Consonance evaluation of plucked-string instrument tones based on a modified CWT cumulative energy

摘要

For some musical tones with lots of inharmonic components, such as some Chinese traditionalplucked-string instruments, like Pi-Pa, Gu-Qin and Gu-Zheng, may sound as consonant as thosewith a standard harmonic structure, a new method to evaluate the subjective consonance ofplucked-string instrument musical tones was introduced in this paper. Compared to manyprevious methods based on the harmonics, this method was based on the temporal equalconsonancecontours constructed from a modified CWT cumulative energy Ec(n) and the resultsfrom psycho-acoustical experiments with local subjects of age from 20 to 30 in common hearingability. The psychometric method was pair-compare-method. The equal-consonance contourswere similar to the equal loudness contours or the equal noisome contours, and may offer a morereasonable standard for the subjective consonance of plucked-string instrument musical tones, nomatter they have lots of inharmonic components or not. The paper also put forward a roughdiscussion on the theoretic definition of consonance, while many theories, reviewed on theconsonance of musical tones with a standard harmonic, suggested that inharmonic componentsof musical tones may add much noisome to the auditory perception.