Concerts

For my second post I would like to talk about our perception of live music.  With tickets to see my favorite group live in a few days I felt like it was very suiting.  When thinking about sound, and music specifically we have to think about all the attributes that affect it including pitch, duration, and loudness.  Harmonic relation is an important factor of live music meaning that instruments and voices would sound similar.  When two harmonic complex tones sound at the same time, with the same harmonic frequencies they are often perceived as a single complex tone (Deutsch 2007).  Certain artists aim for sounds to stand out from the music, making it a different harmonic frequency, while others want the sounds to blend together.  Artists can also use alternating tones with one repeated, even though it is broken up by other bursts it will often be perceived as one long tone (Deutsch 2007).  This also allows for more fluctuation within the music and a more pleasant listening experience.

Link:http://deutsch.ucsd.edu/pdf/frontiers.pdf