The Effect of Overtones on Dissonance Perception
* Presenting author
Abstract:
In Western music theory, different musical intervals are connected with perceived consonance or dissonance. Applying this concept to a psychoacoustics analysis of environmental sounds, however, demands a description of consonance and dissonance which is not limited to distinct musical intervals and equal level ratios. In a previous study, an auditory modelling approach based on envelope fluctuations showed promising results by predicting both known relations from musical theory and findings from a new experiment. The aim of this series of psychoacoustics experiments is to investigate how components of the harmonic overtones influence the human consonance and dissonance perception because an effect was expected based on the previous modelling approach. The perceived dissonance of 18 different sounds with varying overtone content, interval and decay of the overtone components were adjusted to the same dissonance as a comparison signal by altering the level of one of the two tones in an adaptive procedure. It showed that for some combinations of overtone content and musical interval, a significantly lower reduction of the second tone was needed to reach the dissonance of the comparison signal. This finding supports a modelling using envelope fluctuations as a measure for perceived dissonance.