Pitch salience in chords of harmonic complex tones

2009

Parncutt (1993) estimated the salience of the 12 chroma in chords of octave-complex tones (OCTs, Shepard tones). In each trial, listeners rated how well an OCT went with a preceding chord. The conventional root tended to go better than other chord tones. Non-chord pitches tended to go better if they corresponded to steps of associated scales; tones following the major triad went well if they belonged to the major scale (perfect fourth, major sixth, major seventh), following the minor if in (a) minor scale (major second, perfect fourth, minor sixth, minor seventh). The non-chord tones that went well tended to be missing fundamentals of incomplete harmonic series whose salience can be predict…