Shape in music notation
Adam Ockelford · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2017
This chapter explores how perceptual domains function in the auditory and visual modalities, and sets out a model, using ‘zygonic’ theory, showing how different forms of mapping between the two may logically occur in cognition. Such mappings enable the perceived shapes of patterns in sound to be represented as two-dimensional visual shapes. Four types of inter-domain relationship are identified: ‘regular’, ‘irregular’ (the latter being ‘indirect’ or ‘arbitrary’) and ‘synaesthetic’. ‘Regular’, ‘indirect’ and ‘arbitrary’ representations are somewhat analogous to the threefold typology of signs defined in Peircean semiotics: icon, index and symbol. The new model is tested in the context of (1) young children’s ‘picture’ scores, (2) blind children’s tactile representations of pitch, (3) Western staff notation, (4) music in braille, (5) guitar chord symbols and (6) a synaesthete’s representation of patterns in sound. The implications for musicians and for musicological and music-psychological understanding and future research are discussed.