Remember how I'd written two posts below about the person on the forum who'd nixed the idea of vibrational frequencies and pitch in sound and scent and how they might correlate, who didn't tell me why what I wrote didn't jive? Well, I contacted her this morning asking why and whether she had another theory, and lo and behold, this person is author Tania Sanchez who's working on a book with biophysicist Luca Turin. The book is called "Perfumes: The Guide" and it's to be published in 2008. The lovely Tania gave me his contacts and Mr. Luca Turin was kind enough to write me back with all the info I was hoping to find on the subject and more. This is what he had to say about the matter:
"There is no systematic difference in the shapes of vibrational spectra of topnotes and drydown notes. All molecules composed of C, H O, N and S, as 99% of odorants and flavorants are, vibrate in the range of 500 to 1800 wavenumbers to roughly the same extent. The higher the molecular weight, the more vibrational modes a molecule will have, but the frequencies of the modes will still fall in the same region as those of lighter molecules. Volatility determines whether a molecule is a topnote or drydown note, and it is inversely related to molecular weight."
Obviously, since I'm not a biophysicist, all this is way over my head, but I think I'm starting to get a couple of things--first of all, it sounds to me like wavenumbers in scent and wavelengths in music determine their forms and amplitude more than their pitches--or rather, that we can't see their pitches by looking at a graph. In scent, the more vibrational modes (that's a new term for me), the higher the molecular weight (since it's inversely related to volatility), so, would the note smell higher-pitched if it weighed more? More to me usually indicates volume, so this is why I think maybe this "more vibrational modes" has to do roughly with the intensity or character of the scent if not their pitches. In music and sound, you can see a sound on a graph indicating what the sound looks like in sound wave form--a piano, for instance, provided it's allowed to sustain, looks like a sharp attack followed by a smooth slope downwards. The sound wave of a crash cymbal when it's hit looks very jagged (there are also different types of wave forms that determine the characters of sounds).
Pitch is determined by the frequency or the number of cycles per second, therefore A440. But since there are vibrational frequencies within scent, even though they are very slow, couldn't they be measured so we can determine their pitches that way, and is that related to volatility?
Sound and scent both have overtones and harmonics so why not the cycle of fifths? OK, colors don't work in exactly the same way, either, but there must be order of some kind at work...Between MIDI and headspace technology, there's really a lot music and perfume have in common. To be continued...
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Pitch Perception In Music and Scent
I always think of pitch in music correlating to pitch in scent; for instance, a high note in sound vibrates at a faster frequency than a low note and likewise a high-pitched lemon note vibrates (maybe not physically save for how it evaporates faster--but certainly in feeling) faster than a base note, and therefore smells "uplifting" in comparison to how a base note (woods, for example) feels "heavy" to smell and to wear. Someone on a forum has already nixed this idea flat out but hasn't told me why. Perhaps high and low frequencies in scent don't correlate with highs and lows in olfactive pitch to start with, but take for example this question posed by biologists (Citation: Chittka L, Brockmann A (2005) Perception Space—The Final Frontier):
...are odor mixtures simply perceived as a compound entity with distinct components (like a triad in vertebrate pitch perception), or are mixtures unique entities that are perceived as fundamentally different from their elements (like “white” in color perception)?
I think when our noses are trained, we can smell olfactive pitch better than most people who have never learned to smell; likewise people who've had training in music (or people who are naturally inclined to perceive on a higher plane) can hear pitch (recognize highs and lows) better than those who have never connected what they hear with notes on a scale or their own voice being able to go higher and lower. When I teach people to sing for the first time, it starts with recognizing that basic difference between high and low and how it correlates with the physical dynamic of how we produce sound with our voice. When they are able to make the mental connection, it's truly eye-opening and freeing for them. It's about learning to hear, even though they've always heard. It's about going beyond the physical and into the realm of perception.
When I say pitch, I mean just the highs and lows we perceive, not the "texture" or type of smell which I correlate in my mind with timbres of sound--a flute and a harp can play the same high note but they don't sound the same. Also, two notes played one after the other on the same instrument don't sound the same unless they were deliberately performed the same way twice, so music isn't as simple as biology makes it out to be, either. "How" it's played is a huge factor in differenciating the sounds we hear. Still, a high C is a high C. A440 is A440. Pitch and timbre are two different things. Volume (loudness)is another.
I think certain accords (scent chords if you will) smell more like one new accord (a different smell altogether) than a mixture where the notes are more distinguishable. It would be harder to distinguish individual notes (and pitches of each) in an abstract scent mixture. I generally don't like perfumes that smell like one smell because they bore me, whereas perfumes that I perceive as being multidimensional and having distinctive placement of notes I can recognize as highs and mids and lows are more interesting. But the trained nose is like the trained ear. I listen to and sing a lot of complex music so an intricate jazz chord sounds interesting to me, and I can distinguish the notes within it and the motion of chords before and after that chord that makes sense and sounds beautiful in context, whereas the person who doesn't listen to complex music might hear a jazz chord and it sounds like noise to that person (because the chord didn't sound like a simple major or minor chord for instance). The physical ear alone doesn't perceive music, nor even individual notes for that matter, even though notes exist...or do they?
Anyway, I don't think it's far off when this article, Structure-odor Relations--a Modern Perspective by Luca Turin and Fumiko Yoshii says: We hope that biologists will realize that, once a vocabulary is agreed upon, odor is as reliable a sensation as pitch or color.
