Perception Of Musical Intervals Research Articles

Comparison of independent, participant-led, high-resolution studies of pitch-matching in post-lingual single-sided cochlear implant recipients

Understanding “what the world sounds like to someone else“ is fundamental to developing technologies and therapies to improve auditory perception for people with hearing impairment. Post-lingual single-sided deaf (SSD) cochlear implant (CI) recipients can play a special role here through their ability to compare perceptions of sounds heard acoustically and “electrically.” Pitch is, ostensibly, a sonic attribute that can be quantitatively compared, and pitch perception has been studied by asking SSD CI recipients to rank or discriminate limited sets of pitches, mindful of the burden on experimental participants. Through unusual circumstances, we have independently conceived and conducted two sets of participant-driven pitch-matching experiments on authors WM and DL gaining more data and richer insights than reported elsewhere. While our findings are consistent with existing lower-resolution studies (e.g., sounds perceived via CI are at higher pitch than via normal hearing), we have gained much more detailed quantitative and qualitative descriptions of those perceptual differences. Results can be meaningfully compared after accounting for individual differences and suggest that the CI transformation of pitch information for these two recipients could be individually adjusted to improve music appreciation, particularly with respect to restoring perception of musical intervals between successive notes.

On musical interval perception for complex tones at very high frequencies.

Listeners appear able to extract a residue pitch from high-frequency harmonics for which phase locking to the temporal fine structure is weak or absent. The present study investigated musical interval perception for high-frequency harmonic complex tones using the same stimuli as Lau, Mehta, and Oxenham [J. Neurosci. 37, 9013-9021 (2017)]. Nine young musically trained listeners with especially good high-frequency hearing adjusted various musical intervals using harmonic complex tones containing harmonics 6-10. The reference notes had fundamental frequencies (F0s) of 280 or 1400 Hz. Interval matches were possible, albeit markedly worse, even when all harmonic frequencies were above the presumed limit of phase locking. Matches showed significantly larger systematic errors and higher variability, and subjects required more trials to finish a match for the high than for the low F0. Additional absolute pitch judgments from one subject with absolute pitch, for complex tones containing harmonics 1-5 or 6-10 with a wide range of F0s, were perfect when the lowest frequency component was below about 7 kHz, but at least 50% of responses were incorrect when it was 8 kHz or higher. The results are discussed in terms of the possible effects of phase-locking information and familiarity with high-frequency stimuli on pitch.

A psychophysical pitch function determined by absolute magnitude estimation and its relation to the musical pitch scale

A psychophysical pitch function, describing the relation of perceived magnitude of pitch to the frequency of a pure tone, was determined by absolute magnitude estimation. Pitch estimates were made by listeners with relative pitch and by absolute pitch possessors for 27 tones spanning a frequency range of 31.5-12,500 Hz in 1/3 octave steps. Results show that the pitch function, plotted in log-log coordinates, is steeper below 200 Hz than at higher frequencies. It is hypothesized that the pitch function's bend may reflect the diversity of neurophysiological mechanisms of pitch encoding in frequency ranges below and above 200 Hz. The variation of the function's slope implies that pitch distances between tones with the same frequency ratios are perceived as larger below 200 Hz than at higher frequencies. It is argued that this implication may apply only to a purely sensory concept of pitch distance and cannot be extended to the perception of musical intervals, a phenomenon governed by musical cognitive principles. The results also show that pitch functions obtained for listeners with relative and absolute pitch have a similar shape, which means that quantitative pitch relations determined for both groups of listeners do not differ appreciably along the frequency scale.

Mistuning in two-part singing

This research describes the strategy of singers in reacting to the pitch deviation from equally tempered (ET) value in their ensemble partner's part in singing two-part a cappella music, and the ability of professional musicians to identify such deviations. Professional singers preferred to maintain the purity of melodic intervals in their own part and to ignore the occurring harmonic mistuning with their deviating ensemble partner. In multi-part singing, the musical interval perception ability of the singers is more finely honed for production than it is for perception, which can be explained by the enhancing effect of the memory of how to vocally produce the intervals, available only in the process of singing.

