Pitch Perception

As I had written in some previous Blog, Pitch is an often confused term. I too wanted to quantify pitch in physical quantities, so i conducted a perceptual experiment to find out what usually people call pitch.

I wont go into the detials of the experiment, but while conducting the experiment I came across really fantastic experiences. On of the most fascinating things was the variation among people regarding what they call pitch. Its really wide. Sometimes I could not believe that a person can preceive some thing in that particular manner.

One more significant thing to note is that each person, was not sure of what he/she really called pitch. Their own definitions became clear as they were conducting the experiment. At the same time, the comments that each one made was totally different. After conducting the experiment, I always discussed with them the results in general and the results which that particular person had come up with. I always got new inputs and insights into the problem. Each person gave me new problems they had faced with while conducting the experiment.

At this stage I have understood certain things properly and certain things are even more muddled. Most importantly what I found was, pitch is not a single physical quantity. All the following go in determining the pitch, the lowest frequency component, the lowest difference in frequencies (the fundamental frequency), the highest frequency component, the bandwidth of the signal, the existance of the 3rd or fifth harmonic and so om..... I have not still experimented with varying levels of the harmonics. I guess things may get even more complicated. Even thinking of a suitable experiment is going to be a tough job.

I hope I really am able to get a good answer at the end of my MSc period in IISc.