The psychology of sound / by Henry J. Watt.

  • Henry J. Watt
Date:
1917
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The psychology of sound / by Henry J. Watt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    49/260 (page 37)
    single stick is thrown on the ground, it was said, no 'tone’ is heard; but it is readily recognised if a series of sticks of the appropriate sizes are thrown on the ground. A moment’s recollection of this familiar experiment suffices to show that in the serial part of it only pitches are heard and recognised, not tones, unless we mean by tones merely recognisable pitches. So too when a tone was said to be heard from a brook. And Stumpf’s test of the absence of‘tone’ from subjective (ear) noises seems to have been: how nearly their pitch could be estimated (112, 500ff.). With regard to theories, Stumpf’s chief objection to the view that noises consist of many simultaneous tones little different in pitch, was that the resultant sound does not, or would not, lose “its tonal character and its analysability ” (112, 504). This double concept seems somewhat strange. And of noises, in so far as they are said to be a very rapid succession of very many tones of different pitch, he said, we should still hear the “rapid change of tone.” But what constitutes ‘ tone ’ when the steadiness of pitch is gone ? Is it the mere change of volume? And do not noises have volumes as well? Do not noises show among themselves all or any of those kinds of differences which accompany change of pitch in tones? Having rejected these two theories Stumpf then favoured the view that noises are tones of a definite, not necessarily changing, pitch, and are distinguished from tones in the usual sense either by their being momentary or by their being a rapid succession of intermittent momentary tone impressions. Here he seems to have got rid of the tonal phenomenon, while still retaining (as very brief) real tones in the noise. But even this theoretical device did not quite convince him. He added: “ One set of so-called noises are intermittent tones of the highest or lowest region (growling, hissing, etc.). Here it is by no means impossible with increased attention to recognise the tones as such. Still I would not maintain even in these cases, that some scrap of pure noise is not left over1.” And then some noises, as he said, are surely constant, e.g. ear noises. Noises might therefore still be special sensations not reducible to tones, but like enough to them to justify their reference to the same organ as a different quality of hearing from tones. With all this, he thought, some noises might still be more like low than high tones or conversely. Thus a 1 112, 509. Stumpf wrote as late as 1914: '‘That all noises contain admixtures of tone, I should now no longer maintain” (123, 341). At the same place he spoke of noises with a limited zone of pitch, which yet do not include ‘real tones,’ or do not therefore become ‘tones.’