Subject: Re: Pitching in From: Greg Sandell <sandell(at)EPUNIX.SUSSEX.AC.UK> Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1993 11:13:42 -0400Punita Singh writes on Richard Parncutt's posting: > > ............Richard's tutorial continued ......... > > The mel scale and its relatives listed above apply only to pure > > tones, and not (or at least not directly) to music or speech. For > > complex tones, it is generally safe to assume that pitch is > > proportional to the logarithm of frequency. This is true over a wider > > range of frequencies for complex tones than for pure tones. > > To use the most popular sentence in human (mis)communication > today: Whatcha talkin' 'bout Richard ???? > In any case, harmonics are not equally spaced on a > log-frequency scale so I'm not sure which logarithm of which frequency > is being referred to.in the "tutorial". I think Punita misread Richard...he was talking about relationships between different pitches, not relationships between partials in a single complex tone. The mel scale indeed refers to a psychological representation of pitch distance (i.e. it ain't linear, to use the most popular phrase in music research today). Furthermore, I think Richard is saying/postulating that the mel scale may have been a psychologically real phenomena for sine-tone stimuli, but would not hold water for pitches instantiated by complex tones. Has anybody of recent ilk tried to defend the mel scale? Greg Sandell -- Gregory J. Sandell (sandell(at)epunix.sussex.ac.uk) Experimental Psychology, University of Sussex Brighton BN1 9QG England +44-273-678058