Yahoo Tuning Groups Ultimate Backup tuning Pierce rejects Helmholtz/Plomp/Sethares model?

--- In tuning@y..., "jjensen142000" <jjensen14@h...> wrote:
> Hi
>
> I read a posting somewhere ( I think it was by Paul Erlich)
> that John Pierce found serious fault with the
> Helmholtz/Plomp/sethares dissonance model in a 1992
> edition of his book "The Science of Musical Sound".

yes, absolutely.

> I only have the 1983 edition, and so does the library.
> Could someone please elaborate on what the problems
> are?

hopefully the edition you have goes into the same difficulties.
first, read the chapter 'helmholtz and dissonance' (chapter 5?)
which supports the helmholtz/plomp/sethares model. then, read
the chapter 'rameau and harmony' where pierce recounts how
he discovered the limitations of that model, in the context of
synthesizing chord progressions with increasingly stretched
frequency ratios (equally stretched for the fundamentals and for
the partials). is that in your edition?

🔗jjensen142000 <jjensen14@hotmail.com>

--- In tuning@y..., "emotionaljourney22" <paul@s...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@y..., "jjensen142000" <jjensen14@h...> wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > I read a posting somewhere ( I think it was by Paul Erlich)
> > that John Pierce found serious fault with the
> > Helmholtz/Plomp/sethares dissonance model in a 1992
> > edition of his book "The Science of Musical Sound".
>
> yes, absolutely.
>
> > I only have the 1983 edition, and so does the library.
> > Could someone please elaborate on what the problems
> > are?
>
> hopefully the edition you have goes into the same difficulties.
> first, read the chapter 'helmholtz and dissonance' (chapter 5?)
> which supports the helmholtz/plomp/sethares model. then, read
> the chapter 'rameau and harmony' where pierce recounts how
> he discovered the limitations of that model, in the context of
> synthesizing chord progressions with increasingly stretched
> frequency ratios (equally stretched for the fundamentals and for
> the partials). is that in your edition?

Yes, I know this book well. I think it is excellent, except for
Pierce's derivation of the diatonic major scale, which I figured
would take me a half day to straighten out, and ended up growing
out of control into the online paper that I'm still working on.

My impression is that Pierce distinctly supported the the Plomp
model, but he was not sure that it full explained "consonance"
because
(1) People who were musically trained to recognize common intervals
would "hear" as consonant an interval that they expected to
be consonant, even if the partials were surgically moved.
(presumably, within some limits)

(2) In the Rameau and Harmony chapter, he found that if people
heard an "artifical" sound i.e. electronically manipulated
placement of the partials, their auditory system would not
recognize it as a a nice tone, but instead hear a wierd "mash" of
sound. That is why Pierre Boulez couldn't get anything out of
"Old Hundredth". Conventional music didn't sound *good*, even
though Plomp's theory predicted consonance.

As you doubtlessly know, B. Sethares tries to get around this
problem by creating customized music suited to the non-harmonic
spectra....

Jeff

🔗emotionaljourney22 <paul@stretch-music.com>

--- In tuning@y..., "jjensen142000" <jjensen14@h...> wrote:
> --- In tuning@y..., "emotionaljourney22" <paul@s...> wrote:
> > --- In tuning@y..., "jjensen142000" <jjensen14@h...> wrote:
> > > Hi
> > >
> > > I read a posting somewhere ( I think it was by Paul Erlich)
> > > that John Pierce found serious fault with the
> > > Helmholtz/Plomp/sethares dissonance model in a 1992
> > > edition of his book "The Science of Musical Sound".
> >
> > yes, absolutely.
> >
> > > I only have the 1983 edition, and so does the library.
> > > Could someone please elaborate on what the problems
> > > are?
> >
> > hopefully the edition you have goes into the same difficulties.
> > first, read the chapter 'helmholtz and dissonance' (chapter 5?)
> > which supports the helmholtz/plomp/sethares model. then, read
> > the chapter 'rameau and harmony' where pierce recounts how
> > he discovered the limitations of that model, in the context of
> > synthesizing chord progressions with increasingly stretched
> > frequency ratios (equally stretched for the fundamentals and for
> > the partials). is that in your edition?
>
> Yes, I know this book well. I think it is excellent, except for
> Pierce's derivation of the diatonic major scale, which I figured
> would take me a half day to straighten out, and ended up growing
> out of control into the online paper that I'm still working on.
>
> My impression is that Pierce distinctly supported the the Plomp
> model, but he was not sure that it full explained "consonance"
> because
> (1) People who were musically trained to recognize common intervals
> would "hear" as consonant an interval that they expected to
> be consonant, even if the partials were surgically moved.
> (presumably, within some limits)
>
> (2) In the Rameau and Harmony chapter, he found that if people
> heard an "artifical" sound i.e. electronically manipulated
> placement of the partials, their auditory system would not
> recognize it as a a nice tone, but instead hear a wierd "mash"
of
> sound. That is why Pierre Boulez couldn't get anything out of
> "Old Hundredth". Conventional music didn't sound *good*, even
> though Plomp's theory predicted consonance.
>
> As you doubtlessly know, B. Sethares tries to get around this
> problem by creating customized music suited to the non-harmonic
> spectra....
>
> Jeff

hi there . . .

well, i think you may be missing a small point here . . . or perhaps
a large one.

what sethares is doing is essentially no different than what pierce
does in his 'old hundredth' experiment. in both cases, the 'tuning'
matches the 'timbre' perfectly, and the plomp model predicts no
increase in dissonance no matter how far the stretching
(concomitantly, of both tuning and timbre) is taken. so you are
correct that observation (2) shows an incompleteness in plomp's
model, but in no way does sethares get around it . . . he simply
obtains interesting and new effects within the limitations of the
paradigm.

i believe that plomp-type measures capture one out of the two or
three components of dissonance. if you can get a hold of any of
terhardt's articles, please do so -- as a guide to that literature, i
would strongly recommend studying the articles on his website:

http://www.mmk.ei.tum.de/persons/ter.html

especially this one, which treats the major component of consonance
not accounted for by plomp's model:

http://www.mmk.ei.tum.de/persons/ter/top/basse.html

further, i would ask you join, or look at the archives of, the group

harmonic_entropy@yahoogroups.com

a bunch of us there listened to 36 tetrads and attempted to rank them
in order of consonance. it became apparent that any plomp/sethares-
type model would fail to explain our rankings very well at all, while
even a very simple, naive model that goes by the size of the numbers
in the harmonic series segment approximated by the chord would
explain them far better.

looking forward to talking more,
paul