Production and Perception of Musical Intervals

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.

Stretching and Compression in the Perception of Musical Intervals

Perceived octaves are stretched, requiring frequency-dependent ratios that generally exceed 2:1. Small intervals seem to be compressed perceptually. Whether this compression also depends on frequency is unclear. To examine this question, six experienced string instrumentalists each made perceptual judgments of sinusoidally formed major seconds, perfect fourths, and octaves above each of four lower frequencies. The frequency ratio for each perceived interval type varied with lower frequency. The pattern of this variation differed between the octave and the other two interval types and across subjects. A consequence is that nonlinear loci in a two-dimensional space are mathematically necessary for a complete representation of an individual listener's subjectively equal musical intervals. The listener apparently quickly assimilates the intervals produced by performers to these personal interval loci.

Absolute magnitude estimation of pitch

The pitch of 24 pure tones covering a frequency range of 63–12 500 Hz in 1/3-oct. steps was measured by absolute magnitude estimation. The tones were presented monaurally at a loudness level of 60 phons. Tone duration was 1 s. Sixteen music students, not possessing absolute pitch served as subjects. The experiment was carried out in individual listening sessions. The subjects were instructed to assign a number to the tone in such a way that their impression of how large the number was matched their impression of the pitch of the tone. The results show that the pitch function plotted in log–log coordinates against frequency is considerably steeper below than above 250 Hz. A similar shape of the pitch function was found in a previous study in which narrow-band noises were used [A. Rakowski, Proc. Fechner Day ’97, pp. 91–96]. It is hypothesized that the change of the pitch function steepness at 250 Hz may also be observed in the perception of musical intervals. Intervals in low pitch registers may be perceived larger than those corresponding to the same frequency ratios in high-pitch registers.

Melody recognition and musical interval perception by deaf subjects stimulated with electrical pulse trains through single cochlear implant electrodes.

The perception of musical pitch was investigated in postlinguistically deaf subjects with cochlear implants. Stimuli consisted of sequences of biphasic electrical pulse trains at rates which represented the tones of the equal-tempered musical scale, delivered at equalized comfortable loudness levels to selected single bipolar electrodes along the array of the Nucleus cochlear implant. Seventeen subjects correctly identified a mean of 44% of rhythmically intact familiar tunes, presented in an open-set paradigm. Three subjects were tested with a closed set of melodies without rhythmic cues. The results showed relatively higher recognition scores at lower pulse rates, although melody recognition remained possible up to rates of approximately 600-800 pulses per second. Stimulation of apical electrodes yielded higher recognition scores than of basal electrodes. The perception of musical intervals, defined as frequency ratios between two trains of stimulus pulse rates, was investigated in an interval intonation labeling experiment, for intervals ranging from a minor 3rd to a major 6th. Within a range of low pulse rates, subjects defined the intervals mediated by electrical pulse rate by the same ratios which govern musical intervals of tonal frequencies in normal-hearing listeners. It may be concluded that temporal cues are sufficient for the mediation of musical pitch, at least for the lower half of the range of fundamental frequencies commonly used in music.

What child is this? What interval was that? Familiar tunes and music perception in novice listeners

In the laboratory, musical novices often seem insensitive even to basic structural elements of music (octaves, intervals, etc.), undermining long-held theories of music perception, and threatening to leave current theories applicable only to experts. Consequently it is important to demonstrate novices' basic listening competence where possible. Two experiments examined the perception of musical intervals (minor thirds, major thirds and perfect fourths) by musical novices. Subjects received either standard instructions or familiar folk-tune labels to aid performance. The folk-tune labels greatly improved identification performance, producing expert-caliber performance by some musically inexperienced subjects. The effectiveness of the folk-tune manipulation was much more limited in a difficult discrimination task. The results suggest that novices do have some basic competence when assayed appropriately, and that familiar musical tokens may be a critical element in such assays. Larger implications of the role of familiarity in novices' competence are discussed, including those that relate to music cognition and aesthetics.

