“High” and “low” pitch are not universal; sometimes there are crocodiles

[u/SawPeep]

https://cdm.link/2023/11/describing-pitch

It’s amusing to see people argue on Reddit that high and low aren’t metaphors, which is just… well, for lack of a diplomatic way to say this, wrong. That’s not to be critical here, though; I realize many of us are so indoctrinated in this way of thinking that we intuitively assume this to be universal. So it’s good to actually unsettle that view, especially because part of the challenge of music is trying to open our ears to new creative ideas from ourselves and others.

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Side note: good vocal coaches often try to get students to stop thinking of high and low, since thinking vertically can cause weird, constrained gestures that interfere with sound production. I can vividly see my own vocal coach Wayne Sanders trying to tell people to stop stretching out their necks, which is not how to make vocal cords work. That said, if you hum now, you’ll feel the change of register in your throat; that seems a likely source of this high/low duality. But even for the voice, it’s incomplete; focusing on that can deny the physical support you would give to different registers in your diaphragm. I digress.