Harmony: A Psychoacoustical Approach

by Richard Parncutt

Overview

My first encounter with the theory of harmony was during my last year at school (1975). This fascinating system of rules crystallized the intuitive knowledge of harmony I had acquired from years of piano playing, and facilitated memorization, transcription, arrangement and composition. For the next five years, I studied music (piano) and science (Physics) at the University of Melbourne. This "strange combination" started me wondering about the origins of those music theory "rules". To what extent were they determined or influenced by physics? mathematics? physiology? conditioning? In 1981, the supervisor of my honours project in musical acoustics, Neville Fletcher, showed me an article entitled "Pitch, consonance, and harmony", by a certain Ernst Terhardt of the Technical University of Munich. By that stage, I had devoured a considerable amount of (largely unsatisfactory) material on the nature and origins of harmony, which enabled me to recognize the significance of Terhardt's article. But it was not until I arrived in Munich the following year (on Terhardt's invitation) that I began to appreciate the consequences of his "psychoacoustical" approach for the theory of harmony. That is what this book is about. The book presents Terhardt's work against the broad context of music perception research, past and present. Music perception is a multidisciplinary mixture of physics, psychology and music. Where different theoretical approaches appear contradictory, I try to show instead that they complement and enrich one another.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783642748332
Publisher:	Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Publication date:	12/13/2011
Series:	Springer Series in Information Sciences , #19
Edition description:	Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1989
Pages:	212
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

