Pitch Change Research Articles

The sound of timbre reigns: Auditory sequence discrimination in 3–5-year-old children

ABSTRACT How do young children apprehend the sounds in their environments? The current study elucidates a recent finding that 3–5-year-olds have greater sensitivity to timbre – non-pitch-related spectral and dynamic attributes that differentiate sounds – than to pitch contour. This finding is somewhat surprising given that pitch contour underlies much of linguistic prosody and music recognition. Further, it represents a gap in scientific knowledge about nonspeech auditory perception, which is commonly linked to, and used to remediate, speech perception. Two hypotheses are explored: the temporal order hypothesis (that pitch contour discrimination is more difficult because it requires encoding the order of pitches, while timbre discrimination does not); the perceptual distance hypothesis (that previously tested timbres were more auditorily distant to children than pitches were, and thus that greater perceptual distance even within a dimension should lead to better discrimination). Three same-different discrimination experiments with 3–5-year-old children suggested that temporal order variation makes timbre change detection harder, but does not affect pitch change detection, and that more-distant pitch changes are better detected (CG vs. GC is easier than CD vs. DC), with hints at such an effect for timbre. Findings raise the possibility of a trade-off such that auditory perceptual distance aids detection only up to a point, past which sounds cohere less well, impeding apprehension of temporal order. Implications for auditory and spoken language development are discussed.

Sandra Trehub (1938–2023)

Research Article| April 01 2023 Sandra Trehub (1938–2023) E. Glenn Schellenberg, E. Glenn Schellenberg Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon, Portugal Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Laurel J. Trainor Laurel J. Trainor McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Music Perception (2023) 40 (4): 347–349. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2023.40.4.347 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation E. Glenn Schellenberg, Laurel J. Trainor; Sandra Trehub (1938–2023). Music Perception 1 April 2023; 40 (4): 347–349. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2023.40.4.347 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentMusic Perception Search We are greatly saddened by the passing of Sandra Trehub. Born in 1938, she died peacefully at her home on January 20, 2023. Sandra was a trailblazer. Her research focusing on auditory pattern perception in infancy and early childhood single-handedly started developmental research in music perception and cognition. Her experimental studies documented that infants have basic skills that form the building blocks for remembering and responding emotionally to music, including the capability to perceive and categorize auditory sequences on the basis of pitch, upward or downward changes in pitch, and rhythm. Her research also established that singing to infants is a universal behavior, which ultimately facilitates language acquisition and bonding with caregivers. A fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the British Psychological Society, Sandra was awarded many honors, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Music Perception and Cognition and the Kurt Koffka Medal from the... You do not currently have access to this content.

Increased Pre-Boundary Lengthening Does Not Enhance Implicit Intonational Phrase Perception in European Portuguese: An EEG Study.

Prosodic phrasing is the segmentation of utterances into prosodic words, phonological phrases (smaller units) and intonational phrases (larger units) based on acoustic cues-pauses, pitch changes and pre-boundary lengthening. The perception of prosodic boundaries is characterized by a positive event-related potential (ERP) component, temporally aligned with phrase boundaries-the Closure Positive Shift (CPS). The role of pre-boundary lengthening in boundary perception is still a matter of debate: while studies on phonological phrase boundaries indicate that all three cues contribute equally, approaches to intonational phrase boundaries highlight the pause as the most powerful cue. Moreover, all studies used explicit boundary recognition tasks, and it is unknown how pre-boundary lengthening works in implicit prosodic processing tasks, characteristic of real-life contexts. In this study, we examined the effects of pre-boundary lengthening (original, short, and long) on the EEG responses to intonational phrase boundaries (CPS effect) in European Portuguese, using an implicit task. Both original and short versions showed equivalent CPS effects, while the long set did not elicit the effect. This suggests that pre-boundary lengthening does not contribute to improved perception of boundaries in intonational phrases (longer units), possibly due to memory and attention-related constraints.

