Musical Scales and Brightness Evaluations: Effects of Pitch,Direction,and Scale Mode

Abstract

German

Spanish

French

Italian

A common form of synesthesia and nonsynesthetic cross-modal matching involves an association of visual brightness and auditory frequency, and the form of this association was studied in nonsynesthetic observers who rated the perceived brightness of ascending and descending musical scales drawn from four modes (natural, melodic, and harmonic minor modes, and major modes [including both relative and parallel major scales]). The descending harmonic minor mode was rated as darker than the descending natural/melodic minor mode. Ascending minor and major modes were rated as brighter than descending minor and major modes. In addition, musical keys that started on a higher pitch were rated as brighter than musical keys that started on a lower pitch. No consistent differences in ratings of brightness were found between musically experienced and musically inexperienced participants. The data are consistent with previous findings and suggest that more global aspects of pitch height, pitch distance between subsequent notes, and pitch contour (i.e. the direction of pitch movement), rather than mode or key per se, influence ratings of the brightness of musical stimuli, and suggest recent use of “brightness” as a descriptor of or synonym solely for timbre may not be appropriate.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Baron-Cohen

Harrison

J. E.

(1997). Synaesthesia: Classic and contemporary readings. Cambridge, MA.: Blackwell Publishers.

Boring

E. G.

Stevens

S. S.

(1936). The nature of tonal brightness. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 22, 514–21.

Collier

W. G.

Hubbard

T. L.

(1998–2001). Judgments of happiness, brightness, speed and tempo change of auditory stimuli varying in pitch and tempo. Psychomusicology, 17, 17–36.

Collier

W. G.

Hubbard

T. L.

(2001). Musical scales and evaluations of happiness and awkwardness: Effects of pitch, direction, and scale mode. American Journal of Psychology, 114, 114–355.

Cytowic

R. E.

(2002). Synesthesia: A union of the senses. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.

Demany

Semal

(1993). Pirch versus brightness of timbre: Detecting combined shifts in fundamental and formant frequency. Music Perception, 11, 11–1.

Fung

C. V.

(1996). Musicians′ and nonmusicians′ preferences for world musics: Relation to musical characteristics and familiarity. Journal of Research in Music Education, 44, 44–60.

Harrison

J. E.

(2001). Synaesthesia: The strangest thing. New York: Oxford University Press. Hubbard

T. L.

(1996). Synesthesia-like mapping of lightness, pitch, and melodic interval. American Journal of Psychology, 109, 109–219.

Karwoski

T. F.

Odbert

H. S.

Osgood

C. E.

(1942). Studies in synesthetic thinking: II. The roles of form in visual response to music. Journal of General Psychology, 26, 26–199.

10.

Kosrka

Payne

(1995). Tonal harmony with an introduction to Twentieth-century music (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.

11.

Krumhansl

C. L.

(1990). Cognitive foundations of musical pitch. New York Oxford University Press.

12.

Lehman

R. S.

(1972). A multivariate model of synesthesia. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 7, 7–403.

13.

Marks

L. E.

(1974). On associations of light and sound: The mediation of brightness, pitch, and loudness. American Journal of Psychology, 87, 87–173.

14.

Marks

L. E.

(1975). On colored-hearing synesthesia: Cross-modal translations of sensory dimensions. Psychological Bulletin, 82, 82–303.

15.

Marks

L. E.

(1982). Bright sneezes and dark coughs, loud sunlight and soft moonlight. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 8, 8–177.

16.

Marks

L. E.

(1987). On cross-modal similarity: Auditory-visual interactions in speeded discrimination. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 13, 13–384.

17.

Marks

L. E.

(1996). On perceptual metaphors. Metaphor and Symbol, 11, 11–39.

18.

McAdams

Winsberg

Donnadieu

De Soete

Krimphoff

(1995). Perceptual scaling of synthesized musical timbres: Common dimensions, specificities, and latent subject classes. Psychological Research, 58, 58–177.

19.

Pierce

(1999). Sound waves and sine waves. In Cook

P. R.

(ed.), Music, cognition, and computerized sound: An introduction to psychoacoustics (pp. 37–56). Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.

20.

Rich

G. J.

(1919). A study of tonal attributes. American Journal of Psychology, 30, 30–121.

21.

Sachs

(1955). Our musical heritage: A short history of music. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

22.

Samoylenko

McAdams

Nosulenko

(1996). Systematic analysis of verbalizations produced in comparing musical timbres. International Journal of Psychology, 31, 31–255.

23.

Sethares

W. A.

, (1993). Local consonance and the relationship between timbre and scale. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94, 94–1218.

24.

Shepard

R. N.

(1965). Approximation to uniform gradients of generalization by monotone transformations of scale. In Mostofsky

D. I.

(ed.), Stimulus generalization (pp. 94–110). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

25.

Shepard

R. N.

(1982). Structural representations of musical pitch. In Deutsch

(ed.), The psychology of music (pp. 343–90). New York: Academic Press.

26.

Wapnick

Freeman

(1980). Effects of dark-bright timbral variation on the perception of flatness and sharpness. Journal of Research in Music Education, 28, 28–176.

27.

Warrier

C. M.

Zatorre

R. J.

(2002). Influence of tonal context and timbral variation on perception of pitch. Perception & Psychophysics, 64, 64–198.

28.

Von Bismarck

(1974). Timbre of steady sounds: A factorial investigation of its verbal attributes. Acustica, 30, 30–146.