Tiny yet delightful "Affect" test

Please take a listen to the sound file "Two Fifths", two tempered
fifths.
Do they sound different in character?

Is one more consonant and/or more "fifth" sounding than the other?

They're here...

http://abumbrislumen.googlepages.com/home

Thank you for your time. Blood donors get free cookies and punch!

-Cameron Bobro

Since there is some bell ringing in the area just now, I can't say
anything immediately ... except that the first note of both fifths is
inharmonic, as evinced by its timbre slowly shifting.

What does it mean to have tempered intervals if the individual tones
are inharmonic?

~~~T~~~

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Cameron Bobro" <misterbobro@...> wrote:
>
> Please take a listen to the sound file "Two Fifths", two tempered
> fifths.
> Do they sound different in character?
>
> Is one more consonant and/or more "fifth" sounding than the other?
>
> They're here...
>
> http://abumbrislumen.googlepages.com/home
>
> Thank you for your time. Blood donors get free cookies and punch!
>
> -Cameron Bobro
>

The timbres are not inharmonic, nor is there any pitch modulation-
the timbre is slowly shifting due to phasing. In other words, the
different harmonics are simply going up and down in amplitude.

This is on purpose, for several reasons: it's more "organic",
softer, and no particular partial dominates the timbre. Also I would
like people to concentrate on the overall picture- with dead
straight rock steady tones I think it tends to become a test for
listening only to beats, besides being very annoying.

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Tom Dent" <stringph@...> wrote:
>
>
> Since there is some bell ringing in the area just now, I can't say
> anything immediately ... except that the first note of both fifths
is
> inharmonic, as evinced by its timbre slowly shifting.
>
> What does it mean to have tempered intervals if the individual
tones
> are inharmonic?
>
> ~~~T~~~
>
>
> --- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Cameron Bobro" <misterbobro@>
wrote:
> >
> > Please take a listen to the sound file "Two Fifths", two
tempered
> > fifths.
> > Do they sound different in character?
> >
> > Is one more consonant and/or more "fifth" sounding than the
other?
> >
> > They're here...
> >
> > http://abumbrislumen.googlepages.com/home
> >
> > Thank you for your time. Blood donors get free cookies and punch!
> >
> > -Cameron Bobro
> >
>

Carl Lumma posted the first comment on another thread.

Carl said:

> Other than the fact that the second interval beats
>slightly faster...
>There is no difference in consonance or affect here.

Thanks Carl for the first comment, and for a comment with
such staggering implications!

-Cameron Bobro

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "Cameron Bobro" <misterbobro@...> wrote:
>
> The timbres are not inharmonic, nor is there any pitch modulation-
> the timbre is slowly shifting due to phasing. In other words, the
> different harmonics are simply going up and down in amplitude.
>

Isn't that some form of 'chorusing'?

A sine wave with periodic amplitude modulation is of course equivalent
to two sine waves with slightly different frequencies. So what we have
is, instead of a harmonic series, a set of partials going two by two
around the frequency where each harmonic 'should' be. The exact
frequency content depends on whether all the would-be harmonics are
being 'phased' at the same rate or at different rates.

In any case, the result is not a harmonic tone - it is maybe not even
as good as an approximation to a harmonic tone as (say) middle C on a
grand piano, and certainly not as good as a sustained note sung senza
vibrato.

> This is on purpose, for several reasons: it's more "organic",
> softer, and no particular partial dominates the timbre. Also I would
> like people to concentrate on the overall picture- with dead
> straight rock steady tones I think it tends to become a test for
> listening only to beats, besides being very annoying.
>

I find this 'overall picture' just confusing, myself. If I were tuning
an instrument (say a reed organ) I would think to myself, that first
note is a mistuned unison, and I can't possibly hear any kind of
tempered fifth above it because it's not clean enough.

I grant that in many musical contexts a certain amount of 'chorusing'
is inevitable and not in any way detrimental. But it is precisely in
those contexts that a small amount of tempering is undetectable and
irrelevant, because the chorusing obliterates the difference between
pure and tempered intervals.

Returning to harmonic tones, if you want to make hearing tempered
intervals more than a matter of detecting the textbook lowest beat
frequency, you can use complicated timbres - for example if the
fundamental is weak and certain upper partials dominate; or you can
try to model a real instrument by having an 'envelope' which gives
different partial content at different pitches... etc.

~~~T~~~

This is just very mild PWM of pulses with slow sines (heavy modulation
with a triangle does create a detuned "ghost"), and a LPF. I'll try
to put up a "straight" version, its a good idea to listen with
different timbres anyway.

-Cameron Bobro

Results so far are:

4 prefer 1st fifth
3 prefer 2nd fifth

A Bosnian friend of mine, a very talented untrained musician whom I
haven't seen for a while, just listened. I said, it's not a test,
just say which one you prefer. She prefered the first because the
second is "a little nervous", and immediately added "depends what
you want in the music". She did not find the test esoteric or
difficult, and made some interesting comments- it's what we do every
day making music (hearing and using different sound characters), for
example, sometimes she'll sing false, even quite a bit, and be happy
because it sounds great and makes an energy.

To be more precise, where I translated "even quite a bit false", she
actually said "quarter tone false" (ètrt tona favš), but I know from
having sung in a Balkan folk music group with her that that's her
term for a region from a few cents out to an eighth-tone; an
official "quarter tone" is more a kind of concrete half-step in her
book. On a side note, she found my 23-limit 17-tone tuning beautiful
and natural, "that's how you sing anyway".

Anyway, it's just a tiny test, but with ten years of plodding along
with different "tests" we'll surely have something.

-Cameron Bobro