They've already nixed the vibration theories but I don't think they're as focused on pitch perception alone the way I am--however, they do use the term "wavenumbers" which I'm assuming doesn't correlate with scent pitches at all. How then did they come up with the idea of scent pitches? I think the olfactive scale is a workable concept--it makes perfect sense to me and helps me visualize olfactive structures in space just like I can visualize chords inside my head, but apparently the olfactive scale has little to do with the physical proof of how one smells. It's more to do with how one thinks about what one smells. Well, that's all I'm concerned with. I wish we could just expand on the olfactive scale idea and have it make sense like the H & R chart makes sense to me. Is that too much to ask for? I love the piano keyboard and how it simplifies how we see and hear musical notes the way no other instrument has laid it all out so clearly for us from top to bottom.
Maybe olfactive pitch has to do with tenacity or longevity (or evaporation rate) than vibrational frequencies. But if low = slow, that means I was still right about something. It boils down to listening to how something makes us feel. That's not to say that individuals can't find heavy smells uplifting, but I don't think we could say that a lemon note is lower pitched than a wood note. Even if the particular wood note has high pitched elements in it, wouldn't they be considered something like overtones?
...are odor mixtures simply perceived as a compound entity with distinct components (like a triad in vertebrate pitch perception), or are mixtures unique entities that are perceived as fundamentally different from their elements (like “white” in color perception)?
I think when our noses are trained, we can smell olfactive pitch better than most people who have never learned to smell; likewise people who've had training in music (or people who are naturally inclined to perceive on a higher plane) can hear pitch (recognize highs and lows) better than those who have never connected what they hear with notes on a scale or their own voice being able to go higher and lower. When I teach people to sing for the first time, it starts with recognizing that basic difference between high and low and how it correlates with the physical dynamic of how we produce sound with our voice. When they are able to make the mental connection, it's truly eye-opening and freeing for them. It's about learning to hear, even though they've always heard. It's about going beyond the physical and into the realm of perception.
When I say pitch, I mean just the highs and lows we perceive, not the "texture" or type of smell which I correlate in my mind with timbres of sound--a flute and a harp can play the same high note but they don't sound the same. Also, two notes played one after the other on the same instrument don't sound the same unless they were deliberately performed the same way twice, so music isn't as simple as biology makes it out to be, either. "How" it's played is a huge factor in differenciating the sounds we hear. Still, a high C is a high C. A440 is A440. Pitch and timbre are two different things. Volume (loudness)is another.
I think certain accords (scent chords if you will) smell more like one new accord (a different smell altogether) than a mixture where the notes are more distinguishable. It would be harder to distinguish individual notes (and pitches of each) in an abstract scent mixture. I generally don't like perfumes that smell like one smell because they bore me, whereas perfumes that I perceive as being multidimensional and having distinctive placement of notes I can recognize as highs and mids and lows are more interesting. But the trained nose is like the trained ear. I listen to and sing a lot of complex music so an intricate jazz chord sounds interesting to me, and I can distinguish the notes within it and the motion of chords before and after that chord that makes sense and sounds beautiful in context, whereas the person who doesn't listen to complex music might hear a jazz chord and it sounds like noise to that person (because the chord didn't sound like a simple major or minor chord for instance). The physical ear alone doesn't perceive music, nor even individual notes for that matter, even though notes exist...or do they?
Anyway, I don't think it's far off when this article, Structure-odor Relations--a Modern Perspective by Luca Turin and Fumiko Yoshii says: We hope that biologists will realize that, once a vocabulary is agreed upon, odor is as reliable a sensation as pitch or color.
They've already nixed the vibration theories but I don't think they're as focused on pitch perception alone the way I am--however, they do use the term "wavenumbers" which I'm assuming doesn't correlate with scent pitches at all. How then did they come up with the idea of scent pitches? I think the olfactive scale is a workable concept--it makes perfect sense to me and helps me visualize olfactive structures in space just like I can visualize chords inside my head, but apparently the olfactive scale has little to do with the physical proof of how one smells. It's more to do with how one thinks about what one smells. Well, that's all I'm concerned with. I wish we could just expand on the olfactive scale idea and have it make sense like the H & R chart makes sense to me. Is that too much to ask for? I love the piano keyboard and how it simplifies how we see and hear musical notes the way no other instrument has laid it all out so clearly for us from top to bottom.
Maybe olfactive pitch has to do with tenacity or longevity (or evaporation rate) than vibrational frequencies. But if low = slow, that means I was still right about something. It boils down to listening to how something makes us feel. That's not to say that individuals can't find heavy smells uplifting, but I don't think we could say that a lemon note is lower pitched than a wood note. Even if the particular wood note has high pitched elements in it, wouldn't they be considered something like overtones?
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
The Scented Salamander Reviews Unreleased/Persephone Perfume
Marie-Hélène Wagner's perfume reviews are among my very favorites because she has a talent for creating visuals that are as vivid as the images that grace her most up-to-date, cutting edge perfume blog, The Scented Salamander. She's able to describe a scent not only as poetry in motion but also from the objective perspective of the wearer of scent--the scent that wafts from the nape of her neck as her hair is lifted by the wind. Delivered with finesse and precision, her review always feels like an experience not to be missed. Please click on the image above to link to the latest review of Unreleased Mix a.k.a. Persephone Perfume.
The Scented Salamander is a featured blog on Coutorture.com and the Glam Network.