Re: Pitching in (at)


Subject: Re: Pitching in
From:    at <parncuttSOUND.MUSIC.MCGILL.CA>
Date:    Wed, 29 Sep 1993 23:19:25 EDT

Dear Greg, Thanks for your words of support. >Has anybody of recent ilk tried to defend the mel scale? Not that I know of, off hand. But let me briefly return to the original question: >Sometimes they say pitch is proportional to the logarithm of frequency. What is true? What is not? and add some words of explanation to my previous letter, in which I claimed that: > For complex tones, it is generally safe to assume that pitch is > proportional to the logarithm of frequency ... over a wider > range of frequencies than for pure tones. > The pitch of pure tones (as reflected by critical-band rate -- Zwicker & Terhardt, 1980 or ERB rate -- Moore & Glasberg, 1983) is roughly proportional to frequency for frequencies greater than about 500 Hz. The (main virtual) pitch of a harmonic complex tone is determined by certain "dominant" harmonics (Plomp, 1967). Ritsma (1967) found that the pitch of a harmonic complex tone with all low harmonics and a fundamental frequency in the range 100 to 400 Hz depends only (or primarily) on the frequencies of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th harmonics. Assuming that the pitch of harmonics WITHIN a complex tone is proportional to log frequency down to about 500 Hz, it follows that the pitch of typical complex tones is roughly proportional to frequency down to about 100 Hz (NB: ballpark estimate only). The above argument seems to be consistent with musical experience. It is no surprise to musicians that "psychoacoustical complex-tone pitch" (if I may call it that) is roughly proportional to musical pitch in semitones above about G2 (that's the bottom line of the bass clef). Below that, melodies start to feel a bit cramped. And while on the subject of music -- It is difficult to scale pitch (and especially complex-tone pitch) in the way that Stevens did, due to the confounding effect of musical experience (subjects are reminded of musical intervals). That's why I prefer to rely on round-about arguments such as those of the preceding paragraph. The aim of the exercise is to give musicians (and others) a sensible answer to a reasonable question, even if the reasoning is not absolutely watertight. Does that make sense? I'd be interested in feedback. AND FINALLY, A LITTLE SIDETRACK ON TERMINOLOGY... (NB: The following is probably of pedagogical rather than research interest.) I think that communication about the perception of complex tones could be rendered more transparent by more careful use of the word "pitch". We often refer loosely to tone sensations as "pitches" or even "timbres". But in a strict psychoacoustical definition, pitch is not a "thing in itself" (kein Ding an sich, right?) but an ATTRIBUTE of a thing, namely, of a tone or tone sensation. Take for example the following quite innocent (and true) sentence from Punita's letter: > Depending on the relationship between the components, a single > unified pitch or multiple candidate pitches may be evoked. Perhaps the following version would be more clear to "non-pitchers"? Depending on the relationship between the components, either a single tone sensation (whose pitch may be ambiguous) or multiple tone sensations may be evoked. The reason I'm mentioning this is (as well as the above material on pitch scaling) that I happen to have a vested interest in applying research in complex-tone perception to music theory. So I want to make things as clear as possible to a music-theoretic audience. Again, suggestions are welcome. Richard Parncutt P.S. I was wrong: The refs to Henning (1966) and Wier et al. (1977) in my last epistle concerned pure, not complex tones. References Moore, B.C.J., & Glasberg, B.R. 1983. Suggested Formulae for Calculating Auditory-Filter Bandwidths and Excitation Patterns. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 74: 750-753. Plomp, R. (1967). Pitch of complex tones. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 41, 1526-1533. Ritsma (1967). Frequencies dominant in the perception of the pitch of complex tones. JASA, 42, 191-198. Zwicker, E. and E. Terhardt. 1980. "Analytical Expressions for Critical-Band Rate and Critical Bandwidth as a Function of Frequency." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 68, 1523-1525


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DAn Ellis <dpwe@ee.columbia.edu>
Electrical Engineering Dept., Columbia University