Psychoacoustics question

When sets of notes are played, they can sometimes be aggregated into
the sensation of a larger structure. An example of such a structure
would be a "chord" which is perceived to take place in the background,
which the set of notes is fleshing out. Additionally, the background
structure which is being constructed doesn't have to just be a "chord"
in the typical sense, but can also perhaps be a scale or an ambient
"mode," to which notes are perceived to belong with varying degrees of
membership.

In order to avoid the loaded term "chord," I'll instead call this an
"ambient pitch set," a term which Dustin Schallert just came up with
on XA IRC. APS's are intended to be a bit more abstract than "chords"
in the usual Western sense, and are something which could perhaps
apply to monophonic musics as well.

This process seems to take place regardless of whether the notes are
played concurrently or simultaneously. It also seems to occur
regardless of if "noise" is inserted into the signal, such as if a
"passing note" is played. Perhaps more significantly, when new notes
are introduced, it appears to be non-trivial when they tend to "stick"
to the APS, when they're heard as "noise," or when they trigger a
"mutation" of the APS.

Given this, I have the following questions:
1) When notes are "aggregated" into larger structures in this way, how
related is this process to fundamental tracking?
2) Do the resultant "chords" which are aggregated in this way
correspond 1-to-1 with harmonic series structures,
essentially-tempered harmonic series structures, etc?
3) Is this the same thing as the "templates" that Krumhansl is
measuring with her probe tone method?

Any ideas?

-Mike

Had a huge discussion about this on IRC with Jason Conklin, Ryan
Avella, Joel Taylor, Dustin Schallert, and Keenan Pepper near the end
of it - check out some working ideas here:

http://xenharmonic.wikispaces.com/Ambient+Pitch+Sets+%28Working+Group%29

-Mike

On Sat, May 12, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Mike Battaglia <battaglia01@...> wrote:
> When sets of notes are played, they can sometimes be aggregated into
> the sensation of a larger structure. An example of such a structure
> would be a "chord" which is perceived to take place in the background,
> which the set of notes is fleshing out. Additionally, the background
> structure which is being constructed doesn't have to just be a "chord"
> in the typical sense, but can also perhaps be a scale or an ambient
> "mode," to which notes are perceived to belong with varying degrees of
> membership.
>
> In order to avoid the loaded term "chord," I'll instead call this an
> "ambient pitch set," a term which Dustin Schallert just came up with
> on XA IRC. APS's are intended to be a bit more abstract than "chords"
> in the usual Western sense, and are something which could perhaps
> apply to monophonic musics as well.
>
> This process seems to take place regardless of whether the notes are
> played concurrently or simultaneously. It also seems to occur
> regardless of if "noise" is inserted into the signal, such as if a
> "passing note" is played. Perhaps more significantly, when new notes
> are introduced, it appears to be non-trivial when they tend to "stick"
> to the APS, when they're heard as "noise," or when they trigger a
> "mutation" of the APS.
>
> Given this, I have the following questions:
> 1) When notes are "aggregated" into larger structures in this way, how
> related is this process to fundamental tracking?
> 2) Do the resultant "chords" which are aggregated in this way
> correspond 1-to-1 with harmonic series structures,
> essentially-tempered harmonic series structures, etc?
> 3) Is this the same thing as the "templates" that Krumhansl is
> measuring with her probe tone method?
>
> Any ideas?
>
> -Mike

This discussion is reminiscent of David Rothenberg's ideas about sufficient sets, proper subsets of improper scales, efficiency, etc.

--John