Untrained listeners judge two-tone consonance continuously without musical interval prominence

Evidence

Figure 3.16 shows the result of an experiment by Plomp and Levelt (1965) to determine to what extent two sine waves played together sound consonant or dissonant as their frequency difference is altered. 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 that are consonant.) The result is the continuous pattern of response shown in the figure, 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 M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 936

Categorization

• XREF: Shows consonance perception is acoustic/psychoacoustic, not culturally pre-wired — connects to my reading on soundscape and how listeners map pitch relations. — connects to: Consonance perception is continuous and not tied to musical intervals — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 951; Dissonance depends on musical interval, not a fixed beat rate across frequencies
• DEFINE: Establishes that perceived consonance for pure tones is a continuous function of frequency difference, not discrete musical intervals.

Broader Connections

• Consonance perception is continuous and not tied to musical intervals #corroborates (0.95) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 951
• Dissonance depends on musical interval, not a fixed beat rate across frequencies #contradicts (0.75)