English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT
Add to Basket
  Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released
Journal Article

Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons255679

Marjieh,  Raja       
Research Group Computational Auditory Perception, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Max Planck Society;
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, NJ, USA;

/persons/resource/persons247689

Harrison,  Peter M. C.       
Research Group Computational Auditory Perception, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Max Planck Society;
Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom;

/persons/resource/persons266014

Lee,  Harin       
Research Group Computational Auditory Perception, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Max Planck Society;
International Max Planck Research School on Neuroscience of Communication: Function, Structure, and Plasticity, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Max Planck Society;

Deligiannaki,  Fotini
Research Group Computational Auditory Perception, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Max Planck Society;
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute for AI Safety and Security, Bonn, Germany;

/persons/resource/persons242173

Jacoby,  Nori       
Research Group Computational Auditory Perception, Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)

24-cap-mar-01-timbral.pdf
(Publisher version), 4MB

Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Marjieh, R., Harrison, P. M. C., Lee, H., Deligiannaki, F., & Jacoby, N. (2024). Timbral effects on consonance disentangle psychoacoustic mechanisms and suggest perceptual origins for musical scales. Nature Communications, 15(1): 1482. doi:10.1038/s41467-024-45812-z.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0011-9627-8
Abstract
The phenomenon of musical consonance is an essential feature in diverse musical styles. The traditional belief, supported by centuries of Western music theory and psychological studies, is that consonance derives from simple (harmonic) frequency ratios between tones and is insensitive to timbre. Here we show through five large-scale behavioral studies, comprising 235,440 human judgments from US and South Korean populations, that harmonic consonance preferences can be reshaped by timbral manipulations, even as far as to induce preferences for inharmonic intervals. We show how such effects may suggest perceptual origins for diverse scale systems ranging from the gamelan's slendro scale to the tuning of Western mean-tone and equal-tempered scales. Through computational modeling we show that these timbral manipulations dissociate competing psychoacoustic mechanisms underlying consonance, and we derive an updated computational model combining liking of harmonicity, disliking of fast beats (roughness), and liking of slow beats. Altogether, this work showcases how large-scale behavioral experiments can inform classical questions in auditory perception.