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Questions from Reading 2001/10


mishum2000

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Composers today use a wider variety of sounds than ever before, including many that were once considered undesirable notes. Composer Edgard Varese (1883-1965) called this the "liberation of sound...the right to make music with any and all sounds". Electronic music, for example—made with the aid of computers, synthesizers, and electronic instruments—may include sounds that in the past would not have been considered musical. Environmental sounds, such as thunder, and electrically generated hisses and blips can be recorded, manipulated, and then incorporated into a musical composition. But composers also draw novel sounds from voices and non-electronic instruments. Singers may be asked to scream, laugh, groan, sneeze, or to sing phonetic sounds rather than words. Wind and strong players may tap or scrape their instruments.

 

A brass or woodwind player may hum while playing, to product two pitches at once; a pianist may reach inside the piano to pluck a string and then run a meal blade along it. In the music of the Western world, the greatest expansion and experimentation have involved percussion instruments, which outnumber strings and winds in many recent compositions. Traditional percussion instruments are struck with new types of beaters; and instruments that used to be considered unconventional in Western music—tom-toms, bongos, slap sucks, maracas—are widely used.

 

In the search for novel sounds, increased use has been made in Western music of Microtones. Non-Western music typically divides and interval between two pitches more finely than Western music does, thereby producing a greater number of distinct tones, or microtones, within the same interval. Composers such is Krzysztof Penderecki create sound that borders on electronic noise through tone clusters - closely spaced tones played together and heard as a mass, block, or band of sound. The directional aspect of sound has taken on new importance as well. Loudspeakers or groups of instruments may be placed at opposite ends of the stage, in the balcony, or at the back and sides of theauditorium. Because standard music notation makes no provision for many of these innovations, recent music scores may contain graphlike diagrams, new note shapes and symbols, and novelways of arranging notation on the page.

 

 

8. According to the passage, which of the following would be considered traditional elements of Western music?

 

 

A. Microtones

B. Tom-toms and bongos

C. Pianos

D. Hisses

 

 

What unusual or unique biological train led to the remarkable diversification and unchallenged success of the ants for over 50 million years? The answer appears to be that they were the first group of predator eusocial insects that both lived and foraged primarily on the soil and in rotting vegetation on the ground. Eusocial refers to a form of insect society characterized by speculation of tasks and cooperative care of the young; it is rare among insects. Richly organized colonies of the kind made possible by eusociality enjoy several key advantages over solitary individuals.

 

Under most circumstances groups of workers are better able to forage for food and defend the nest, because they can switch from individual to group response and back again swiftly and according to need. When a food object or nest intruder is too large for one individual to handle, nestmates can be quickly assembled by alarm or recruitment signals. Equally important is the fact that the execution of multiple-step tasks is accomplished in a series-parallel sequence. That is, individual ants can specialize in particular steps, moving from one object (such as a larva to be fed) to another (a second larva to be fed). They do not need to carry each task to completion from start to finish – for example, to check the larva first, then collect the food, the feed the larva. Hence, if each link in the chain has many workers in attendance, a series directed at any particular object is less likely to fail. Moreover, ants specializing in particular labor categories typically constitute a caste specialized by age or body form or both. There has been some documentation of the superiority in performance and net energetic yield of various castes for their modal tasks, although careful experimental studies are still relatively few.

 

What makes ants unusual in the company of eusocial insects is the fact that they are the only eusocial predators (predators are animals that capture and feed on other animals) occupying the soil and ground litter. The eusocial termites live in the same places as ants and also have wingless workers, but they feed exclusively on dead vegetation.

 

 

17. All of the following terms are defined in the passage EXCEPT:

 

 

A. eusocial (line 3)

B. series-parell sequence (line 13)

C. caste (line 19)

D. predators (line 23)

 


 

I'm waiting for your replies

 

Thank you,

 

Michael.

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"Moreover, ants specializing in particular labor categories typically constitute a caste specialized by age or body form or both."

 

What about this : From this I understand that a caste are those ants that are specialized in particular labor categories.....

 

And what about your my previous question (the 8th one). What is your answer ?

 

Michael.

 

17.

Caste. Line 19 doesn't define the word.

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8. Hisses, tom-toms and bongos, and microtones are all mentioned with regard to novel elements. Therefore, the answer must be C: pianos.

 

17. For eusocial, caste and predators there are clearly marked concise definitions/descriptions:

Eusocial refers to a form of insect society characterized by speculation of tasks and cooperative care of the young.

ants specializing in particular labor categories typically constitute a caste specialized by age or body form or both.

 

predators are animals that capture and feed on other animals

The explanation of a series-parallel sequence is rather loose, so maybe the answer is B:

the execution of multiple-step tasks is accomplished in a series-parallel sequence. That is, individual ants can specialize in particular steps, moving from one object (such as a larva to be fed) to another (a second larva to be fed). They do not need to carry each task to completion from start to finish – for example, to check the larva first, then collect the food, the feed the larva. Hence, if each link in the chain has many workers in attendance, a series directed at any particular object is less likely to fail.

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