Consonance of tones of changing frequency

Abstract

The tonal consonance of two sinusoids with a temporal change in frequency was measured in psychological experiments. The stimulus consisted of a pair of tone bursts presented simultaneously. The tone bursts were 1s in duration with a continuous change of frequency and had a fixed frequency ratio. The initial frequency of the lower tone from which the frequency change started was 400 Hz, and the rate of the frequency change was 1 oct/s. The ratios of the instantaneous frequencies were from 1.0‐2.0. Twenty‐one types of stimuli were synthesized by the computer. In the experiment, two stimuli were presented in succession to the subjects who were instructed to judge which of the two stimuli was more consonant. The results revealed the following. (1) The tonal consonance was at its minimum when the frequency ratio was around 1.05. (2) The tonal consonance increased with the increase in the frequency ratio up to around 1.2. (3) The tonal consonance kept nearly the same value and the simple frequency ratios did not result in singular points on the consonance curve when the frequency ratio was over about 1.2.