dissonance modelling; virtual pitch x harmonicity x tonal fusion x roughness

[Alexandre Porres <porres@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear list,

Hi, I'm a composer that deals with computers and I've been developing tools for dissonance models, but basically roughness.

Let me draw you the notion I got by checking the literature of dissonance modelling and raise questions from it.

I'm aware that roughness accounts as the main aspect of what is so called sensory consonance/dissonance or "tonal consonance", which are terms that exclude from it the notion of dissonance being influenced by cultural aspects and, therefore, is opposed to what you'd normally call "musical dissonance". Hence, the attributes of sensory dissonance can be measured and analyzed regardless of "musical context" or even in "non-musical sounds".

Nonetheless, there are studies that look into perceptual principals of musical sounds in musical contexts, such as the book "Harmony, a Psychoacoustical Approach", which is based a lot on the work of Terhardt. It makes a different distinction of "Sensory" Versus "Cultural", but under the umbrella of "Sensory" does include more than just a strictly physiological/innate approach, so it is not the same pricipal I would say as "sensory dissonance" usually refers to. this is in line with Terhardt's distinction of perceptual aspects that musical dissonance depends on. He divides in mainly two categories, "sensory dissonance" in its common meaning, plus "harmony".

Anyway, I'm going for this approach and trying to gather many psychoacoustic attributes and models to model "musical dissonance".

Going back to sensory dissonance (basically roughness), it's been usually opposed to an aspect such as Stumpf's "Tonal Fusion" - as in DeWitt, Crowder 1987. I've also seen the composer Clarence Barlow develop a model of "Harmonicity".

I like the work of Terhardt and Parncutt as a starting point for my developments, but I don't see any mentioning of harmonicity or tonal fusion, and I wonder if Virtual Pitch Theory is an equivalent of those. Could it be so? 

I know that Huron presents elements such as Virtual Pitch, Tonal Fusion, Tonalness, Roughness altogether in "Tone And Voice", but they are presented separately.

I would like to make a review of the literature. Departuring from Terhardt/Parncutt and also put on the table things like Harmonicity/Tonal Fusion or even other stuff. but also making connections and writting about their interplay.

Has anyone ever done this? Any papers out there that discusses this moreover?

Thanks a lot

Alex