Short-term changes in the underwater soundscape of Mosquito Lagoon after Hurricane Ian

During late September 2022, Hurricane Ian passed over the east coast of Florida and Mosquito Lagoon. This 4740-acre body of water is part of a larger estuary system sandwiched between the mainland and narrow barrier islands. Two-thirds of the lagoon is located within Canaveral National Seashore, which helps maintain a balance between protecting its rich biodiversity and allowing access for recreational boating. As part of a previously planned study, we deployed two HydroMoths in Mosquito Lagoon to capture the underwater soundscape for two months from September 24 to November 19. Our sampling protocol recorded 5 min of continuous sound at the top and bottom of every hour, with the idea that we could begin to explore diurnal and lunar cycles. When Hurricane Ian's path took it directly over our recorders, we were given an unplanned opportunity to document how the underwater soundscape would respond. The most striking change came from the oyster toadfish (Opsanus tau). Calls from males of this species are a prominent part of the underwater soundscape in Mosquito Lagoon during their breeding season. In the days immediately following Hurricane Ian, they lowered the fundamental frequency of their calls leading to an audible change in pitch.

The role of task difficulty in directing selective attention in bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus) neonates: A developmental test of the intersensory redundancy hypothesis.

The dynamics of selective attention necessarily influences the course of early perceptual development. The intersensory redundancy hypothesis proposes that in early development information presented redundantly across two or more senses selectively recruits attention to the amodal properties of an object or event. In contrast, information presented to a single sense enhances attention to modality-specific properties. The present study assessed the second of these predictions in neonatal bobwhite quail (Colinus virginianus), with a focus on the role of task difficulty in directing selective attention. In Experiment 1, we exposed quail chicks to unimodal auditory, nonredundant audiovisual, or redundant audiovisual presentations of a bobwhite maternal call paired with a pulsing light for 10min/h on the day following hatching. Chicks were subsequently individually tested 24h later for their unimodal auditory preference between the familiarized maternal call and the same call with pitch altered by two steps. Chicks from all experimental groups preferred the familiarized maternal call over the altered maternal call. In Experiment 2, we repeated the exposure conditions of Experiment 1, but presented a more difficult task by narrowing the pitch range between the two maternal calls during testing. Chicks in the unimodal auditory and nonredundant audiovisual conditions preferred the familiarized call, whereas chicks in the redundant audiovisual exposure group showed no detection of the pitch change. Our results indicate that early discrimination of pitch change is disrupted by intersensory redundancy under difficult but not easy task conditions. These findings, along with findings from human infants, highlight the role of task difficulty in shifting attentional selectivity and underscore the dynamic nature of neonatal attentional salience hierarchies.

Japanese onomatopoeia in bodily demonstrations in a traditional dance instruction: A resource for synchronizing body movements

Drawing on the multimodal analysis of interaction, this study investigates the coordination between language and body in an instructional setting where students are asked to move their bodies along with the instructor. The data examined comprise a videotaped interaction during a Japanese classical dance (Nihon Buyo) workshop held for international students in which a professional dance instructor introduced the dance to the students by having them perform a few simple choreographies. The data showed that the instructor often employed onomatopoeias (mimetics or ideophones) during her demonstrations. The study investigated how onomatopoeias are employed in coordination with bodily demonstration and what they accomplish in the instruction. The analysis revealed that the instructor coordinated her body movements with onomatopoeias using sound stretch, pitch and volume change, and voice quality. Onomatopoeias with such modulated prosody along with bodily demonstration highlight the features of the body movements in the choreography. Additionally, onomatopoeias act as resources for synchronized movements among participants in a physical activity through their prolongation and repetition. This suggests an interactional function of onomatopoeias that has not been discussed previously in the relevant literature.

Effects of sensorimotor voice training on event-related potentials to pitch-shifted auditory feedback.

The pitch perturbation technique is a validated technique that has been used for over 30 years to understand how people control their voice. This technique involves altering a person's voice pitch in real-time while they produce a vowel (commonly, a prolonged /a/ sound). Although post-task changes in the voice have been observed in several studies (e.g., a change in mean fo across the duration of the experiment), the potential for using the pitch perturbation technique as a training tool for voice pitch regulation and/or modification has not been explored. The present study examined changes in event related potentials (ERPs) and voice pitch in three groups of subjects due to altered voice auditory feedback following a brief, four-day training period. Participants in the opposing group were trained to change their voice fo in the opposite direction of a pitch perturbation stimulus. Participants in the following group were trained to change their voice fo in the same direction as the pitch perturbation stimulus. Participants in the non-varying group did not voluntarily change their pitch, but instead were asked to hold their voice constant when they heard pitch perturbations. Results showed that all three types of training affected the ERPs and the voice pitch-shift response from pre-training to post-training (i.e., "hold your voice pitch steady" task; an indicator of voice pitch regulation). Across all training tasks, the N1 and P2 components of the ERPs occurred earlier, and the P2 component of the ERPs occurred with larger amplitude post-training. The voice responses also occurred earlier but with a smaller amplitude following training. These results demonstrate that participation in pitch-shifted auditory feedback tasks even for brief periods of time can modulate the automatic tendency to compensate for alterations in voice pitch feedback and has therapeutic potential.

