Investigating the pitch strength of short pur e-tone pulses in middle frequency range through their chroma recognition by absolute-pitch listeners

• Authors: Andrzej Rakowski , Piotr Rogowski
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

A method is proposed for estimating the pitch strength of sounds by measuring the proportion of correct recognitions of their musical pitch (chroma) by expert listeners possessing full absolute pitch. Full absolute pitch (AP) is the ability of some musicians to preserve in their long-term auditory memory the pitch templates of the twelve chromatic tones of the contemporary music system (C, C#, D... etc.) based on the frequency A4 = 440 Hz. This ability is preserved across different octaves in most of the musical pitch scale. Five expert AP listeners, in individual, computer-run sessions, were asked to identify and name the pitch chromas of short tone pulses cut out of twelve sinusoidal vibrations corresponding to the chromatic scale C5 - B5 (523.3 - 987.8 Hz). These tone pulses were composed of n cycles. The value of n was 4, 8, and 16, and so the total number of stimuli investigated was 12 x 3 = 36. All these stimuli were presented in random order to the five AP listeners in a single test, which was run twenty-six times in consecutive sessions (the results of the first session were not used in computations). The results show an increase in correct chroma recognition (and consequently of the pitch strength of a pulse), with n rising from 4 to 16. At n = 4 or 8, the results show also a dependence of chroma recognition on the total pulse duration. Thus, for tone pulses with a low number of cycles (at n=4 and 8), the pitch strength diminishes with increasing pitch and is different in neighbouring parts of a withinoctave musical scale. The discovery of these differences may indicate the relatively high precision of the newly-presented method in estimating the pitch strength of musical sounds.

Keywords

PL

pitch; absolute pitch; pitch strength; chroma; musical scale; vibrations; tone pulses

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Interdisciplinary Studies in Musicology
• Year: 2009
• Issue: 8
• Pages: 271-278

Dates

published

2018-10-17

Contributors

author

Andrzej Rakowski

• professor senior of the Department of Musicology at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, and retired professor of Fryderyk Chopin University of Music in Warsaw. His main research field is acoustics and psychoacoustics of music, particularly problems of pitch and timbre perception. He is the author of four books and over two hundred articles published in Poland, USA and Japan in monographs and periodicals (Acustica, Archives o f Acoustics, Journal o f the Acoustic Society o f America, Journal o f the Catgut Acoustical Society, Music Education Bulletin, Psychology o f Music, Qualitative Linguistics, and others). He is ordinary member of Polish Academy of Sciences and honorary president of its Acoustical Committee.

author

Piotr Rogowski

• Ph.D., he graduated from Warsaw University of Technology in electronics (1990). He has been working at the Chair of Musical Acoustics at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, since 1992. His research work concerns the psychoacoustics and hearing conservation. He is the author or co-author of over 50 research reports. He is member o f the Polish Acoustical Society.