Individual Differences Reveal the Basis of Consonance

Abstract

Summary Some combinations of musical notes are consonant (pleasant), while others are dissonant (unpleasant), a distinction central to music. Explanations of consonance in terms of acoustics, auditory neuroscience, and enculturation have been debated for centuries [1-12]. We utilized individual differences to distinguish the candidate theories. We measured preferences for musical chords as well as nonmusical sounds that isolated particular acoustic factors – specifically, the beating and the harmonic relationships between frequency components, two factors that have long been thought to potentially underlie consonance [2, 3, 10, 13-20]. Listeners preferred stimuli without beats and with harmonic spectra, but across over 250 subjects, only the preference for harmonic spectra was consistently correlated with preferences for consonant over dissonant chords. Harmonicity preferences were also correlated with the number of years subjects had spent playing a musical instrument, suggesting that exposure to music amplifies preferences for harmonic frequencies because of their musical importance. Harmonic spectra are prominent features of natural sounds, and our results indicate they also underlie the perception of consonance.

Revisiting the innate preference for consonance.

“…These findings are reminiscent of the contrasting "preferences" of 2-month-olds when a block of dissonant trials precedes or follows a block of consonant trials (Trainor et al, 2002; see Figure 4). Our results from short-term exposure are consistent with the enduring consequences of musical enculturation and training on evaluative responses to consonant and dissonant intervals in children (Valentine, 1962) and adults (Bugg, 1939;Guernsey, 1928;Malmberg, 1918;McDermott et al, 2010;McLachlan et al, 2013;Roberts, 1984). They are also consistent with the divergence of musical forms across cultures and with divergent evaluative responses to such forms (Brandt, Gebrian, & Sieve, 2012;Herzog, 1939;Jordania, 2006;Nettl, 2000;Vassilakis, 2005).…”

The use of augmented auditory feedback to improve arm reaching in stroke: a case series

“…Consonant sounds are pleasant and more preferred than dissonant sounds [35]; the latter is perceptually harsh and unpleasant since they create a sensation of beating [36]. Two pairs of consonant/dissonant stimuli were created, pair 1: C-G/C-C#; pair 2: C#-G#/G-G# (frequency C ¼ 261.626 Hz; C# ¼ 277.183 Hz; G ¼ 391.995 Hz; G# ¼ 415.305 Hz).…”

Using individual differences to test the role of temporal and place cues in coding frequency modulation

“…Previous work has assessed individual differences on a variety of psychoacoustical tasks within both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired populations to reveal potential underlying coding mechanisms (e.g., Plomp, 1981, 1983;Johnson et al, 1987;Watson et al, 1996;Kidd et al, 2007;McDermott et al, 2010). Our experiment used a similar paradigm, involving 100 young normal-hearing listeners.…”

“…One reason for the lack of the expected correlation may be because of the difference in the procedures used: the frequencydiscrimination task involved identifying which of two intervals included changes in the stimulus frequencies, whereas the ITD task involved not only detecting an ITD, but determining the direction of ITD change from one interval to the next. In addition, the number of participants (22) was rather small for identifying correlations based on individual differences between young normal-hearing listeners, especially when compared to recent studies using individual differences paradigms (Kidd et al, 2007;McDermott et al, 2010). Large samples are likely to be necessary to accurately measure performance variance within the normal-hearing population.…”