Timbral influences on vocal pitch-matching accuracy.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how vocal fundamental frequency control was influenced by the timbre of target auditory stimuli. Nineteen female participants were asked to vocally reproduce the pitch of target tones, which consisted of female, male, violin, and clarinet timbres at three different fundamental frequencies. Results revealed that the participants were significantly more accurate at matching the pitch of female target tones compared to the instrumental timbres. This was interpreted as being due to an effect of spectral similarity of the female timbre to that of the female participants. The results of this study support the hypothesis of a perceptual integrality between timbre and pitch, and that stimulus timbre can influence the accuracy of vocal reproduction.