Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales

Raja Marjieh (), Peter M. C. Harrison (), Harin Lee, Fotini Deligiannaki and Nori Jacoby ()
Additional contact information
Raja Marjieh: Princeton University
Peter M. C. Harrison: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
Harin Lee: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
Fotini Deligiannaki: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics
Nori Jacoby: Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics

Nature Communications, 2024, vol. 15, issue 1, 1-22

Abstract: Abstract The phenomenon of musical consonance is an essential feature in diverse musical styles. The traditional belief, supported by centuries of Western music theory and psychological studies, is that consonance derives from simple (harmonic) frequency ratios between tones and is insensitive to timbre. Here we show through five large-scale behavioral studies, comprising 235,440 human judgments from US and South Korean populations, that harmonic consonance preferences can be reshaped by timbral manipulations, even as far as to induce preferences for inharmonic intervals. We show how such effects may suggest perceptual origins for diverse scale systems ranging from the gamelan’s slendro scale to the tuning of Western mean-tone and equal-tempered scales. Through computational modeling we show that these timbral manipulations dissociate competing psychoacoustic mechanisms underlying consonance, and we derive an updated computational model combining liking of harmonicity, disliking of fast beats (roughness), and liking of slow beats. Altogether, this work showcases how large-scale behavioral experiments can inform classical questions in auditory perception.

Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45812-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:15:y:2024:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-024-45812-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-45812-z

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().