Interactions of Pitch and Timbre: How Changes in One Dimension Affect Perception of the Other

Abstract

In music, timbre differences allow us to distinguish between instruments, while pitch carries melody and harmony. In speech, timbre allows us to distinguish between speech sounds, while pitch carries important prosodic information. Pitch and timbre are two of the most fundamental attributes of auditory perception, yet the perceptual interactions of pitch and timbre are not well understood.

The primary hypothesis for this experiment is that timbre and pitch, despite often being treated as separable dimensions, are not perceptually independent. The secondary hypothesis is that non-musicians and musicians will show perceptual differences on pitch and timbre discrimination tasks.