Pitch perception derives from the highest common factor of sound components

Evidence

The third method will give an appropriate f0 for (i) sounds with missing f0 components (see Table 3.3 and ignore the f0 row), (ii) sounds with odd harmonic components only (see Table 3.3 and ignore the rows for the even harmonics) and (iii) sounds with odd harmonic components only with a missing f0 component (see Table 3.3 and ignore the rows for f0 and the even harmonics). In each case, the highest common factor of the components is f0. This method also provides a basis for understanding how a pitch is perceived for nonharmonic sounds, such as bells or chime bars, whose components are not exact harmonics (integer multipliers) of the resulting f0. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 857

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• DEFINE: The highest-common-factor mechanism for pitch — a crisp formal definition of why nonharmonic sounds like bells still yield a pitch.
• QUESTION: How does the ear’s mechanism compute a highest common factor in real time? Neuronal autocorrelation? Worth investigating.
• SEED: Could turn into an article on why bells and chimes ‘read’ as pitched despite being inharmonic — and how composers exploit this.

Related

• Pitch perception depends on harmonics being integer multiples of the fundamental (similarity 0.88)
• Pitch is perceptual while frequency is acoustic, and not all sounds have pitch (similarity 0.86)
• Highest common factor of partials encodes perceived pitch (similarity 0.86)
• Accentuating individual harmonics makes them perceptually break away as separate notes (similarity 0.86)
• Rising F0 lowers resolved harmonic interactions and worsens pitch extraction (similarity 0.86)
• Perceived pitch is set primarily by fundamental frequency. (similarity 0.83)
• Physiological coding of frequency does not by itself explain perceived pitch. (similarity 0.83)
• Perceived pitch is governed mainly by fundamental frequency, not loudness or duration (similarity 0.83)
• Perfect pitch works by matching autocorrelation peaks between heard sound and remembered notes (similarity 0.83)
• The auditory system can extract pitch from resolved low-frequency harmonics using place patterns (similarity 0.83)
• Pitch of harmonic sounds is determined by the fundamental frequency. (similarity 0.82)
• Only two classical theories, place and temporal, explain pitch tracking. (similarity 0.82)
• Pitch is coded by different mechanisms above and below roughly 3 kHz (similarity 0.82)
• A 34-cent tuning difference changes a chord’s identity and residue pitch (similarity 0.82)
• A combined waveform can produce a perceived pitch absent from its actual frequency components (similarity 0.82)