Perception and acoustical analyzes of traditionally orchestrated musical structures versus non-traditional counterparts.
Roger A. Kendall, Pantelis N. Vassilakis · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2010
Many studies use single-tone or dyadic-unison stimuli in the exploration of musical timbre. Musical contexts, however, often employ larger numbers of simultaneous voices. Recently, we have conducted perceptual/acoustical studies of consonance, dissonance, and roughness in multitimbral triads often finding that chord quality (major, minor, diminished, augmented) had perceptual primacy over timbre. The present research extends this work to include major and minor triads in similarity scaling, blend, and identification experiments. In addition, four-tone chords were orchestrated according to procedures articulated in orchestration texts: juxtaposition, interlocking, enclosure, and overlapping. Sampled instrument tones (Sibelius/Kontakt) of oboe, flute, and clarinet were used, allowing comparison to previous research, and non-traditional combinations with saxophone and trumpet were included. Triads with each tone assigned a different timbre provided nontraditional orchestrations to be compared and contrasted with traditional orchestrations that duplicated timbres within a chord. Perceptual data were correlated to acoustical analyzes of spectral distribution and time-variancy.