Production and Perception of Musical Intervals

Abstract

This Article Reports Two Experiments. In the first experiment, 13 professional singers performed a vocal exercise consisting of three ascending and descending melodic intervals: minor second, tritone, and perfect fifth. Seconds were sung more narrowly but fifths more widely in both directions, as compared to their equally tempered counterparts. In the second experiment, intonation accuracy in performances recorded from the first experiment was evaluated in a listening test. Tritones and fifths were more frequently classified as out of tune than seconds. Good correspondence was found between interval tuning and the listeners responses. The performers themselves evaluated their performance almost randomly in the immediate post-performance situation but acted comparably to the independent group after listening to their own recording. The data suggest that melodic intervals may be, on an average, 20 to 25 cents out of tune and still be estimated as correctly tuned by expert listeners.

Intonation in unaccompanied singing: Accuracy, drift, and a model of reference pitch memory

“…We will see in Section IV that for the purposes of our study the assumption of equal temperament does not substantially affect our results. We also assume that pitch, a perceptual quantity, is adequately represented by its physical correlate, fundamental frequency, for harmonic sounds such as singing (Vurma and Ross, 2006).…”

“…Welch (1985) proposed a theory of singing production, with special regards to how children acquire singing skills. Vurma and Ross (2006) investigated professional singers' ability to sing intervals and reported average standard deviations of 22 cents in interval size, and 34 cents in absolute pitch relative to a tuning fork reference. Immediately after singing, the singers were unable to judge whether their intervals were out of tune, but after listening to a recording of their singing, their judgements were not significantly different from other expert listeners.…”

Toward a Unified Theory of the I-R Model (Part 1)

“…Rising and falling melodic intervals are categorical, and as such they are so perceived by both trained (anchor prone) and untrained (magnet prone) listeners (Aruffo, Goldstone, & Earn, 2014), whether they have perfect or relative pitch (intervals can be significantly out of tune and still be recognized as belonging to a category; see Vurma & Ross, 2005). I-R theory thus does not depend on listeners being able to identify (or to name) discrete intervals (few people other than trained musicians are proficient at this, and those with perfect pitch excel at it; see Dooley & Deutsch, 2011).…”

Absolute Judgment of Musical Interval Width

“…A musical prototype can assimilate an area of approximately 25 cents in either direction (Vurma & Ross, 2006), i.e., musically trained listeners may perceive all stimuli within 25 cents of a prototype to be identical (Perlman & Krumhansl, 1996;Siegel & Siegel, 1977a). Alternatively, a prototype may show enhanced discrimination in its immediate vicinity compared to the same area surrounding a non-prototype (Acker, Pastore, & Hall, 1995;McFadden & Callaway, 1999).…”