- the faster-than-fast microseconds during which players (including young-enough children) relish vibrations as if one at a time
- the actual measured musical time which most of us are trained to conceive of as repeatedly counting to four, usually; three, from time to time
- the lifetime of the player / listener associating the tones heard at this moment with tones heard in the past
Now I sense that there is a fourth, harder to define because incorporeal, even more so than sound itself. This is the time of cultural evolution that alters the definitions of everything by gradually shifting our access to primary sensations. I had to learn to hear some of the attributes of tone that most fascinate me now because of the intrusion of this element.
I suspect that this element is historically connected to the confusion that arises when the visual symbol is mistaken for the aural reality.
