An attempt to construct a quantitative scale of musical brightness for short melodies implementing timbral brightness

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 2006-11, Vol.120 (5_Supplement), p.3277-3277
• Main Author: Yamada, Masashi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0001-4966; 1520-8524
• DOI: 10.1121/1.4777258

It is known that a major tune is brighter than a minor one, and that music played in a faster tempo and a higher register is brighter than a slower and lower one. However, it has not been clarified how these factors quantitatively determine the musical brightness. On the other hand, it has been clarified that the timbral brightness of a tone corresponds well to the spectral centroid. In the present study, major and minor scales and two short melodies were played with pure tones, and listeners evaluated their musical brightness. For each performance, the spectral centroid was calculated for the overall-term spectrum during the performance on the transformed frequency scale of the ERB rate. The results showed that the musical brightness of the ascending scale increases proportionally as the spectral centroid shown in the ERB rate increases. Using this, a quantitative scale of musical brightness, BM, was constructed. The results also showed that the difference in the musical brightness between major and minor scales corresponded to the transposition of approximately 5 ERB rate, and doubling the speed corresponded to the upper shift of the centroid in approximately 2.5 ERB rate.