Frequency ratios and the perception of tone patterns
Open Access
- 1 June 1994
- journal article
- Published by Springer Nature in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
- Vol. 1 (2) , 191-201
- https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03200773
Abstract
We quantified the relative simplicity of frequency ratios and reanalyzed data from several studies on the perception of simultaneous and sequential tones. Simplicity of frequency ratios accounted for judgments of consonance and dissonance and for judgments of similarity across a wide range of tasks and listeners. It also accounted for the relative ease of discriminating tone patterns by musically experienced and inexperienced listeners. These findings confirm the generality of previous suggestions of perceptual processing advantages for pairs of tones related by simple frequency ratios.Keywords
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