Tune That Beer! Listening for the Pitch of Beer

Abstract

We report two experiments designed to assess the key sensory drivers underlying people's association of a specific auditory pitch with Belgian beer. In particular, we assessed if people would rely mostly on the differences between beers in terms of their relative alcohol strength, or on the contrast between the most salient taste attributes of the different beers. In Experiment 1, the participants rated three bitter beers (differing in alcohol content), using a narrow range of pitch choices (50-500 Hz). The results revealed that the beers were all rated around the same pitch (Mean = 232 Hz, SD = 136 Hz). In Experiment 2, a wider range of pitch choices (50-1500 Hz), along with the addition of a much sweeter beer, revealed that people mostly tend to match beers with bitter-range profiles at significantly lower pitch ranges when compared to the average pitch of a much sweeter beer. These results therefore demonstrate that clear differences in taste attributes lead to distinctly different matches in terms of pitch. Having demonstrated the robustness of the basic crossmodal matching, future research should aim to uncover the basis for such matches and better understand the perceptual effects of matching/non-matching tones on the multisensory drinking experience.

Environmental Sounds Influence the Multisensory Perception of Chocolate Gelati

“…Crisinel and Spence [8] mapped the correspondence between basic taste and flavours with musical notes. Soundscapes were further reported to influence the basic taste of cinder toffee [9], beer [4,6], and ice cream [10,23]. The emotional mediation theory [13,23] was proposed to explain these crossmodal effects.…”

“…Over the last decade, researchers have been exploring crossmodal correspondences between sounds and the taste, aroma, flavour and/or texture of foods. Studies investigating the effects of audition on other senses have examined the influence of auditory cues on odours such as roasted coffee [1]; potato-chips and coffee [2] and vanilla [3]; tastes such as bitter and sweet [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13], and; textures such as crunchiness [14], crispness [15], and carbonation [16]. These findings have important implications as sound has the potential to be modulated to enhance the consumer’s eating experience by manipulating the emotional congruency between sound and food perception.…”

Commercializing Sonic Seasoning in Multisensory Offline Experiential Events and Online Tasting Experiences

“…These studies demonstrated that the higher alcohol content export lager tended to be matched with a higher pitch of pure tone, when a small number of participants (c. ten) were invited to select the "pitch of harmony" by varying the sound made by a tone generator. Although a subsequent follow-up only partially supported the claim that different food and beverage products are matched with different pitches of sound (Rudmin and Cappelli, 1983), Reinoso Carvalho et al (2016b) were able to demonstrate a robust cross-sensory mapping between beers and cola having different pitches. In 2020, Beck's launched a similar pitch-based experiential activation using music tracks mixed by Brazilian DJs, entitled "Beck's Frequency" (Fernández, 2020;Gianatasio, 2020b).…”

“…Early studies of sonic seasoning focused specifically on the matching of the frequency of a pure tone with food and beverage items presenting a specific flavour (e.g., Holt-Hansen, 1968 , 1976 ; Rudmin and Cappelli, 1983 ; and see Reinoso Carvalho et al, 2016b , for a more recent study adopting much the same approach). In the majority of contemporary cases of sonic seasoning, specially composed soundscapes and/or pre-recorded music selections have been designed to match, and hence to emphasize, a specific element in the multisensory tasting experience.…”

Blending Emotions and Cross-Modality in Sonic Seasoning: Towards Greater Applicability in the Design of Multisensory Food Experiences

“…Different studies have also shown that certain pitch or auditory frequency ranges correspond with specific taste/flavor sensations, such as bitterness, sourness, and sweetness [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ]. Based on these insights, music can be produced or selected in order to deliberately correspond to specific taste sensations [ 1 , 18 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ].…”