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Consonance perception depends on harmonics up to about the seventh

Properties1
tagsja-picks, causal_relationships, singleton, xref, contrarian_or_surprising

2 min read

Consonance perception depends on harmonics up to about the seventh

Evidence

Listeners with no musical training were asked to indicate the consonance, or pleasantness, of two sine waves played together. (Musicians were not used in the experiment since they would have preconceived ideas about musical intervals which are con­ sonant.) The result is the continuous pattern of response shown in the fig­ ure, with no particular musical interval being prominent in its degree of perceived consonance. Intervals greater than a minor third were judged to be consonant for all frequency ratios. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 951 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

The dissonance of the chord in each case is related to the entries in the final column, which indicate increased dissonance in the order C, c, d and D; it can be seen that the dissonance increases as the harmonic number increases and the musical interval decreases. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 998 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Sensory consonance depends on roughness, sharpness, and tonalness — Professor Dr.-Ing. Hugo Fastl, Professor Dr.-Ing. Eberhard, Psychoacoustics- Facts and Models, 2040; Pitch perception depends on harmonics being integer multiples of the fundamental — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 864; Consonance judgments rest on psychoacoustic critical bandwidth (+6 more)

Broader Connections

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