Influence of tonal context and timbral variation on perception of pitch

Abstract

Pitch and timbre are two of the building blocks of music. Variations in pitch lead to a melodic line, whereas variations of timbre are usually heard as different instrumentations. Do pitch and timbre interact? Listening to an orchestra, one can hear a continuous melody being played when different instruments switch off playing separate parts of this melody, even if each note of the melody is played by a different instrument, a compositional style called klangfarbenmelodieor hocket. A more striking demonstrationof this phenomenon occurs with sung melodies, in which the changing vocal timbres associated with speech do not alter perception of the melody. This implies that one can follow the fundamental frequency (F0) of a series of tones, even when their spectral shapes differ, which argues for the separability of pitch and timbre. However, since both pitch and spectral timbre are rooted in the frequency dimension of sound, it should not be surprising if they interact under some circumstances. To test this idea, one could look at people's perceptions of pitch and/or timbre when both the F0 and the spectral shape of the tones differ. This paper investigates the interaction between pitch and timbre, focusing on spectral timbre's influence on pitch perception as a function of context.The literature in which interactions between pitch and timbre are examined has yielded contradictory results. Some researchers have found that the timbre of a tone affects its perceived pitch (e.g., Krumhansl & Iverson, 1992, Experiment 1;Melara & Marks, 1990a, 1990b, 1990cPlatt & Racine, 1985;Singh & Hirsh, 1992;Wapnick & Freeman, 1980), whereas others have found no effect of timbre on pitch perception (e.g., Krumhansl & Iverson, 1992, Experiments 2 and 3;Semal & Demany 1991, 1993. It seems that those studies presenting tones in the absence of other tones tend to find an interaction between pitch and timbre, whereas studies presenting tones within the context of other tones find no such interaction (but see also , in which pitch and timbre difference thresholds for isolated tones were not affected by variation in the irrelevant dimension).A same-different paradigm was used by Singh and Hirsh (1992) to determine the perceived pitch of isolated residue tones, tones having no component at F0. Six timbres were synthesized, each containing four consecutive harmonics, the lowest of which could be the second, third, fourth, or up to the seventh harmonic. Each pair of tones could differ in F0, spectral composition, or both. Subjects indicated whether timbre was the same or different, and whether pitch stayed the same, went up, or went down. When the harmonic numbers and F0 moved in the same direction, subjects correctly reported the direction of pitch change. However, when harmonic number and F0 moved in opposite directions, this created a conflict. If the change in F0 was 4% or greater, the direction of F0 change dominated pitch judgments. However, when the change in F0 was less than 4%, the direction of harmonic change dominated pitch judgmen...

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

“…Previous research has indicated that timbre can affect judgments of whether one tone is higher or lower than another (Singh & Hirsh, 1992) and whether two tones differ in pitch (Warrier & Zatorre, 2002), but these effects were observed only for very small intervals involving tones that differed in fundamental frequency by 4% or less. Indeed, Warrier and Zatorre speculated that spectral shape is unlikely to affect pitch judgments when pitches differ in fundamental frequency by more than 4%.…”

“…The spectra of the dull and bright timbres (modeled after those used by Warrier & Zatorre, 2002) are represented in Figure 1. The energy in the dull timbre was weighted in the lower partials, and the energy in the bright timbre was weighted in the higher partials so that the normalized spectral centroid (i.e., f c /f 0 , where f c is the amplitude-weighted mean of the frequency spectrum and f 0 is the fundamental frequency) of the dull timbre was lower than that of the bright timbre.…”

“…Other kinds of timbral manipulations do not affect the perceived pitch but influence the speed with which listeners can classify individual tones by pitch (Krumhansl & Iverson, 1992, Experiment 1; Melara & Marks, 1990a;Pitt, 1994, Experiment 2). Timbre can also influence the perception of pitch relations, including pitch discrimination thresholds (Warrier & Zatorre, 2002; but see Semal & Demany, 1991 and judgments of pitch direction (Singh & Hirsh, 1992).…”

Tonal expectations influence pitch perception

“…In the related condition with the expected tonic target, pitch perception should be facilitated, in comparison with the less related condition with the less stable, less expected subdominant target. In Experiment 1, we used ratings of degree of mistuning (proposed by Warrier & Zatorre, 2002). In Experiment 2, we used a speeded reaction time task requiring binary judgments of mistuning.…”

Aspects of Auditory Perception and Cognition for Usable Display Resolution in Data Sonification

“…However, as smaller sets of intervals are used, the chances of obtaining musical phrases with a strong tonal identity would be higher. This gives rise to the question of whether musical context (which can significantly improve pitch judgements [10]) is a desirable factor in a display of numerical information or if, on the contrary, the sense of expectation of musical events that might arise [11] could interfere with the objective exploration of numerical information.…”