Volume 1
A text-book of experimental psychology : with laboratory exercises / by Charles S. Myers.
- Charles Samuel Myers
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A text-book of experimental psychology : with laboratory exercises / by Charles S. Myers. Source: Wellcome Collection.
65/370 page 45
![number of both closed and open teeth. The number of inter¬ ruptions in the teeth determines the pitch of the interruption tone. An interruption tone is also produced when the vibra¬ tions communicated by a tuning-fork to the air are periodically interrupted by a rotating disc provided with alternate closed and open sectors.] The Relation of Tones.—If various pairs of successively sounding tones be compared (exp. 36), a closer, more intimate relation will be found to exist between the members of some pairs than between those of others. The tone nearest related to a given tone will prove to be the octave or any multiple of the octave. Even practised musicians, when asked to identify a given tone, are apt to confuse octave tones with one another. .. One might at first feel disposed to express this relation throughout the tone range by means of a spiral, along which the tones are marked off in order, and successive octave tones are so placed that they overlie one another. But such a diagram would fail to represent the facts at all accurately, inasmuch as the next most nearly related members are found to be a tone and its fifth above, which would lie on such a spiral at a point furthest removed from the lower tone. After the fifth, the fourth is the next closely related interval. Then follow the major and minor thirds and the sixths. The confusion of a tone with its octave may be also demonstrated by sounding the two tones simultaneously and asking a listener to report whether one or more tones are present. If the octave tone be weak in comparison with the lower, it is unnoticed, except in so far as it alters the timbre and the apparent pitch of the lower tone (page 29). Even when the two tones are of equal strength, a trained musician will sometimes return wrong judgments. Unmusical people experience a like difficulty of analysis in the case of other less closely related pairs of tones (exp. 38), the percentage of their wrong answers being approximately as follows :— Octave Fifth Fourth 75 50 Thirds and Seconds and Sixths Sevenths 30 20 IO](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b3135984x_0001_0065.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
