The subjective size of melodic intervals over a two-octave range

Russo, Frank A.; Thompson, William Forde

doi:10.3758/bf03206445

Cited by 43 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Trials were presented in one of four pre-determined randomized orders, and order was counterbalanced across participants. We adopted procedures for interval size judgment developed by Russo and Thompson (2005) to encourage responses based on perceptual experience and to discourage listeners with higher levels of musical training from referring to categorical knowledge. First, participants were urged to make their judgments as quickly as possible without compromising accuracy.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mouth versus eyes: Gaze fixation during perception of sung interval size.

Russo

Sandstrom

Maksimowski

2011

Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain

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We used eye tracking to examine the relative influence of the mouth and eyes on perception of sung interval size. Frequency and duration of gaze were tracked while participants rated the size of intervals produced by two singers in three signal-to-noise conditions, corresponding to high, medium and low audibility. All intervals ascended in pitch direction and ranged in size from 0 to 12 semitones. Both the frequency and duration of gaze fixations revealed that the mouth was the most salient aspect of the visual channel. However, gaze was diverted away from the mouth and toward the eyes with increasing audibility, interval size, and tonal consonance of intervals. A linear regression model incorporating all of these variables accounted for 50% of the variability in gaze duration for the mouth and 45% of the variability in gaze duration for the eyes. Results are discussed in the context of dynamic allocation of attentional resources on the basis of early registration of sensory input. This is the first study of singing to incorporate eye-tracking methodology.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mouth versus eyes: Gaze fixation during perception of sung interval size.

Russo

Sandstrom

Maksimowski

2011

Psychomusicology: Music, Mind and Brain

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“…Music composed from different scales tends to evoke different moods ͑Hevner, 1935͒, with the major typically sounding bright and happy, the minor darker and sad, and the Phrygian evoking the music of Spain, for example. The importance of intervals in music has motivated a large body of perceptual research ͑Dowling and Fujitani, 1971;Cuddy and Cohen, 1976;Siegel and Siegel, 1977;Burns and Ward, 1978;Zatorre and Halpern, 1979;Maher, 1980;Edworthy, 1985;Rakowski, 1990;Peretz and Babai, 1992;Smith et al, 1994;Schellenberg and Trehub, 1996;Burns, 1999;Deutsch, 1999;Russo and Thompson, 2005;.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical intervals and relative pitch: Frequency resolution, not interval resolution, is special

McDermott

Keebler

Micheyl

et al. 2010

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Pitch intervals are central to most musical systems, which utilize pitch at the expense of other acoustic dimensions. It seemed plausible that pitch might uniquely permit precise perception of the interval separating two sounds, as this could help explain its importance in music. To explore this notion, a simple discrimination task was used to measure the precision of interval perception for the auditory dimensions of pitch, brightness, and loudness. Interval thresholds were then expressed in units of just-noticeable differences for each dimension, to enable comparison across dimensions. Contrary to expectation, when expressed in these common units, interval acuity was actually worse for pitch than for loudness or brightness. This likely indicates that the perceptual dimension of pitch is unusual not for interval perception per se, but rather for the basic frequency resolution it supports. The ubiquity of pitch in music may be due in part to this fine-grained basic resolution.

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“…Ascending intervals may distort interval widths to make them seem wider, a phenomenon referred to as ''perceptual enlargement'' (Hartmann, 1993;Russo & Thompson, 2005). If perceptual enlargement occurred here, it would cause categorical boundaries to shift upwards, distorting the interval widths perceived around each boundary.…”

Section: Additional Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Absolute Judgment of Musical Interval Width

2014

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WHEN A MUSICAL TONE IS SOUNDED, MOST LISTENERS are unable to identify its pitch by name. Those listeners who can identify pitches are said to have absolute pitch perception (AP). A limited subset of musicians possesses AP, and it has been debated whether musicians' AP interferes with their ability to perceive tonal relationships between pitches, or relative pitch (RP). The present study tested musicians' discrimination of relative pitch categories, or intervals, by placing absolute pitch values in conflict with relative pitch categories. AP listeners perceived intervals categorically, and their judgments were not affected by absolute pitch values. These results indicate that AP listeners do not infer interval identities from the absolute values between tones, and that RP categories are salient musical concepts in both RP and AP musicianship.

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The subjective size of melodic intervals over a two-octave range

Cited by 43 publications

References 45 publications

Mouth versus eyes: Gaze fixation during perception of sung interval size.

Mouth versus eyes: Gaze fixation during perception of sung interval size.

Musical intervals and relative pitch: Frequency resolution, not interval resolution, is special

Absolute Judgment of Musical Interval Width

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