Re: Clarity of high/low frequency and impact on musics persistence...

[Wolfgang Dreier <wolfgang.dreier@xxxxxx>]

Dear Robin,

to my point of view, this all seems to depend on the audience, 'cause how a
single person picks up acoustic stimuli is a matter of so-called "schema based
auditory scene analysis (Bregman 1990) - No culture's ears are equal  and a
stimulus will be shaped different in different brains.(Stockmann 1990)
So I'd be quite sceptical about some "universal ingredients" to create an
earworm...final statement of one Cognitive-Inch Investigator:
"Professor Kellaris [University of Cincinnati College of Business
Administration] said that his research had shown that there was, however, no
standard for creating an earworm - people could react differently to different
tunes." (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3221499.stm, 2005-07-28)

What one of course can do, is to narrow the question down to "primitive
auditory scene analysis" (Bregman 1990), containing for instance the
psychoacoustic phenomena masking and streaming. According to the first, it
seems to be of evidence that higher frequencies are masked more easily by lower
ones (cf Eckel 1989). (certainly, rules of masking and streaming are related
with frequency, but seem to depend even more on timbre)

Hope this'll be at least of some help to you.

All the best, Wolfgang

[Bregman, Albert S.: Auditory Scene Analysis. The Perceptual Organization of
Sound, (1st ed. 1990), 4th ed., Cambridge 2001 - might be helpful, differs
between a primitive and a schema based aud.sc.analysis,
Eckel, Gerhard: Ein Modell der Mehrfachverdeckung für die Analyse musikalischer
Schallsignale, Vienna 1989.
Stockmann, Doris: ?Aspekte des Rhythmischen am Beispiel europäischer
Volksmusik?, in: Rhythmik und Metrik in traditionellen Musikkulturen, ed. Oskár
Elschek, Bratislava 1990.]



Zitat von Robin Rader <astaroth_96@xxxxxxxxx>:

>
> Dear members of the list,
>
> I have just started my BA Hons degree research (in Recording Arts) in
> Australia and therefore would be thankful for help in finding papers and
> information on previous research in the field of the "Earworm"/"Cognitive
> Itch"-phenomena and particularly on the psychological and psychoacoustic
> influences of high and low frequency contents in recordings on an audience.
>
> Thank you in advance for any help in starting this project-
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Robin.