Perception of Musical Intervals by Absolute Pitch Possessors

Previous studies have demonstrated that absolute pitch (AP) possessors can directly perceive the musical pitch quality (pitch class) of a tone presented in isolation. However, an isolated tone without musical context has no relevance to music, and AP ability should be examined in musically meaningful situations. In this study, AP possessors tried to identify the musical intervals between pairs of successive tones. The first tone (a reference) was either in-tune C according to the conventional pitch standard or out-of-tune C (a quarter-tone higher than standard C). The identification performance was less accurate and slower in the out-of-tune reference condition than in the in-tune condition. In contrast, AP nonpossessors showed no significant difference in performance in the two conditions, as predicted by the principle of equality under transposition. These results suggest that AP subjects tend to adhere to AP in relative pitch tasks, and that at least some AP listeners may have developed a strong dependence on AP at the sacrifice of relative pitch. AP may not have any advantage in music, in which relative pitch, not AP, is essential. Rather, AP may conflict with relative pitch and, in some cases, harm musical pitch processing.

Categorical perception revisited, yet again: Frequency and frequency ratio resolution by “possessors” and other musicians

Macmillan et al. [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84, 1262–1280 (1988)] recently demonstrated the advantages gained by applying experimental techniques and analyses derived from a model of intensity resolution to the phenomenon of categorical perception of speech. In this paper, the application of these techniques to both the perception of musical intervals (frequency ratios) by musicians with relative pitch, and the perception of frequency by musicians with absolute pitch is discussed. The results suggest that the perception of frequency ratios by musicians differs from perception along most unidimensional psychophysical continua (characterized by the “7 ± 2” principle) in two ways. First, identification resolution for frequency ratios is much better than for stimuli along 7 ± 2 continua. Second, musical interval perception seems to be a case of ideal categorical perception (as originally defined) in that musicians apparently can discriminate between two musical intervals only to the extent that they can differentially identify them. Although the identification resolution for frequency by absolute pitch possessors is much better than that of nonpossessors (whose identification resolution is consistent with the 7 ± 2 limitation), their discrimination resolution for frequency remains much better than their identification resolution. [Work supported by NIDCD.]

Complex tones with log-spaced partials

The importance of ratio in the chromatic scale and in the perception of musical intervals, coupled with the evidence that the cochlear transmission line exhibits logarithmic frequency spacing suggests that logarithmically spaced partials could produce exciting new musical materials. Tones with log-spaced partials were generated such that the complex tone has the same number of partials per octave as the regular harmonic series. Partial structure is of the form f1 = 2(n+m/2n)f1, with n = octave above f1 (=0, 1, 2 …); m = 0, 1, 2 … 2n − 1. In such log-spaced tones, all neighboring partials within any octave above the fundamental have the same frequency ratio. Since tones with log-spaced partials do not time lock readily, having no least common divisor, it should be difficult to separate the voices in multipart composition compared to chords composed of conventional tones. Subjects were required to identify standard intervals and were tested on hearing separate voices of simple musical phrases.

Hemispheric asymmetries in the perception of musical intervals as a function of musical experience and family handedness background

This study examines the effect of musical experience and family handedness background on the categorization of musical intervals (two-note chords). Right-handed subjects, who were divided into four groups on the basis of musical training and presence (or absence) of left-handed family members, categorized musical intervals which were monaurally presented to left or right ear. The results, based on consistency and discreteness of categorization, showed: (1) Musicians' performance is superior to nonmusicians'; (2) musicians and nonmusicians differ significantly on their ear of preference; (3) family handedness background significantly affects ear of preference among musicians but not among nonmusicians.

