Recently I had my piano tuned (it’s a gorgeous Steinway Model B originally built in 1887, and still going strong! The picture is of a similar, but newer, instrument). After playing it for a while I found that one note was consistently standing out and distracting me each time it sounded. I emailed my tuner, and we corresponded a bit over the nature of the sound. I found myself straining to find words to describe what I was hearing, and I realized that in everyday language, our different senses have very different sizes of vocabularies.

Continue reading →