandolin player came in and paid me a compliment and wondering what brand was that "great mandolin" that I was playing. I showed him the Johnson and he almost fell over. For a laugh I said, "I use this playing out and I keep my Lloyd Loar Gibson at home". We both laughed heartily and that was that, but it shows how just by listening, an instrument can be best judged.

[dwhite]

It is universally agreed that electrons travel from negative to positive, and that positive charges travel fom positive to negative.

It is likely that no single individual electron moves all that far at all, the charge however does.

But I digress...

From a physics problem I had in the early 80's. Electron drift velocity at room temperature, 100V in number 12 wire, single stranded is on the order of 20mph, more or less, as I remember.

[Silly Moustache]

Hi, late to this thread - but what an interesting one. If (likie me) you tend to admire and play expensive instrumnts, you muight be a little of a musical snob. Therefore (and I admit it) I'll tend to have greater expectations of an god "name" on the headstock.

However - at a slight tangent - I started thinking about this sort of thing some years ago when I took my blind cat to the vets. He told me that the cat does not realise that it is blind because it does not differnentiate the stimuli from differnt senses. Hearing, sught, smell and wind on whiskers all contribute to the cat's understanding of its surroundings. I observed my cat knowing about corners and other obstructions for sme while and what kind of things caught him out.

Now, I am slightly deaf and have tinnitus. I have discovered that I cannot hear people talking unless they are facing me - why ? because I lip read. I didn't realise it at first - but I do.

So ...I suspect that we have epxectations of what an instrument wil soud like and can fool ourselves to soe extent. But also we do process information that comes from all our senses ......my new Collings guitar smells of vanilla....so is that why I like it's sound ?

The Silly Moustache

[Silly Moustache]

Oh, and another thing..or things. I know musicians who have the ability to make almost any instrument sound better than most, and just because an instrument is cheap - doesn;t mean that it can't soud good - sometimes you get lucky.

SM

[JeffD]

From a physics problem I had in the early 80's. Electron drift velocity at room temperature, 100V in number 12 wire, single stranded is on the order of 20mph, more or less, as I remember.

I don't want to prolong what is probably more interesting to us nerds, but I have seen numbers more in the meters per hour range for small currents under 5 amps.

My only point is that the physics of electron flow is unambiguous. The understanding of it is often not.

Regarding the question posed - I would say that sight affects what I expect to hear, but my expectations and the actuality often do not match.