Werner "Journal of Psychology" Interval Expansion

I'm a bit behind in my E-mail, so this is in response to Brian Mclaren's
quote of Heinz Werner in Journal of Psychology. Here's part of the quote: "A
subject, when presented with a arelatively small interval of--let us say--0.12
of a semitone, at first may hear a very slight indefinite difference between the
two tones, or even no difference at all. But when the same interval is repeated
a great many times with the subject deliberately focussing his attention on the
task of discerning a clear-cut interval, there will almost invariably be
reported an apparent enlargement of the objectively constant interval."

I can relate to this effect myself, along with a few other really strange
interval-size change effects from repeated listening. Probably the strangest
one to me is when I practice singing 7:6 vs 6:5 sub/minor thirds. When I
practice those intervals only continuously for 5 minutes or so, I often find
that when I quickly expand outward to sing 5:4s and 3:2s, the 5:4 sound like
perfect fourths, and the 3:2s seem like octaves! Anybody else ever experienced
anything like that? It's really a weird feeling.


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