Widespread but Limited in Context: Absolute Tuning Judgments are Disrupted by Relative Pitch Cues

Most listeners exhibit absolute pitch memory for familiar pitched sounds, ranging from simple tones (e.g., the “bleep” used to censor broadcast media) to rich, polyphonic melodies (e.g., excerpts from popular songs). Given that relative pitch is the predominant means of processing music for most listeners, this observed absolute pitch memory suggests that most listeners have hybrid representations, containing both absolute and relative pitch cues. The present experiment assesses how relative pitch cues influence absolute pitch memory in a variety of listening contexts, varying in terms of ecological validity. Participants were asked to explicitly judge different musical sounds (isolated notes, chords, scales, and short excerpts), varying in complexity, in terms of absolute tuning (i.e., whether a musical sound adhered to conventional, A440 tuning). Listeners showed robust above-chance performance in judging absolute tuning when the to-be-judged sounds did not contain relative pitch changes (i.e., isolated notes and chords), replicating prior work. Critically, however, performance was significantly reduced and was not statistically different from chance when the musical sounds contained relative pitch changes (scales and short excerpts). Taken together, the results suggest that most listeners possess some long-term memory for absolute tuning, but this ability has limited generalizability to more ecologically valid musical contexts that contain relative pitch changes.

Research on dimensionless structure size of coil heat exchanger in heat discharging process of molten salt single tank heat storage system

• Optimum dimensionless size of coil heat exchanger was studied by simulation. • The optimal size of heat exchanger appears under the combined action of vortex and molten salt flow rate. • When the dimensionless pitch L/d =4, the heat exchanger has the best heat discharging performance. • When the dimensionless pitch is the best, the optimal dimensionless diameter is 0.25. There has been an increasing attention on single-tank thermal energy storage, attracted by the low cost, high efficiency and compactness in the operation. However, the most researches on single-tank thermal energy storage focused on the way of heat discharging and the arrangement of heat exchangers. Few studies on the dimensionless size of heat exchanger, which is important for the design of single-tank thermal energy storage, were carried out. In order to obtain higher heat exchange efficiency and design criteria of coil heat exchanger, the optimal dimensionless size of heat exchanger is studied by numerical simulation. The results show that both the dimensionless pitch and the dimensionless pipe diameter of the coil heat exchanger have a great influence on the heat discharging performance when the air is used as the heating medium and the molten salt is used as the heat storage medium. With the change of dimensionless pitch, the heat discharging performance and the flow field of molten salt are affected. When the dimensionless pitch L / d = 4, the heat discharging power and heat release are the highest. At this time, the temperature and flow field of molten salt are evenly distributed, and no temperature stratification and vortex are formed. When the dimensionless pipe diameter is changed on the premise of the optimal dimensionless pitch, the heat discharging power increases first and then decreases with the increase of dimensionless pipe diameter. When the dimensionless pipe diameter d / a =0.25, the molten salt flow rate in the single tank is relatively large and no vortex hindering heat transfer, and the heat discharging performance is the best. Therefore, under the joint action of molten salt velocity and vortex, the optimal dimensionless pitch and pipe diameter appear. The research results provide a theoretical basis and an example for the design of single tank energy storage system.

NERVE MONITORING IN THYROID SURGERY: A RETROSPECTIVE COHORT STUDY

Background:The proximity of the Recurrent Laryngeal and External Branch of Superior Laryngeal Nerve to the Thyroid Gland has been a key factor for a profound interest of surgeons and clinicians in the clinical outcomes and Vocal changes in the post operative period in the patients undergoing thyroid surgery. The presence of Recurrent Laryngeal nerve in proximity of Thyroid poses a significant risk of damage to the nerve during surgery. The Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve SuppliesLarynx below the level of vocal cords and all the muscles except Cricothyroid. Posterior Cricoarytenoid, the only abductor of vocal cord is also supplied by this nerve. So, any damage to the nerve during surgery causes significant changes in pitch and texture of voice, commonly referred to as hoarseness.Intra-operative Nerve Monitoringwas introduced about 50 years ago and various neuromonitoring methods (glottis pressure method, glottic monitoring method, insertion of needle electrodes invocal cords endoscopically or through cricothyroid membrane, laryngeal palpationmethod, and monitoring via endotracheal tube with surface electrodes) have been utilized. We present a retrospective cohort study to surmise the effect of the use of Intraoperative nerve monitoring devices during Thyroid surgery and compare the clinical outcome in two cohorts. First, the study group where the nerve monitoring was used intraoperatively and the Second, where no intraoperative nerve monitoring was used. All the Patients included in the study underwent Thyroid surgery in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, MBS Hospital, Kota. Methods:This retrospective cohort study includes 100 patients as per the inclusion criteria specified in this article and all the included patients were studied after dividing them into two groups with one group where intraoperative nerve monitoring was used and the other group where no nerve monitoring was used. Each group had 50 patients each. All the patients are regularly documented for with Video Laryngoscopic Examination as a standard. All the data collected from the archives and put to statistical evaluation to analyse the data Age wise, Sex wise, Residential address wise, according to mean Thyroid volume, according to presenting complaints, according to history, according to mean operative time, according to the type of Nerve Injury, according to duration of hospital stay and other parameters as followed in the study. Results: On appropriate statistical analysis of the data, it was seen that there were no demographic variables within groups that ensured statistical similarity in the groups, there was also no statistical correlation of functional preservation attributable to mean Thyroid volume. The incidence of nerve injury was higher in the patients who got themselves operated for the malignancy of thyroid and the revision surgeries. The patients being operated for controlled toxic goitre reported ni nerve injury in the post operative period. The intraoperative nerve monitoring reported lower mean time required to do the surgery. There was a similar incidence of permanent and transient nerve injury in both the cohort groups.

Structural design of patient-specific vascular ring stents

The expediency of replacing the corrugated ring of a vascular stent with a constant corrugation pitch by a corrugated ring of variable pitch is being investigated. To describe the change in pitch of corrugation, a special function is introduced. The equilibrium and deformation equations were analyzed using the asymptotic homogenization method. The dependence of the radial stiffness of a corrugated ring with a variable pitch of corrugation on the constructive parameters is obtained. The effectiveness of the design under consideration is evaluated by the area of the lumen provided by the vascular stent. Compared to stents with regularly corrugated rings, this area is larger which improves the ring stent efficiency.

Modeling the Coal Tar Pitch Primary Carbonization Process

The properties of the carbon materials obtained as the final product of coal tar pitch carbonization process are a consequence of the type of chemical and physical phenomena occurring through the process. A new simplified approach for modeling of the primary carbonization is presented to provide the semi-quantitative knowledge about the process useful for improving the efficiency of the industries that deal with this process. The proposed approach is based on defining thermodynamic and kinetic equations simply representing numerous phenomena happening during primary carbonization. Partial pressures of emitted volatiles in a simple pitch system are studied. The model enables estimating the mass and enthalpy changes of pitch through thermal treatment consistent with experimental data for mass losses of pitch heat treated up to 550 °C. Application of the model to describe molecular weight distribution changes of pitch during primary carbonization is demonstrated, showing a good agreement between the presented results and the investigations reported by Greinke. For the first time, the effect of important parameters in pitch carbonization, such as the heating rate of the pitch and the carrier gas flow rate, on the emission rate of volatiles is successfully modeled. The present model is well able to estimate the energy requirement for thermal treatment of pitch up to 350 °C.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Study of Thermo-Fluid Characteristics of Solar Air Heater Duct Using W-Shaped Rib Roughened Collector Plate

Abstract This study analyzes the thermo-fluid characteristics of the solar air heater duct (SAHD) consisting of W-shaped transverse ribs on the collector plate. The results of the study are presented with the appearance of Nusselt number, friction factor, thermo-hydraulic performance parameter (THPP), and contours of various fluid properties. Different roughness and flow parameters are considered for the computational study, like Reynolds number (Re) and nondimensional pitch (P/e). Re changes from 3800 to 18,000, and the nondimensional pitch changes from 7.5 to 18.75. The nondimensional height remains constant for the computational study. Aluminum was taken as the material of the absorber plate, and an isoheat-flux condition was employed on the plate with 1000 W/m2. The highest value of THPP obtained is 2.05 at P/e = 7.5 for Re = 12,000.

Employing Energy and Statistical Features for Automatic Diagnosis of Voice Disorders.

The presence of laryngeal disease affects vocal fold(s) dynamics and thus causes changes in pitch, loudness, and other characteristics of the human voice. Many frameworks based on the acoustic analysis of speech signals have been created in recent years; however, they are evaluated on just one or two corpora and are not independent to voice illnesses and human bias. In this article, a unified wavelet-based paradigm for evaluating voice diseases is presented. This approach is independent of voice diseases, human bias, or dialect. The vocal folds' dynamics are impacted by the voice disorder, and this further modifies the sound source. Therefore, inverse filtering is used to capture the modified voice source. Furthermore, the fundamental frequency independent statistical and energy metrics are derived from each spectral sub-band to characterize the retrieved voice source. Speech recordings of the sustained vowel /a/ were collected from four different datasets in German, Spanish, English, and Arabic to run the several intra and inter-dataset experiments. The classifiers' achieved performance indicators show that energy and statistical features uncover vital information on a variety of clinical voices, and therefore the suggested approach can be used as a complementary means for the automatic medical assessment of voice diseases.

Automated manufacture of optimised shape-adaptive composite hydrofoils with curvilinear fibre paths for improved bend-twist performance

Composite marine propellers improve hydrodynamic efficiency by inducing bend-twist coupling and allowing for passive pitch changes. One critical limitation, however, is the extent to which a composite propeller blade can deform and cause a pitch change without incurring structural failure. Recent numerical studies showed that curvilinear tows could improve the structural response of a composite blade by lowering its deflection or stress and strain required to induce a pitch change, but no experimental validation has been carried out before. The current study, thus, presents the manufacture of composite sandwich hydrofoils made with steered tows using automated fibre placement and validates the curvilinear tow benefits. Two hydrofoils were optimised with straight and curved fibre path layups, respectively and were manufactured for mechanical testing. The manufacturing complications arising from steering curvilinear tows in a three-dimensional convex mould are also discussed in the paper. The study found that significant tow buckling occurred near the tool cavity edge due to excessive steering radius during manufacture. The follow-up structural cantilevered tests showed that the experimental results were consistent with the FE predictions despite the presence of some manufacturing defects. The experiment agreed that the hydrofoil manufactured with curved tows achieved a similar tip twist but a significant reduction in deflection and critical principal strains compared to the hydrofoil made with straight tows. The use of a foam core reduced the overall weight of the sandwich hydrofoils by about 25% compared to that of a fully-carbon composite hydrofoil, and the numerical analysis showed that the core shear failure induced by transverse shear stresses was unlikely to occur.

Thermal assessment of solar concentrated system with utilizing CNT nanoparticles and complicated helical turbulator

Turbulent flow of nanomaterial (mixture of CNT and water) within the circular tube of solar system as an absorber has been simulated numerically in this article. The circular tube has been equipped with complex swirl flow device to make the impingement of fluid with wall stronger and in this way warmer fluid can be achieved from this system. To concentrate the solar radiation, ten mirrors were utilized and geometric parameters have been calculated mathematically to reach the maximum optical performance. The maximum fraction of CNT is 0.025, thus involving single phase formulation is logical. Three configurations of device have been utilized in which two range of pitch ratio (S = 0.1, 0.25) were utilized in addition to configuration without twisting (WT). K-ϵ model was utilized in simulation which was based on finite volume method. Four ranges of flow rate (Q = 8, 12, 16, 20 Lit/min) was applied with inlet temperature of 291.15 K. As CNT utilizes with fraction of 0.025, the thermal performance (ηth) improves around 0.68% for Q = 20 which is 1.72 times stronger than that impact of Q = 8 L/min. Switching from WT to configuration of S = 0.1, leads to augmentation of ηth about 2.19% when Q = 20. When S = 0.1, elevate of Q causes friction factor (f) to decrease around 26.03% while convective factor (h) augments around 84.72%. As pitch ratio changes from 0.25 to 0.1, the amount of h increases around 14.13% while f augments around 47.88%.

Load and motion behaviors of ogive-nosed projectile during high-speed water entry with angle of attack

Hazardous loads exist not only during the water impact but during the entire high-speed water entry process. This article systematically investigates the load behavior of an ogive-nosed projectile during the entire process from the impact to the full wetting by experimental and numerical methods. It is found that the hazardous loads during the entire water entry process mainly exist in the three stages of water impact, tail slap and beginning of wetting. The formation mechanisms of hazardous loads are revealed. The initial angle of attack (IAA) within 8° in absolute value has little influence on the axial load, with the maximum difference of 4 g. In contrast, the effect of the IAA on the radial load is significant in terms of the direction, the peak, the beginning time of wetting, and the magnitude after wetting. The peak radial load of the tail slap reaches 3.7 times the peak axial impact load at the IAA of −8°. When the IAA is large (±8°), serious deflection of the trajectory occurs, such as the water exit at +8° and the backward movement at −8°; the angle of attack eventually diverges; and the pitch angle change reaches over 200°. The results provide helpful guidance in effectively identifying all hazardous loads during the entire water entry process and clearly understanding the motion behavior under the action of the loads.

Tone and prosodic recursion in Degema nouns and noun phrases

Abstract This paper presents the first systematic study of tone in nouns and noun phrases in Degema. From a database of approximately 1,000 nouns, we find that nouns fall into three main tone patterns: /L-L/ (48% of nouns), /H-H/ (18%), and /L-HH/ (13%). This last case is theoretically important in that it includes cases where two separate H tones associate to the same tone-bearing unit, in violation of the Obligatory Contour Principle. In isolation, nouns are subject to two basic tone rules which alter their underlying forms: downstep is inserted between two final H’s (e.g. /H-H/ → [H↓H]), and H is inserted at the end of an all-low sequence (e.g. /L-L/ → [LH]). The combined effect of these rules is that virtually all nouns and noun phrases have a pitch change. Further, we catalog tonal effects found on nouns in 33 distinct modificational contexts within the noun phrase. We attribute these tonal effects to whether modifiers plus the noun form phonological phrases (φ) or phonological words (ɷ), and whether they form recursive prosodic structures, e.g. of the type ( ( A )φ B )φ. By positing recursive structure, we can localize tonal effects to an outermost prosodic layer (e.g. φ[+max]), innermost layer (e.g. φ[+min]), non-inner or outermost layers (e.g. φ[-max]), or to the prosodic category as a whole (i.e. all layers of a φ).

Convolutional neural networks for the classification of guitar effects and extraction of the parameter settings of single and multi-guitar effects from instrument mixes

Guitar effects are commonly used in popular music to shape the guitar sound to fit specific genres, or to create more variety within musical compositions. The sound not only is determined by the choice of the guitar effect, but also heavily depends on the parameter settings of the effect. Previous research focused on the classification of guitar effects and extraction of their parameter settings from solo guitar audio recordings. However, more realistic is the classification and extraction from instrument mixes. This work investigates the use of convolution neural networks (CNNs) for the classification and parameter extraction of guitar effects from audio samples containing guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums. The CNN was compared to baseline methods previously proposed, like support vector machines and shallow neural networks together with predesigned features. On two datasets, the CNN achieved classification accuracies 1-5,% above the baseline accuracy, achieving up to 97.4, % accuracy. With parameter values between 0.0 and 1.0, mean absolute parameter extraction errors of below 0.016 for the distortion, below 0.052 for the tremolo, and below 0.038 for the slapback delay effect were achieved, matching or surpassing the presumed human expert error of 0.05. The CNN approach was found to generalize to further effects, achieving mean absolute parameter extraction errors below 0.05 for the chorus, phaser, reverb, and overdrive effect. For sequentially applied combinations of distortion, tremolo, and slapback delay, the mean extraction error slightly increased from the performance for the single effects to the range of 0.05 to 0.1. The CNN was found to be moderately robust to noise and pitch changes of the background instrumentation suggesting that the CNN extracted meaningful features.

Just noticeable differences in sound intensity of piano tones in non-musicians and experienced pianists

Changes in sound intensity are important components of piano performance. Previous research in this area has largely focused on perception of changes in pitch and timing, with little investigation of sound intensity. The present study used Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) technology to algorithmically control the key velocity, and thereby sound intensity, of consecutive piano tones. Non-musicians ( n = 20) and experienced pianists ( n = 30) played pairs of consecutive piano tones with 0–15 arbitrary units (a.u.) of change in key velocity, indicating whether they perceived the first, second, or neither tone as louder. All participants completed the test with C4, and a subset ( n = 24) with pitches C2 and C6 also. The mean just noticeable difference (JND) ranged from 2.71 to 4.48 a.u., corresponding to 0.68–1.22 dBC on the Yamaha Disklavier used to produce the stimuli. Experienced pianists demonstrated lower JND, which the authors theorize may be linked to listener motivation. When two tones were played with the same key velocity, participants tended to perceive the first tone as louder. The authors discuss a number of factors that may be relevant considerations for application of the findings in music and psychoacoustics research. These findings hold insight for music performance researchers, psychoacoustics researchers, and pedagogues.