Pitch is the most imp factor for deciding if we like music in Western societies

Frequencies 27.5Hz to 4,900Hz are the most pleasurable

-this is a narrow range compared to everything we can hear

Distance between 2 tones that have the same name

-two notes one actave are apart=one tone is twice the frequency of another tone

Octave is a subset of the concept of tone height

Perceived similarity shared by all muscial tones that have the same name

-something inherently "c" like in C1, C2, etc.

-increase in pitch that accompanies an increase in frequency

Octave Generalization: 2 tones of same chroma, separated by 1 octave can be perceived as equivalent

• Subjects asked to judge whether 2 test stimuli were the same or different
• Presented 1st test stimuli, then a bunch of distractor notes, then a 2nd test stimuli
•  If a distractor was exactly one octave away from tone 1, participants were inaccurate at assessing if tone 2 was same or different
• part were accurate as long as an octave away note wasn't included in distractors

Use correct chroma w/ randomized tone height in a song (e.g., play c when they should but a diff C)

-you can't interpret song

-shows that height is really important in addition to chroma

Tonality:The organization of pitches around one particular tone called the tonic

Tonic: One of the 12 pitches in an octave

-AKA the key in which a musical piece is played (in western music)

Probe-tone Technique: Shows Imp of Tonic

• Subjects are played a scale of a givin tonic or key
• then presented w/ single tones, asked to rate how well each one fits whithin the scale they first heard
• Part rate the tonic as the best fit
• Part rate other tones in scale as the next highest
• Part rate tones not in scale (eg sharps) as unsuitable
• even if they are closer to tonic in frequency
• eg. play A scale of C  major (C,D,E,F,G,A,B,)
• rate C as highest
• G,E,F,A,D,B next highest (in order??)
• C#, D#, etc as unsuitable

AKA Absolute Pitch

85-90% accuracy in identifying tones or singing a note

1 in 1,000 people

Better @ chroma then height (when mistakes are made they have the right note but wrong octave)

• possible critical period for developing perfect pitch
•  most start to study music at age 5-6
• better w/ white keys on piano (1st scales learned)
• Familial contribution
• Chinese-Mandarin dialect: pitch conveys meaning
• pitch is important in early language
• 63% of chinese music students had perfect pitch vs. 7% of english-speaking Americans

Timbre is the perception of sound quality resulting from complexity

complexity of tone is the fundamental frequency (lowest Hz) and the overtones (multitudes of the fundamental)

Flute: closest to a pure tone

Helmholtz assessed how was perceive timbre

3 parts of a tone

-attack: initial buildup, fundamental and as each harmonic is added in 

-steady state: middle part, we hear fundamental and all harmonics at the same time

-decay: end, decrease in amplitude as harmonics fade

Attack is crucial for identifying timbre, when presented alone or w/ other parts instrument is identified

-if it isn't presented (even if other 2 are) we can't identify timbre/instrument

Qualities of chamber (theatre/room) affect how clearly sounds are heard and transmitted

-involves direct & indirect sound waves

-indirect are waves bouncing off of structures

Acoustics is related to Loudness & Amplitude

Shape of chamber: better distribution of waves

-less absorption of sound waves

e.g. Lincoln center was a disaster

Avery Hall was built to fix the acoustic

Kennedy Center learned from Lincoln's mistakes & made a pyramid shape which was good for distributing sound

In a musician's brain:

-auditory cortex is 25% larger

-Heschl's gyrus (in auditory cortex of temporal lobe)  is 2x bigger

-primary motor cortex (motor ctrl to play instrument)is bigger

-cerebellum (movement) is bigger

-corpus callosum (communication b/ cortexes) is bigger

Octave illusion

-present one tone to one ear and another tone, exactly one octave away, simultaneously to the other ear

-counterbalance stimuli across trials so sometimes the higher pitched tone is in R and sometimes in L ear

-one every trial part perceives higher tone in the ear that received the higher tone on the first trial

Might be due to asymetry of brain in audition, but it isnt well studied

Tendency for qualities of objects to stay the same, despite changes in the way people view the objects

Distal: object as it exists in real world

Proximal: representation on sensory organ

If there is a discrepancy we pick distal

Large variability in speech between & within individuals, but we have great constancy

Factors contributing to speech variability: 

-vocal apparatus changes w/ age (we detect age by voice)

-gender differences: length of vocal tract is 15% longer in adult males compared to females (decreased freq for males)

