The subjective size of musical intervals

Abstract

The musical scale and the psychophysical scales of pitch appear to be in contradiction with one another. The debate centers on whether or not pitch is a log function of frequency. Previous results on the listeners' judgment of ratios and differences in pitch between pairs of tones agree with the musical scale [R. Elmasian and M. H. Birnbaum, Percept. Psychophys. 36, 531–537 (1984)]. In the present experiment, the subjective size of musical and nonmusical intervals was measured by magnitude estimation and category rating, using subjects without musical training. Pure tones as well as complex tones (harmonic series) were used. Frequencies ranged from 110–2145 Hz. For each pair of tones presented melodically, subjects were instructed to rate the pitch of the second tone relative to the pitch of the first one. Results show that subjects use the same comparison operation for both ratio and difference judgments of pitch. The effects of frequency range, spectral composition, size of interval, and musicality of t...