Range of Tuning for Tones With and Without Vibrato

Abstract

PREVIOUS STUDIES ON VIBRATO PITCH HAVE attempted to determine the "principal pitch" of vibrato tones and not the range of tuning for such tones in a melodic context. This study investigates the range of acceptable tuning (RAT) for tones with and without vibrato, using repeating ascending and descending three-tone arpeggios. The second tone in each sequence was modulated or unmodulated with an initial pitch that was flat or sharp. With each repetition the pitch of the second tone increased or decreased by 3 cents depending upon the initial pitch condition. Participants indicated when they perceived the second tone to be in tune and out of tune. The RAT for vibrato tones was approximately 10 cents greater than for unmodulated tones. This is largely due to the lower RAT limit, indicating that the carrier frequency of vibrato tones can be 10 cents flatter than the fundamental frequency of an unmodulated tone.

Two studies of pitch in string instrument vibrato: Perception and pitch matching responses of university and high school string players

“…The performed pitches in response to vibrated tone stimuli were near the mean frequencies of the vibrato for both vibrato and non-vibrato responses. The vibrato responses were a few cents lower than non-vibrated responses, a result that appears to corroborate recent investigation of listeners' perception of vibrato tones van Besouw et al, 2008). These results are consistent as well with Study 1 using the method of paired comparisons, at least for the violin.…”

“…This perhaps indicates that these musicians heard pitches of vibrato tones one or two cents lower than the arithmetic mean of the vibrato. This outcome also appears to correspond with the conclusion of van Besouw et al (2008), who used synthesized tones and found that the range of acceptable tuning for vibrato tones was approximately 10 cents wider and predominantly in the flat direction compared to non-vibrato tones.…”

“…Because of the necessity of stimulus control in experimental studies of perception, until recently previous research has used electronic or synthesized sound sources in place of acoustical instruments. These studies have indicated that perceived pitch corresponds closely to the mean of the frequency-modulated sound (Iwamiya, Kosugi, & Kitamura, 1983;Seashore, 1938;Shonle & Horan, 1980;van Besouw, Brereton, & Howard, 2008). Shonle and Horan extended the range of modulations to whole tones, and found that perceived pitch of those wider modulations corresponded more closely to the geometric mean of the extreme frequencies, a frequency only slightly lower than the arithmetic mean.…”

Principal pitch of frequency-modulated tones with asymmetrical modulation waveform: A comparison of models

“…In this case, the difference between the predicted and observed mean values are greater for the u profiles, reaching 13 Hz (11 cents) for p f ¼ 24%. Except for this last case, the differences are all within the RAT (range of acceptable tuning) for vibrato tones, 29 which goes up to 10 cents, so that a vibrato with carrier frequency of up to 10 cents flatter than the fundamental frequency of a tone without vibrato is still perceived as being in tune. The functional form of f con vs p f has a maximum departure from the geometric mean between p f ¼ 50% and p f ¼ 70% for experiment 1 and for a wide range of c values, which agrees with the maximum departure for the perceived pitch that occurs for values p f ¼ 55% and p f ¼ 75%.…”

Analysing and Understanding the Singing Voice: Recent Progress and Open Questions

“…Only a few cycles of vibrato may appear in short sung notes. The perceived pitch of such notes appears to be a function of the vibrato phase at the end of the note [31], but when sinusoids rather than synthesized /a/ vowels are used, there are variations in the pitch changes perceived [32].…”