-rate of speech

-regionalism, dialects

-emotional states shorten vocal tract (excited, vocal cords shorten, higher frequencies)

-careless pronunciation

-segmentation b/ words & boundary errors (we get confused w/ these one)

-boundary errors

Basic unit of speech

-smallest unit that makes an important difference between speech sounds

Alveolar ridge: ridge on roof of mouth behind teeth

Oral Cavity: space between tongue and roof

Hard Palate: hard tissue in middle of roof of mouth

Velum (soft palate): tissue on roof behind hard plate

Uvula: part of velum

Glottis: vocal cords and the space between them

Sound depends on where the tongue is placed in regards to other structures

Vary along 3 dimensions

1. Place of articulation: where airstream is blocked
2. Manner of articulation: how completely airstream is blocked and where it passes (completely or partially)
3. Voicing: whether vocal cords vibrate or not & how much they vibrate 

place of artic noted by '-' (no vibration, lots of vibration)

Manner: Complete closure

-2 lips (pin, bin)

-tongue to alveloar ridge (toe, doe)

-tongue to palate (chip, jam)

-tongue to velum (kilt, give)

Manner: Narrowing of point of articulation (partial closure)

-Lip + teeth (fit, vigor)

-tongue + teeth (thick, this)

-tongue to alveolar ridge (zebra, save)

-tongue to palate (share, azure)

-glottal (hill, X)

Manner: mouth closed, nasal cavity open

-2 lips (X, mice)

-tongue to alveolar ridge (X, nice)

-tongue to velum (X, sing)

Part of tongue used (front/middle/back) & height of raised portion of tongue (high/medium/low)

Front/High (tree, hid)

Front/Medium (late, let)

Front/Low (fat)

Middle/High (carry)

Middle/Medium (sofa)

Middle/Low (nut)

Back/High (root, nut)

Back/Medium (coat, sought)

Back/Low (top)

Speech spectrogram:shows complexity of speech phonemes including frequencies & amplitudes

Formants: horizontal bands of frequency that move across time

-darker means higher amplitude

parallel transmission: AKA coarticulation

-measures what signals are presentat a single point in time

1. phoneme constancy
2. phonetic boundary
3. phonemic restoration
4. top-down processing

We perceive phonemes categorically

-We are good @ distinguishing sounds from diff categories, bad if they are in the same category

Experiment: Start playing 'ba' (voice onset immediate, 'b' & 'a' are voiced)

-then delay voice onset electronically until it says 'pa'

-start and end we are good at differentiating, when you are switching categories we have poor differentiation

- we hit the phonetic boundary (where 50% of the time each phoneme is perceived)

• we perceive a given phoneme the same even if the physical stimulus is not constant
• pronounced differently (diff physical formation) depending on what proceeds or follows it but we still perceive the same letter/sound

when a speech sound is replaced or masked by an irrelevant sound, the perceptual system restores or fills in the gap

-we can repeat the phrase in it's entirety

-We can't identify which phoneme was replaced

But, there has to be an auditory stimulus, if there is a phoneme replaced by silence it doesn't work

top-down processes: perceive masked part differently depending on the context

Context is important in speech perception, more context = better perception

• we perceive better if...
•  we know what we are going to hear is speech
• phonemes are in words
• words are in phrases
• if we know the topic of conversation
• we can see lip movement

• McGurk Effect

Special Mechanism Account (SMA): speech perception occurs in the same module or neural mechanism, specific modules are used to process just phonetics and speech

General Mechanism Account (GMA): there isn't a single mechanism specifically for speech

Motor Theory: we decode speech based on encoding sound we hear w/ motor movement we make to get that sound (first speculated the SMA)

Both are true

-as you get to higher brain regions you get more specialization

-there are some specialized areas and some more general areas

• Broca's Area: left frontal cortex,ctrl of motor responses that produce speech
• Aphasia
• difficulty producing speech sounds (motor px), only moderate problems w/ speech comprehension
• can develop content words but trouble w/ connecting words to make sentences

• Wernicke's Area: Left temporal cortex, near adutory cortex
• Imp in speech/language comprehension
• Aphasia: defict in speech/language comprehension
• talks what sounds fluently but it doesn't make any sense 

Multimodal perception, auditory illusion

Experiment: record "ba, ba, ba" and give visual of someone saying "ga, ga, ga,"

-ppl perceive "da, da, da,"

-if they close eyes they can clearly hear the correct "ba"