The basis of musical consonance as revealed by congenital amusia.

ABSTRACT: Some combinations of musical notes sound pleasing and are termed "consonant," but others sound unpleasant and are termed "dissonant." The distinction between consonance and dissonance plays a central role in Western music, and its origins have posed one of the oldest and most debated problems in perception. In modern times, dissonance has been widely believed to be the product of "beating": interference between frequency components in the cochlea that has been believed to be more pronounced in dissonant than consonant sounds. However, harmonic frequency relations, a higher-order sound attribute closely related to pitch perception, has also been proposed to account for consonance. To tease apart theories of musical consonance, we tested sound preferences in individuals with congenital amusi

SUBMITTER: Cousineau M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3511708 | biostudies-literature | 2012 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature