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

Abstract

The present article focuses on the question of whether the timbre difference of two sounds with harmonic spectra, produced by natural musical instruments or the singing voice, may influence subjective assessments of the pitch of one sound in relation to the pitch of the other. The authors administered a series of perception tests to a group of professional musicians (n = 13) and a group of non-musicians (n = 13). The tests used the following pre-recorded sounds: the singing voice, the sound of the viola, and the sound of the trumpet. The participants had to compare the pitch of pairwise presented successive tones and decide whether the second tone was either 'flat', 'sharp' or 'in tune'. Tests using stimuli in the pitch range around A3 (220 Hz) at a loudness level of approximately 90 phons revealed pitch shifts of significant magnitude likely to affect intonation quality in a musical performance among both musicians and non-musicians. The conclusion drawn from the study is that timbre-induced pitch shifts may attain magnitudes that are likely to lead to conflicts between subjective and fundamental-frequency-based pitch assessments. Situations are described in which such conflicts may arise in actual musical practice.

Using listener-based perceptual features as intermediate representations in music information retrieval

“…This was also confirmed in an experiment by Schubert and Wolfe (2006) in which they found that perceptual brightness was influenced by the pitch. Similarly, the perception of pitch may change with timbre (e.g., Vurma et al, 2011). This confirms an interaction effect but will not explain the large correlation found in this study.…”

The Evaluation of Vocal Pitch Accuracy

“…Concerning the perceptual process, several studies reported that spectral composition (Hutchins et al, 2012;Russo & Thompson, 2005;Vurma et al, 2010;Warrier & Zatorre, 2002) and vibrato (van Besouw et al, 2008) affect the perception of tones. The several interactions observed in our multiple regression modeling showed that the individual acoustical parameters cannot be observed separately.…”

“…Indeed, pitch perception of tones differs depending on spectral composition (Hutchins, Roquet, & Peretz, 2012;Russo & Thompson, 2005;Vurma, Raju, & Kuuda, 2010;Warrier &Zatorre, 2002) andvibrato (van Besouw, Brereton, &Howard, 2008). As the evaluation of performed pitch intervals is based on the pitch level of individual notes and the perception of tones is altered by the acoustical components involved (and appreciated) in operatic singing voices, it may be particularly complex to evaluate such voices.…”

Lay Listeners Can Evaluate the Pitch Accuracy of Operatic Voices

“…Second, the definition of pitch accuracy in operatic singing voices is based on the interaction of several parameters (Larrouy-Maestri et al, 2014a), in contrast with the definition of pitch accuracy of melodies performed by occasional singers (Larrouy-Maestri, Lévêque, Schön, Giovanni, & Morsomme, 2013;Larrouy-Maestri et al, 2015). In addition, parameters such as the spectral composition of the sound (e.g., Hutchins, Roquet, & Peretz, 2012;Russo & Thompson, 2005;Vurma, Raju, Kuuda, 2010;Warrier & Zatorre, 2002) or vibrato (van Besouw, Brereton, & Howard, 2008) influence pitch perception. The combination of these parameters in a single signal may enhance the complexity of the task for laypersons and challenge their perceptual abilities, which are typically deemed weaker than music experts' (e.g., Kraus & Chandrasekaran, 2010;Micheyl, Delhommeau, Perrot, & Oxenham, 2006;Schellenberg & Weiss, 2013;Tervaniemi, Just, Koelsch, Widmann, & Schroger, 2005;Varnet, Wang, Peter, Meunier, & Hoen, 2015; but see Larrouy-Maestri et al, 2015;Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden, Hannon, & Snyder, 2015, for contradictory findings).…”