Canonically consonant intervals such as the octave, perfect fifth, and perfect fourth produce aggregate spectra whose frequencies approximate harmonics of a common fundamental frequency (f0). Whether consonance preferences (when present) reflect in some way universal perceptual constraints has thus remained unclear.Ī Frequency spectra of example musical interval stimuli, each generated from the superposition of two harmonic notes separated by a particular pitch interval. And even within Western cultures, definitions of consonance have fluctuated over history 15, and preferences for consonance vary with musical experience 24, 29. Moreover, in contrast to the presumptive worldwide perceptual importance of harmonicity, consonance preferences vary across cultures, and in some cases appear to be absent 31. In particular, the perception of harmonicity is strongly influenced by the position of harmonics within the harmonic series 30, and is not well captured by naive measures based on harmonic templates or autocorrelation. However, the extent to which consonance preferences in Westerners can be fully predicted by similarity to the harmonic series is unknown, in part because we lack widely accepted models for how harmonicity is represented in the auditory system 23, 25, 30. ![]() For Western listeners, converging evidence supports some relationship between harmonicity and consonance-here operationalized as the pleasantness of note combinations 24, 25, 26, 27, 29. Pairs of notes whose f0s are related by simple integer ratios, and whose combined spectra approximate the harmonic frequencies of a single note, are generally regarded as consonant by Westerners (Fig. Scholars have long noted the potential relationships between the structure and perception of Western music and the harmonic series, particularly for musical harmony 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29. The importance of harmonicity in perceptual contexts that are presumably shared across all human societies suggests that mechanisms related to harmonicity could provide a strong constraint on musical behavior. Moreover, neuronal selectivity for harmonic frequencies is evident in at least one species of non-human primate 14. The absolute f0 associated with a set of harmonics is also critical for recognizing voices 12, 13. ![]() Harmonic frequencies provide a key acoustic grouping cue allowing listeners to segregate concurrent sound sources 6, 7, 8 such as speech 9, and to attend to particular sound sources in auditory scenes 10, 11. One prominent regularity in natural sounds is harmonicity-the presence of frequencies (harmonics) that are integer multiples of a common fundamental frequency (f0). But due to the dearth of cross-cultural perception research, little is definitively known about universal mechanisms of hearing that might serve as such constraints on musical systems. These cross-cultural regularities could reflect biological constraints, as might arise from universal perceptual mechanisms adapted to natural sounds 4, 5. Music is present in every culture, and some features of musical systems and behavior are widespread 1, 2, 3. ![]() The results suggest universal perceptual mechanisms that could help explain cross-cultural regularities in musical systems, but indicate that these mechanisms interact with culture-specific influences to produce musical phenomena such as consonance. However, fusion did not predict aesthetic judgments of intervals in Westerners, or in Amazonians, who were indifferent to consonance/dissonance. Thus, even with little exposure to Western harmony, acoustic constraints on sound segregation appear to induce perceptual structure on note combinations. Both groups were more likely to mistake note combinations related by simple integer ratios as single sounds (‘fusion’). We measured the extent to which concurrent musical notes are misperceived as a single sound, testing Westerners as well as native Amazonians with limited exposure to Western music. Such constraints could arise from our dependence on harmonic frequency spectra for segregating concurrent sounds, but evidence has been circumstantial. Music perception is plausibly constrained by universal perceptual mechanisms adapted to natural sounds.
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