Perception Of Dyads Of Percussive And Sustained Instruments

Abstract

Perception of instrumental blend is important for understanding aspects of orchestration, but no work has studied blends of impulsive and sustained instruments. The first experiment identified the factors that influence the rating of blendedness of dyads formed of pairs of sustained and impulsive sounds. Longer attack times and lower spectral centroids increased blend. The contribution of the impulsive sound’s properties to degree of blend was greater than that of the sustained sound. The second experiment determined the factors that influence ratings of dissimilarity among dyads. The mean spectral envelope of the dyad best explained the dissimilarity ratings. However, contrary to the first experiment, the spectral envelope of the sustained sound was more important than that of the impulsive sound. Multidimensional scaling of dyad dissimilarity ratings yielded one dimension correlated with the attack time of the dyad and another dimension whose spectral correlate was different for two different clusters within the space, suggesting a combined categorical-analogical organization of the second dimension.