Pitch (music)

Pitch is a perceptual property that allows sounds to be ordered on a frequency-related scale,^[1] or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies.^[2] Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre.^[3]

Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system.^[4]

^ Anssi Klapuri, "Introduction to Music Transcription", in Signal Processing Methods for Music Transcription, edited by Anssi Klapuri and Manuel Davy, 1–20 (New York: Springer, 2006): p. 8. ISBN 978-0-387-30667-4.
^ Plack, Christopher J.; Andrew J. Oxenham; Richard R. Fay, eds. (2005). Pitch: Neural Coding and Perception. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-23472-4. For the purposes of this book we decided to take a conservative approach, and to focus on the relationship between pitch and musical melodies. Following the earlier ASA definition, we define pitch as 'that attribute of sensation whose variation is associated with musical melodies.' Although some might find this too restrictive, an advantage of this definition is that it provides a clear procedure for testing whether or not a stimulus evokes a pitch, and a clear limitation on the range of stimuli that we need to consider in our discussions.
^ Roy D. Patterson; Etienne Gaudrain & Thomas C. Walters (2010). "The Perception of Family and Register in Musical Tones". In Mari Riess Jones; Richard R. Fay & Arthur N. Popper (eds.). Music Perception. Springer. pp. 37–38. ISBN 978-1-4419-6113-6.
^ Hartmann, William Morris (1997). Signals, Sound, and Sensation. Springer. pp. 145, 284, 287. ISBN 978-1-56396-283-7.

[1] Anssi Klapuri, "Introduction to Music Transcription", in Signal Processing Methods for Music Transcription, edited by Anssi Klapuri and Manuel Davy, 1–20 (New York: Springer, 2006): p. 8. ISBN 978-0-387-30667-4.

[2] Plack, Christopher J.; Andrew J. Oxenham; Richard R. Fay, eds. (2005). Pitch: Neural Coding and Perception. New York: Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-23472-4. For the purposes of this book we decided to take a conservative approach, and to focus on the relationship between pitch and musical melodies. Following the earlier ASA definition, we define pitch as 'that attribute of sensation whose variation is associated with musical melodies.' Although some might find this too restrictive, an advantage of this definition is that it provides a clear procedure for testing whether or not a stimulus evokes a pitch, and a clear limitation on the range of stimuli that we need to consider in our discussions.

[3] Roy D. Patterson; Etienne Gaudrain & Thomas C. Walters (2010). "The Perception of Family and Register in Musical Tones". In Mari Riess Jones; Richard R. Fay & Arthur N. Popper (eds.). Music Perception. Springer. pp. 37–38. ISBN 978-1-4419-6113-6.

[hartmann-4] Hartmann, William Morris (1997). Signals, Sound, and Sensation. Springer. pp. 145, 284, 287. ISBN 978-1-56396-283-7.

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