1. Background.- 1.1 Music Theory.- 1.1.1 Introduction.- 1.1.2 Single Chords.- 1.1.3 Pairs of Chords.- 1.1.4 Chord Progressions.- 1.1.5 A Scientific Basis?.- 1.2 Physically Based Theories.- 1.2.1 Introduction.- 1.2.2 Frequency Ratios.- 1.2.3 Harmonic Series.- 1.2.4 Beats.- 1.2.5 Combination Tones.- 1.2.6 Periodicity.- 1.3 Psychologically Based Theories.- 1.3.1 Introduction.- 1.3.2 Cognitive Structures.- 1.3.3 Generative Grammars.- 1.3.4 Mathematical Groups.- 1.4 Towards a Psychophysical Theory.- 1.4.1 From Rameau to Terhardt.- 1.4.2 The Psychoacoustical Approach.- 1.4.3 Outline of the Book.- 2. Psychoacoustics.- 2.1 Philosophy of Perception.- 2.1.1 Hardware and Software.- 2.1.2 Matter, Experience and Information.- 2.1.3 Perception, Sensation and Cognition.- 2.1.4 Tone, Tone Sensation and Note.- 2.2 Auditory Sensation.- 2.2.1 Loudness and Timbre.- 2.2.2 Spectral Analysis.- 2.2.3 Sensory Memory.- 2.3 Extraction of Information.- 2.3.1 Noticing and Salience.- 2.3.2 Categorical Perception.- 2.3.3 Holistic Perception and Pattern Recognition.- 2.3.4 Ambiguity, Multiplicity and Context.- 2.4 Tone Sensation.- 2.4.1 Terminology.- 2.4.2 Pure Tone Sensations.- 2.4.3 Complex Tone Sensations.- 2.4.4 Pitch Ambiguity of Complex Tones.- 2.4.5 Subharmonic Pitches of Pure Tones.- 2.4.6 Melodic Streaming.- 2.5 Pitch Perception.- 2.5.1 Dimensionality.- 2.5.2 Continuous Pitch Scales.- 2.5.3 Categorical Pitch Perception.- 2.5.4 Musical Training.- 2.5.5 Perfect Pitch.- 3. Psychomusicology.- 3.1 Conditioning.- 3.1.1 Sensory Versus Cultural.- 3.1.2 Prenatal Conditioning.- 3.2 Consonance.- 3.2.1 Introduction.- 3.2.2 Roughness and Tonalness.- 3.2.3 Pitch Commonality and Pitch Distance.- 3.3 Musical Pitch.- 3.3.1 Octave Equivalence.- 3.3.2 The Chromatic Scale.- 3.3.3 Intonation.- 3.4 Tonality.- 3.4.1 Introduction.- 3.4.2 The Root of a Chord.- 3.4.3 The Tonic of a Scale.- 3.4.4 Major/Minor and Emotion.- 3.4.5 Chord Progressions.- 4. Model.- 4.1 General Aspects.- 4.1.1 Aim, Form and Implementation.- 4.1.2 Formulation and Assessment.- 4.1.3 Culture-Specific Aspects.- 4.1.4 Comparison with Terhardt’s Model.- 4.2 Input.- 4.2.1 Pitch Category.- 4.2.2 Experiments.- 4.2.3 Auditory Level.- 4.2.4 Applications.- 4.3 Masking and Audibility.- 4.3.1 Critical Bandwidth.- 4.3.2 Masking.- 4.3.3 Audibility.- 4.4 Recognition of Harmonic Pitch Patterns.- 4.4.1 Harmonic Template.- 4.4.2 Complex Tone Sensations.- 4.4.3 Tonalness.- 4.5 Salience.- 4.5.1 Multiplicity.- 4.5.2 Tone Salience.- 4.5.3 Chroma Salience.- 4.6 Sequential Pitch Relationship.- 4.6.1 Pitch Commonality.- 4.6.2 Pitch Distance.- 4.6.3 Pitch Analysis Experiment.- 4.6.4 Similarity Experiments.- 5. Experiments.- 5.1 General Method.- 5.1.1 Results and Modelling.- 5.1.2 Cultural Effects.- 5.2 Multiplicity.- 5.2.1 Introduction.- 5.2.2 Method.- 5.2.3 Results.- 5.2.4 Modelling.- 5.2.5 Conclusions.- 5.3 Pitch Analysis.- 5.3.1 Introduction.- 5.3.2 Method.- 5.3.3 Results.- 5.3.4 Modelling.- 5.3.5 Conclusions.- 5.4 Similarity of Piano Tones.- 5.4.1 Introduction.- 5.4.2 Method.- 5.4.3 Results.- 5.4.4 Grouping.- 5.4.5 Conclusions.- 5.5 Similarity of Synthetic Tones I.- 5.5.1 Introduction.- 5.5.2 Method.- 5.5.3 Results.- 5.5.4 Grouping.- 5.5.5 Conclusions.- 5.6 Similarity of Synthetic Tones II.- 5.6.1 Introduction.- 5.6.2 Method.- 5.6.3 Grouping and Results.- 5.6.4 Modelling.- 5.6.5 Conclusions.- 5.7 Similarity of Chords.- 5.7.1 Introduction.- 5.7.2 Method.- 5.7.3 Results.- 5.7.4 Modelling.- 5.7.5 Conclusions.- 5.8 Discussion.- 5.8.1 Modelling.- 5.8.2 Musical Universals?.- 6. Applications.- 6.1 Simultaneities.- 6.1.1 Masking.- 6.1.2 Spectral Dominance.- 6.1.3 Multiplicity.- 6.1.4 Tonalness.- 6.1.5 Pitch Analyses.- 6.1.6 Chroma Salience and the Root.- 6.2 Progression.- 6.2.1 Pitch Commonality.- 6.2.2 Pitch Distance.- 6.2.3 Tonicity.- 6.2.4 Implied Triad/Scale.- 6.2.5 Key Profile.- 6.3 Pieces.- 6.3.1 Analysis.- 6.3.2 Composition.- Glossary of Symbols.- References.

Editorial Reviews

To what extent are the structure and experience of (specifically Western) music psychophysically pre-determined, to what extent are they cultural artifacts? The author (attached to the Departments of Music and Psychology at the University of New England, Armidale, Australia, and a disciple of Ernst Terhardt of the Technical University of Munich) provides in the first half of his beautiful monograph a balanced account of previous work in the field, and of the (perceptual) phenomena which any theoretical effort must address, and gives the remainder of the book to careful description and interpretation of the results of the experimental studies in which he has recently been involved. Dense with balanced wisdom and fascinating particulars. Superbly thought out and very attractively produced contribution to a field which remains problematic despite its long history; might inspire Helmholtz himself to rise from his grave and give it an attentive read. (NW) Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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