Centre for Music and Science, Faculty of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2024 Aug 1;156(2):1111-1122. doi: 10.1121/10.0028167.
Previous psychological studies have shown that musical consonance is not only determined by the frequency ratios between tones, but also by the frequency spectra of those tones. However, these prior studies used artificial tones, specifically tones built from a small number of pure tones, which do not match the acoustic complexity of real musical instruments. The present experiment therefore investigates tones recorded from a real musical instrument, the Westerkerk Carillon, conducting a "dense rating" experiment where participants (N = 113) rated musical intervals drawn from the continuous range 0-15 semitones. Results show that the traditional consonances of the major third and the minor sixth become dissonances in the carillon and that small intervals (in particular 0.5-2.5 semitones) also become particularly dissonant. Computational modelling shows that these effects are primarily caused by interference between partials (e.g., beating), but that preference for harmonicity is also necessary to produce an accurate overall account of participants' preferences. The results support musicians' writings about the carillon and contribute to ongoing debates about the psychological mechanisms underpinning consonance perception, in particular disputing the recent claim that interference is largely irrelevant to consonance perception.
先前的心理学研究表明，音乐的协和性不仅取决于音之间的频率比，还取决于这些音的频谱。然而，这些先前的研究使用了人工音，特别是由少数纯音构成的音，它们与真实乐器的复杂音响不匹配。因此，本实验调查了从真实乐器——西教堂大键琴录制的音，进行了“密集评分”实验，其中参与者（N=113）对从连续范围 0-15 半音中抽取的音乐音程进行评分。结果表明，大三度和小六度的传统协和音在大键琴中变成不协和音，小音程（特别是 0.5-2.5 半音）也变得特别不协和。计算模型表明，这些效应主要是由泛音之间的干扰（例如，拍音）引起的，但对谐和性的偏好也是产生参与者偏好的准确总体解释所必需的。研究结果支持音乐家对大键琴的论述，并为协和感知的心理机制的持续争论做出贡献，特别是对最近关于干扰在协和感知中基本无关紧要的说法提出质疑。
