Relative pitch representations and invariance to timbre.

ABSTRACT: Information in speech and music is often conveyed through changes in fundamental frequency (f0), perceived by humans as "relative pitch". Relative pitch judgments are complicated by two facts. First, sounds can simultaneously vary in timbre due to filtering imposed by a vocal tract or instrument body. Second, relative pitch can be extracted in two ways: by measuring changes in constituent frequency components from one sound to another, or by estimating the f0 of each sound and comparing the estimates. We examined the effects of timbral differences on relative pitch judgments, and whether any invariance to timbre depends on whether judgments are based on constituent frequencies or their f0. Listeners performed up/down and interval discrimination tasks with pairs of spoken vowels, instrument

SUBMITTER: McPherson MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10016107 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature