Council for Research in Music Education

The Perception of Musical Intervals by Music Students

Author(s): Andrzej Rakowski
Source: Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No. 85 (Late Fall, 1985),
pp. 175-186
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the Council for Research in Music
Education
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40317954
Accessed: 14-03-2020 20:46 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40317954?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Illinois Press, Council for Research in Music Education are collaborating
with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the Council for Research
in Music Education

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 175

Andrzej Rakowski
Frederic Chopin Academy of Music
Warsaw, Poland

The Perception of Musical Intervals

By Music Students

Introduction

One of the important goals to achieve in the ear

training courses of any music school is to develop
students' ability to produce musical intervals.
This ability is particularly important for those
musicians who play instruments without fixed
tuning. Apart from choosing a proper interval to
be tuned they also have to maintain high precision
in tuning its exact value. Requirements for this
precision are often accompanied by theoretical
statements as to the proper frequency ratios which
must be preserved, or actually are preserved in
playing or singing "in tuneM.
The theoretical statements concerning "true"
musical intonation refer in most cases to the
natural scale, based on the simplest possible
frequency ratio ("just intonation"), or the
Pythagorean scale, constructed from superposition
of the ratio 3:2 (pure fifth). These statements are
usually combined with a strongly expressed opinion
about the inadequacy of the equally tempered scale.
In order to verify these and other theoretical
considerations various experiments have been
performed in the past. These experiments may be
considered as belonging to four different groups:

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 176

1. Measurements of the interval sizes in actual,

artistically approved musical performances.
(Green, 1937; Garbuzow, 1948; Nickerson,, 1948;
Rags, 1960; Mason, 1960; Schackford, 1961-62)

2. Tuning of isolated musical intervals [active

process] .
A. Octaves: (Ward, 1954,; Walliser, 1969;
Terhardt, 1970; Lindqvist and Sundberg, 1974)
B. Other intervals: (Cornu and Mercadier,
1869-71; Moran and Pratt, 1926; Walliser, 1969,
[only a fifth]; Pikler and Harris, 1961;
Rakowski, 1976)

3. Estimating interval sizes [passive process];

(Strumpf and Meyer, 1898; Ward and Martin,
1961;; Drobner, 1967; Tarnoczy and Szende,
1971; Burns and Ward, 1978; Plomp, Wagner and
Mimpen, 1973; Fyk, 1982.)

4. Tuning the intervals and estimating interval

sizes not related to musical scales [equal
ratios and equal differences of pitch].
(Stevens, Volkman and Newman, 1937; Stevens and
Volkman, 1940; Harris, 1960)

The results obtained by various investigators

within each of these groups are usually similar.
The results obtained between various groups,
however, are often contradictory, or at least
considerably different. Some of the questions
which arise when comparing these results are the
following:
- Is free musical intonation confined to any strict
theoretical system?
- How much is a musical scale influenced by a mei
scale (Stevens and Volkman, 1940)?
- What is the main reason for the effect of
"stretched octaves" (Lindqvist and Sundberg,
1973)? Is this the influence of a mei scale, the
effect of inharmonicity of piano strings, or

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 177

rather a memorized effect of a pitch shift due to

masking of the second harmonic by the fundamental
(Ward, 1954; Terhardt 1969/70)?
- Is the well established tendency of stretching
the octaves somehow reflected also in stretching
other intervals, smaller than an octave? And if
so, are all the intervals within an octave
equally susceptible to this tendency?
- What should be taken as a criterion for stability
of musical intervals and how can the intervals be
grouped according to this criterion?
The purpose of the present experiment was to
provide answers to some of the above-mentioned
questions. In particular, the goal was to support
the group of works labeled 2 B, with larger
experimental evidence based on the performance of
music students. So far, data reported in this
group are particularly scarce. This fact may be
easily understood. Contrary to the consistent
results obtained in tuning such stable intervals as
an octave, the results of tuning other isolated
intervals show a large amount of variability. This
is due to numerous psychological and musical
factors which influence decisions of the subject.
Most of these factors cannot be separately analyzed
(although such a possibility exists in the experi-
ments from group 1).
Nevertheless, the measuring of separately tuned
intervals has some advantages over the interval
measurements in actual music performance. In
particular, the number of measurements may easily
be made equal for all intervals and may be numer-
ous. Another advantage is that the experimental
setting is very similar to the one used in octave
enlargement experiments or in pitch magnitude
estimating experiments. This offers a better
possibility for comparing results and discerning
general tendencies.

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 178

Experimental Method

Eight students of the Frederic Chopin Academy of

Music in Warsaw took part in the experiment which
consisted of tuning the frequency of a pure tone
(variable) to obtain a given musical interval with
another pure tone (standard). The two tones
appeared alternately depending on the position of a
switch operated by the subject. The subject was
seated in a sound-treated booth and listened to the
tones through high-quality earphones. All tones
were presented with a constant loudness of 1 sone
regardless of frequency, due to an appropriate
isosonic equalizer.
The subject could regulate the frequency of a
variable tone until the musical interval between
standard and variable tones was satisfactory to
him. The frequency of the variable tone was then
recorded and the next interval to be tuned speci-
fied by the experimenter.
All the students that took part in the experi-
ment were particularly well trained in producing
and recognizing musical intervals, but they did
not possess absolute pitch. After one learning
session each subject took part in about 50 experi-
mental sessions lasting approximately 60 min. with
one 10-15 minute break. No more than one session
daily was performed. Each session covered tuning
the intervals from only one standard frequency in a
random manner, with the exception that tuning up
and down took place interchangeably. The entire
task of each subject was to tune 13 musical
intervals (including a unison) ten times within an
octave, up and down 5 standard frequencies: 125,
250, 500, 1000, and 2000 Hz.

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 179

Results

All the raw data were obtained as deviations

in cents of the measured values from equally
tempered musical intervals. The data show a
considerable variability, and it was decided to
represent this variability in terms of medians and
interquartile ranges rather than in the usual
statistical terms (variance) for the following
reasons:

1. Deviations from equally tempered values which

occurred in tuning may have two possible sources.
Firstly, they reflect a general tendency in the
perception of a given interval as larger or smaller
than its tempered value [central tendency of the
results]; and the subjects1 uncertainty in asses-
sing this interval [dispersion of the results].
Secondly, they may reflect typical mistakes made by
music students when producing verbally labeled
musical intervals, e.g. producing a major sixth
instead of a fifth, etc. As already mentioned, the
students participating in this experiment were
particularly good in ear training. Such mistakes
therefore occurred rarely; but could not be totally
excluded.
From the point of view of the problem investi-
gated the deviations due to musical mistakes were
not relevant at all; however their influence would
be predominant if variances had been taken as a
measure of dispersion.
2. In several cases the results obtained showed a
typical bimodal distribution. Typical to this was
the case of a tritone perceived either as an
augmented fourth or as a diminished fifth. In such
cases interquartile ranges seemed to be a more
appropriate statistical measure than variances and
standard deviations.
Medians and interquartile ranges of all the
results gathered within the time span of about 6
months are presented in Table 1. The analysis of

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 180

Table 1. Median deviations from equally tempered

values and interquartile ranges in cents
(M) in tuning within-octave musical
intervals by IQR music students.

Interval m2 M2 m3 M3 4 T 5 m6 M6 m7 M7
tuned

Standard ^19 ^lC» +3 ^1 +4 ^ ^5 zi H HI HI

fre- 29 24 37 26 21 32 18 22 33 52 18
quency ^ 2?I 2ÌÌ 11+6+4+5+3+5+1^^
125Hz 20 24 49 26 31 26 27 54 38 82 65

-19 -11 -3 -4 -7 -4 -7 -7 +8 +8 +8
26 32 40 40 20 50 26 38 82 40 32
250Hz 2_3£ ^T2 ^ ^14. ^4 2L4 ^5 +5 +8 +1J, +9
36 47 57 44 43 37 45 57 62 42 52

-18 2L il®, tl ill ±1 ±1 il til ±19. tl

26 23 36 40 32 38 35 21 36 36 52
500Hz ^20 ^ H^ ^7 ^12^ ^9 HU. ^ ^ +3 ^
24 27 29 23 29 55 31 44 52 43 45

-12 ^6 +5 +1() +19^ +2¿ +28 +28 +_US -m +1^

lOOOHz 30 28 32 32 20 42 37 33 40 29 48
-30 -17 -15 -15 _0 +4 +20 +36 +28 +23 +20
25 32 37 48 24 36 36 43 33 28 28

