Re: effects of musical experience on pitch perception?

[Linda Seltzer <lseltzer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Fred, With respect to perceived timbres, the dimensions found in a
subjective experiment, such as a data analysis with multidimensional
scaling, would be perceptual qualities and not matematical properties of a
signal.  For some of the most fundamental work, done with speech, try to
find any papers by William Voiers or the Dynastat company.  Dynastat used
to mail out some of their technical papers for free.  I haven't been in
contact with them for a long time.  By some quirk of fate, although I am
in audio, I am currently consulting im image processing.
> At 4:33 PM -0400 7/15/06, Fred Herzfeld wrote:
>>...The piano, the violin and drums all have different timbers and
>>these can depend on:

> At 4:33 PM -0400 7/15/06, Fred Herzfeld wrote:
>>...The piano, the violin and drums all have different timbers and
>>these can depend on:
>>
>>(a) the number of harmonics
>>(b) the phase of each harmonic relative to a specific harmonic
>>(c) the intensity of each of the harmonics.
>>
>>It is thus obvious that timber must be measured along at least the
>>three dimensions I gave above.
>
> Fred, I think you're mixing metaphors here; mixing signal types
> anyway.  There's a big difference between an actual instrument note
> and a "composite tone", a periodic waveform that can be described by
> a Fourier series.  It is well documented that a large part of an
> instrument's character, which I believe falls under the term
> 'timbre', comes from the attack transients.
>
> One could say therefore that there are other important dimensions,
> consistent with your "at least" statement.  But I would still argue
> that it is misleading to say the that timbre "must be measured" along
> those dimensions from Fourier analysis, since many sounds that have a
> timbre do not have any sensible decomposition into harmonics;
> percussion especially.
>
> Still, your approach should be fine for "composite tones" that are
> periodic.
>
> Dick
>
>