Major scale

Abstract: Listeners rated test tones falling in the octave range from middle to high C according to how well each completed a diatonic C major scale played in an adjacent octave just before the final test tone. Ratings were well explained in terms of three factors. The factors were distance in pitch height from the context tones, octave equivalence, and the following hierarchy of tonal functions : tonic tone, other tones of the major triad chord, other tones of the diatonic scale, and the nondiatonic tones. In these ratings, pitch height was more prominent for less musical listeners or with less musical (sinusoidal) tones, whereas octave equivalence and the tonal hierarchy prevailed for musical listeners, especially with harmonically richer tones. Ratings for quarter tones interpolated halfway between the halftone steps of the standard chromatic scale were approximately the averages of ratings for adjacent chromatic tones, suggesting failure to discriminate tones at this fine level of division. The study of perceived pitch and of the perceived relations between tones differing in pitch has generally been approached from one of two quite different traditions: the psychoacoustic and the musical. The psychoacoustic approach has typically focused on simple, physically specifiable properties of tones isolated from any musical context— properties of frequency, separation in log frequency, or simplicity of integer ratios of frequencies. The results of such studies have provided some precise information about how the ear responds to isolated tones or tones in random sequences. We believe that they have been less informative with regard to how the listener perceives tones in organized musical sequences. Music theory suggests that the perception of such sequences may rely on the listener's sensitivity to different and structurally richer principles associated with tonal and diatonic organization. Such principles are useful in explaining the cognitive phenomena of reference point, motion, tension, and resolution that underlie the dynamic force of virtually all tonal music. They have, however, been subjected to relatively little systematic laboratory investigation or quantitative formulation.

Abstract: Adults and 9-month-old infants were required to detect mistuned tones in multitone sequences. When 7-tone versions of a common nursery tune were generated from the Western major scale (unequal scale steps) or from an alternative scale (equal steps), infants detected the mistuned tones more accurately in the unequal-step context than in the equal-step context (Experiment 1). Infants and adults were subsequently tested with 1 of 3 ascending-descending scales (15 tones): (a) a potentially familiar scale (major) with unequal steps, (b) an unfamiliar scale with unequal steps, and (c) an unfamiliar scale with equal steps. Infants detected mistuned tones only in the scales with unequal steps (Experiment 2). Adults performed better on the familiar (major) unequal-step scale and equally poorly on both unfamiliar scales (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings are indicative of an inherent processing bias favoring unequal-step scales.

Abstract: Ss listened to a dichotic tonal sequence consisting of the repetitive presentation of the C major scale with successive tones alternating from ear to ear. The scale was presented simultaneously in both ascending and descending form, such that when a component of the ascending scale was in one ear, a component of the descending scale was in the other, and vice versa. All Ss channeled this sequence by frequency range: no S channeled by ear of input, and none reported a full ascending or descending scale. Various illusory percepts were obtained, which varied in correlation with the handedness of the listener. Right‐handers tended to perceive the upper tones of the dichotic sequence as emanating from the right earphone and the lower tones from the left, and to maintain this percept when the earphones were places in reverse position. Left‐handers as a group did not display the same localization tendency.Subject Classification: 65.22, 65.54, 65.62; 75.10.

Abstract: ample, {B, D, F} is an instance of the class "diminished triad" and also an instance of the larger class "triad." We shall call the former designation specific and the latter generic. Thus the class including (C, D, E}, {F, G, A} and (G, A, B} (but not, for instance, {D, E, F}) is specific (two whole steps) and the larger class including all three-note major scale fragments is generic. The specific point of view is the generally adopted one, based on Forte's classification and developed systematically by Browne and in a historical study by Gauldin.1 The generic perspective was developed by one of us (Clough) and in more recent work by Thomas Zimmerman.2 Until now the two approaches have remained unconnected, an uncomfortable and peculiar situation given the similarity of the underlying mathematics. We shall demonstrate here that under the appropriate equivalence relation, there are fundamental connections between the two interpretations. These connections apply to lines as well as chords. We account for these relationships by showing that the embedding of the seven-note diatonic scale in the twelve chromatic notes is one of a special class of