Chris Bonds wrote:

>Stirling S Newberry wrote:
>
>>The single thing which differentiates melody from a succession of pitches
>>is the implication of a harmonic context.
>
>This implies that cultures that don't use harmony don't have melodies,
>something you may not be prepared to assert.

Western style harmony - which is centered on the simultaneous sounding of
pitches is far from the only kind of harmony.  *Harmony* ios based on the
perceptual ability to discern frequencies whose resonance is active - even
if intermittently and periodicaly.  This is how even seemingly monodic
musical styles can have inflections - the placement of the inflections is
a sign of harmony.

Mr. Bonds presents me with a fallacy - he says "then you must say that
cultures without harmony are without melody".  This does not cover all
possible cases: one can, instead, assert that Harmony is always present,
being based on perceptual mechanisms which are universal.  This I am
willing to do - *Harmony* exists in all musical styles and cultures - even
though the *application* of harmony may vary wildly.  The mistake people
often make is to assume that because some perceptual mechanism is used
differently in another culture that it is, *ipso facto*, not present.  This
is a hold over from the myth of "primitive" cultures, where by certain
aspects of human-ness were unused by "lesser" people, a myth which ought
to be intered among such concepts as the flat earth &c.

The pitches in a melody need not even be the sin wave pitches favored in
most cultures - one can form percussive rhythms out of wavelets.

Stirling S Newberry <[log in to unmask]>