-11 -15 -10 ^4 ^8 ^2 +8 +4 +5 +JL2 +18^

2000Hz 26 27 37 22 29 25 22 39 28 42 52
-13 ^5 2Z ill ±i ill il il ìli +20 ìli
30 22 33 38 58 46 34 40 39 33 27

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 181

medians shows the general tendency to decrease the

size of small intervals and increase the size of
large ones. The point of division lies in the
vicinity of the middle of an octave. The same
tendency holds for the intervals tuned up and down,
and there is no evident influence of the frequency
register, except for a few intervals (T, 5, m 6).
In view of the weak dependence of the medians
and interquartiles on frequency it is interesting
to show all the results in a single graph. This is
done in Fig. 1 where inter-frequency medians (Fig.
Ia) and the inter-frequency median values of
interquartile ranges (Fig. lb) are presented.
In Fig. Ia the tendency to enlarge large
intervals and to diminish small ones may be clearly
seen. The enlargement of an octave is in the lower
range of the values given in the literature (Ward,
1954; Walliser, 1969; Terhardt, 1969/70; Lindqvist
and Sundburg, 1973). Majors thirds and major
sixths are generally tuned larger than minor ones.
The dispersion of data for various intervals in
terms of the interquartile ranges is shown in a
similar way in Fig. lb. The range of the values
obtained is rather broad, from 7 cents for a unison
to more than 40 cents for a major sixth and a
tritione. A very low dispersion for a minor second
and a relatively large dispersion for a fifth is an
unexpected result. Contrary to the possible
predictions, the order in which the intervals
appear according to the increasing dispersion of
tuning is not much correlated with the degree of
acoustic dissonance. The ordering factor which
gives low dispersion values to a minor second or to
an i>ctave and great dispersion values to sixths and
sevenths must be of a somewhat different nature
since it cannot be predicted from the position of a
given interval on a scale of consonance, but rather
by the musical functioning of separate intervals.
This factor will be provisionally called "interval
strength".

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 182

i-H

3>
•H

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 183

Conclusions

In tuning isolated musical intervals within an

octave there is a general tendency to diminish
small intervals and to expand large ones. In view
of this fact the octave enlargement effect must be
considered only as a part of the general tendency.
It is difficult to explain this general tendency by
pitch shifts due to masking between the first and
the second harmonic components of complex tones, as
was attempted in the case of an octave enlargement
effect [Terhardt, 1969. 1970]. Rather, it may be
regarded as a psychological effect related to the
differences in estimating small and large pitch
differences.
Various musical intervals reveal considerable
differences in the amount of dispersion when
subjected to tuning. Those intervals which show
small dispersion when tuned in isolation may be
characterized as more active, more stable, or
having more "interval strength". The interval
strength is not necessarily correlated with
acoustic consonance but rather relates directly to
the way in which a given interval operates in
music. It may be concluded that the large dis-
persion of the results in tuning experiments
usually means also a large spread of interval
values in actual music performance.
Making an attempt to relate the obtained results
to the predictions from music theory one should
realize that the deviations in tuning musical
intervals as shown in the above-described experi-
ment are usually much larger than those which
result from using various musical scales. The
differences between just, Pythagorean, and equal-
tempered tuning are always smaller than 25 cents.
It must therefore be concluded that the deviations
observed do not result from a subconscious effort

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 184

by the musicians to attain a better tuning which

would accord with the requirements of the "pure"
musical scales.
It follows, then, that the sensation of musical
intervals, as revealed by music students in tuning
experiments, is mediated by other factors which are
not related directly to the tuning system. These
factors may have a purely musical meaning. In the
example, the minor second with constantly dimin-
ished size and small dispersion may reflect the
most important musical use of this interval as the
melodic resolution of a leading note.
The large dispersion and bimodal distribution in
tuning tritones may reflect the ambiguous musical
meaning of this interval. Large dispersions in
tuning other intervals may be explained by the fact
that the subjects, at each particular tuning,
subconsciously followed the requirements of an
accidentally memorized musical context and its
harmonic tensions. Flexibility of the intonation
of a given interval in response to musical tensions
means the opposite to its strength, it signifies,
in this context, "intervallic weakness".
The conclusions from the above-described
experiment of the theories of music instruction may
be the following: In playing the bowed string
instruments, and in singing, the intonation should
neither be limited by equal temperament nor by any
other fixed system of tuning. Rather it should
reflect the harmonic tensions of the musical
context. Its only controlling device should be the
ear.

