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Kendall, R.A. and Vassilakis, P.N. (2010).  Perception and acoustical analyses of traditionally orchestrated musical structures versus non-traditional counterparts.  J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 128(4/2): 2344 (presented at the 160th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America / 7th Iberoamerican Congress of Acoustics / 17th Mexican Congress on Acoustics, Cancun, Mexico)
[Invited presentation - Special session on Musical Acoustics: Analysis, Synthesis, & Perception of Musical Sounds II.]

Abstract
  
Many studies use single tone or dyadic unison stimuli in the exploration of musical timbre. Musical contexts, however, often employ larger numbers of simultaneous voices. Recently, we have conducted perceptual acoustical studies of consonance, dissonance, and roughness in multitimbral triads often finding that chord quality (major, minor, diminished, augmented) had perceptual primacy over timbre. The present research extends this work to include major and minor triads in similarity scaling, blend, and identification experiments. In addition, four tone chords were orchestrated according to procedures articulated in orchestration texts: juxtaposition, interlocking, enclosure, and overlapping. Sampled instrument tones (Sibelius Kontakt) of oboe, flute, and clarinet were used, allowing comparison to previous research, and nontraditional combinations with saxophone and trumpet were included. Triads with each tone assigned a different timbre provided nontraditional orchestrations to be compared and contrasted with traditional orchestrations that duplicated timbres within a chord. Perceptual data were correlated to acoustical analyzes of spectral distribution and time variancy.