Thanks for the info, Christopher. I hadn't heard of entrainment before. Is
there any explanation as to why two pendulums should come into phase? Do
you think people can be more or less expert at entraining?
best, Sue
At 10:16 PM 2/21/2005, you wrote:
><snip>
>Recognition of beats, I would call a basic level skill. This has pertinence
>to many different areas of experience. Not just music but sport, poetry,
>fluent handwriting, stress in speech, dance among many other activities
>all use depend at least to some extent on the recognition of beats. Musical
>ability presupposes some sensitivity to recognition of beats, but also
>pitch, intonation, pattern recognition, physical control etc.
><snip>
>
>It's even more basic than a skill, I think, if by 'recognition' one means
>*taking into account*.
>
>I'm thinking of entrainment, which is a _physical_ phenomenon: the tendency
>of two oscillators (eg pendulums) to come into phase. Stoppard had fun with
>it in *Albert's Bridge*. Ditto Ligeti with *1,000 Metronomes*. But Cf also
>the 1940 Tacoma Bridge collapse, a consequence of frequency entrainment.
>
>We entrain nutually in working together and entrain to particular rhythms in
>listening to music. We self entrain when we walk and also (I think) when we
>read.
>
>CW
>__________________________________________
>
>'I might have known you'd choose the easy way'
>(Franz Kline's mother)
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