Musical intervals in speech.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Throughout history and across cultures, humans have created music using pitch intervals that divide octaves into the 12 tones of the chromatic scale. Why these specific intervals in music are preferred, however, is not known. In the present study, we analyzed a database of individually spoken English vowel phones to examine the hypothesis that musical intervals arise from the relationships of the formants in speech spectra that determine the perceptions of distinct vowels. Expressed as ratios, the frequency relationships of the first two formants in vowel phones represent all 12 intervals of the chromatic scale. Were the formants to fall outside the ranges found in the human voice, their relationships would generate either a less complete or a more dilute representation of these specific intervals. These results imply that human preference for the intervals of the chromatic scale arises from experience with the way speech formants modulate laryngeal harmonics to create different phonemes.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Ross, D; Choi, J; Purves, D
Published Date
- June 2007
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 104 / 23
Start / End Page
- 9852 - 9857
PubMed ID
- 17525146
Pubmed Central ID
- PMC1876656
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1091-6490
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0027-8424
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1073/pnas.0703140104
Language
- eng