Balancing the scales for music and speech

The results of our experiments on the identification and discrimination of musical intervals, along with the results of experiments by other investigators, are interpreted with regard to the possible “natural” basis of musical scales. We have concluded, primarily from basic differences in the perception of intervals by musicians and nonmusicians, that there is little evidence for the existence of “natural” interval categories, either in the sense of being innately determined by characteristics of the auditory processing system, or in the sense of early learning of the relations between partials in natural sounds. In light of the fact that many of the characteristics associated with the perception of speech, e.g., robust categorical perception, adaptation, and dichotic ear advantage, are also evident in the perception of musical intervals, the general question of the relationship between music perception and speech perception is also discussed.

Further studies in musical interval perception

In previous papers we have presented evidence that, when using experimental paradigms comparable to those used in categorical perception experiments in speech, musicians exhibit categorical perception for melodic musical intervals. In this paper, the effects of varying the parameters of stimulus duration and interstimulus interval on the degree of categorical perception were studied. In addition, the effect of discrimination training on within‐category discrimination was examined. The results of these investigations are compared with those from speech perception experiments, with regard to the question of whether there is a basic difference in the perception of certain consonants and the perception of vowels and nonspeech stimuli.

In search of the shruti

Earlier experiments indicate that the phenomenon of “categorical perception” is present in the perception of musical intervals. The present experiment was undertaken to determine whether musicians from musical systems having more categories in their musical pitch scales would exhibit finer discrimination in categorical perception experiments. The subjects were 13 musicians trained in Hindusthani (North Indian classical) music, a system which theoretically has 22 degrees per octave in its musical pitch scale. However, these subjects were not able to identify musical intervals with any more precision than the Western musicians in our previous experiment. That is, they were not able to do more than identify the interval as one of the notes of the 12-note chromatic scale and were unable to consistently identify the “shrutis” or microtonal variations. In addition, they had much greater difficulty adapting to the moving reference pitch in the experiment. In fact, only one of the 13 was able to decide with any accuracy which of two intervals (defined by two successive pairs of tones, none of which had the same frequency) was the larger. Possible intercultural differences in the perception of musical pitch are discussed. [Research supported, in part, by a Fulbright-Hayes grant and performed at the Phonetics Laboratory, Deccan College, Pune 411006, India.]

Categorical Perception of Musical Intervals

A body of evidence indicates that certain speech units are perceived in a special mode called “categorical perception,” the characteristics of which are (1) the existence of well-defined identification functions and (2) the ability to predict precisely the discrimination functions from the identification functions, based on the assumption that the subjects can discriminate two stimuli no better than they can differentially identify them. Categorical perception is usually assumed to be a unique property of speech and is part of the evidence supporting the idea that “speech is special.” A study of the perception of musical intervals by experienced musicians was performed using the procedures associated with categorical perception experiments; that is, identification and discrimination functions were obtained for points equally spaced along a physical continuum, in this case equal distances in cents along the logarithmic frequency scale defining musical pitch. The results show that the musicians exhibit categorical perception, some to a degree approaching that shown in the perception of stop consonants. The relation of these results to those of the relevant speech perception experiments and of other experiments in musical perception is discussed.

Triadic comparisons of musical intervals.

An analysis is made of the perception of musical intervals. Two kinds of stimuli were used; intervals consisting of two simultaneous simple tones (sinusoids) and intervals consisting of two simultaneous complex tones (fundamental plus harmonics). Subjects judged the stimuli by the method of triadic comparisons in an incomplete balanced design. Multidimensional analysis was performed according to Kruskal's MDSCAL program.The following results were obtained: (a) In both the space of simple‐tone intervals (S) and the space of complex‐tone intervals (C) musical intervals are ordered according to their width (frequency difference between fundamental tones). This ordering appears to follow a scale which is bowed upwards in the centre; extremely narrow and extremely wide intervals are therefore more similar than would be expected on the basis of their width alone. (b) In addition, the intervals in C are ordered along a dimension which is related to the complexity of the frequency ratio of the fundamental tones. This is much less true for S. (c) In S, on the other hand, intervals are differentiated on a dimension which is interpreted as indicating their resemblance to certain normative reference intervals.Attention is given to a number of methodological issues.