Abstract
Traditionally,
musical chords have been understood as combinations of discrete tones or as the
layering of intervals. From the listener’s point of view, however, chords often
fuse into a single perceptual unit with a specific, readily recognized
character (i.e. major/minor). When chordal fusion occurs, a chord’s distinct
character can be understood as its timbre in terms of a single inharmonic
spectral distribution, rather than a combination of discrete harmonic spectra.
The present
study examines the relationship between spectral distribution – described in
terms of i) spectral centroid (center of amplitude-weighted frequency
distribution); ii) spectral bandwidth (spread of frequency distribution); iii)
spectral density (average number of components per critical band); and iv)
spectral inharmonicity (defined in terms of sensory consonance/dissonance
curves) - and perceptual identity of complex tone combinations. It addresses
the perceptual equivalence of chord inversions (root, first, second inversion
of a single chord category) and the perceptual difference between different
chord categories (major/minor) in terms of spectral inharmonicity rather than
interval layering. Preliminary results suggest that this study can be extended
to examine harmonic motion as a motion between spectral distributions with
various degrees of sensory consonance/dissonance, rather than melodic motion
between leading tones. [Work supported by UCLA’s Graduate Division.]
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