An interval size illusion: The influence of timbre on the perceived size of melodic intervals

The subjective size of melodic intervals over a two-octave range

“…Quite possibly, the effect of pitch register was observed because the upper harmonics of all tones tested fell above 500 Hz. This explanation is consistent with research indicating that spectral content influences judgments of interval size (Russo & Thompson, 2005).…”

“…It has also been found that estimates of interval size by trained listeners are influenced by timbre (Russo & Thompson, 2005). Insofar as trained listeners can classify and label melodic intervals, these findings suggest a distinction between the distance-quality of pitch intervals and the analytic labels associated with those intervals.…”

Timbral Shepard-illusion reveals ambiguity and context sensitivity of brightness perception

“…They observed symmetric mutual interference of pitch and brightness in a discrimination task, when differences in sensitivity between attributes and participants were controlled (cf. Russo and Thompson, 2005;Melara and Marks, 1990). At the same time, a recent neuroimaging study suggested no systematic anatomical distinction between the cortical regions that subserve the encoding of pitch or brightness variation (Allen et al, 2016).…”

Does timbre affect pitch?: Estimations by musicians and non-musicians

“…If one attribute (e.g., timbre) is extracted, it will constitute a 'context' that will influence other attributes (Melara & Marks, 1990a). Russo and Thompson (2005) claim that the influence of such a context is present in the results of perception tests in which the subjective magnitude of a melodic interval constituted by two sounds of different timbre (the amplitudes of lower partials two to eleven increasing monotonically in one and decreasing in the other) was observed to depend on whether or not the timbre difference of the sounds was congruent with the direction of the interval (e.g., dull and bright sounds combined with an ascending step). The conclusions drawn from the present study are consistent with the findings of Russo and Thompson (2005): when the context is a bright timbre (where a sound's spectral center of gravity is located higher), the pitch of the sound is perceived as higher and vice versa -when the context is constituted by a dull timbre (where a sound's spectral center of gravity is located lower), the pitch of the sound is perceived as lower.…”