References

Burns, E.M. , Ward, W.D. , 1974. Categorical

perception of musical intervals. Journal of
the Acoustical Society of America, 56, 1956 A.

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 185

Cornu, A., Mercadier, E.J.P. , 1969-72. Sur les

intervalles musicaux. Comptes Rendus de
l'Academie des Sciences de Paris, 68, 1969,
73,1971, ^74,1972.
Drobner, M. , 1967. Nowe wyniki badan strefowosci
stuchu intervatowego. PWSM, Krakow.
Fyk, J. , 1983. Perception of some intonational
deviation in melodies. Proceedings, Workshop
on Psychoacoustic of Music, Jablonna 1982.
Garbuzow, A.N. , 1948. Zonnaja priroda zwukowyso-
tnovo sucha. AN SSSR, Moskva.
Green, P.C., 1937. Violin intonation. Journal
Acoustical Society of America, 9^ 43, 1974.
Harris, J.D. , I960., Scaling of pitch intervals.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
32, 1974.
Lindqvist, J. , Sundberg, J. , 1973. Musical octaves
and pitch. Journal of the Acoustical Society
of America, 53., 922.
Mason, J.A. , 1960. Comparison of solo and ensemble
performances with reference to Pythagorean,
just and equi-tempered intonations. Journal
of Research in Music Education, 8^, 31.
Moran, H. , Pratt, C.C., 19Zb. Variability or
judgements on musical intervals. Journal of
Experimental Psychology, 9^, 492.
Nickerson, J.F., 1948. A comparison of performance
of the same melody played in solo and in
ensemble with reference to equitempered, just
and Pythagorean intonations. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, University of Min-
nesota.

Pikler, A.G. , Harris, J.D., 1961. Measurement of

the musical interval sense. Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America, 33, 862A.
Plomp, R. , Wagner, W.A. , Mimpen, A.M., 1973.
Musical interval recognition with simultaneous
tones. Acustica, 29, 101.

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 186

Rags, J. , 1960. Intonirovanie melodii v sviazi s

niekotorymi jejo element ami. Trudy Kafiedry
Teorii Muzyki Moskovskoj Konservatorii ,
Mussgia, Moskva.
Rakowski, A., 1976. Tuning of isolated musical
intervals. Journal of the Acoustical Society
of America, 59, 1976, S 50. A.
Shackford, C, 1961-62. Some aspects of perception
I, II, III. Journal of Music Theory, 5^ 1961,
61, 6^, 1962, 166, £, 1962, 259.
Stevens, S.S., Volkman, J., 1940. The relation of
pitch to frequency: A revised scale. American
Journal of Psychology, 53, 329.
Stevens, S.S., Volkman, J., Newman, E.B., 1937. A
scale for the measurement of the psychological
magnitude pitch. Journal of the Acoustical
Society of Ameria, 8, 185.
Stumpf. C, Meyer, M. , 1982. Maasbestimungen über
die Reinheit konsonanter Interfalle. Beitr.
Akusst. Musikwiss., 2, 84.
Tarnoczy, T. , Szende, 0, 1971. Experiments on the
musical interval sense, 7th Congress ICA,
Budapest.
Terharl64 E. , 1969/1970. Oktavspreizung und
Tonhohenverschiebung bei Sinus tonen.
Acustica, 22, 345-351.
Walliser, K. , 1969. Uber die Spreizung von
empfunden gegenuber matematisch harmonischen
Intervallen bei Sinustonen. Frequenz, 23,
139.
Ward, W.D. , 1954. Subjective musical pitch. Journal
Acoustical Society of America, 26, 369.
Ward,W.D., Martin, D.W.,1961. Psychophysical
comparison of just tuning and equal temper-
ament in sequences of individual tones.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America,
33, 586.

This content downloaded from 176.239.66.134 on Sat, 14 Mar 2020 20:46:16 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms