CONCEPTS OF MUSIC WEEK 7 JND

A thoroughly enjoyable field trip once again as we journeyed this time into the locked-up and secret chamber that is Studio 4. This is obviously where they hide the good stuff; a treasure-trove of vintage analogue equipment which, sadly, students are verboten from using (for good and justifiable reasons, however). I can say that I was fortunate enough to use some of it once, long ago. We spent the lesson investigating the properties of sound in the context of “Just Noticeable Difference” (also called a “differerence limen”), where Stephen required us to listen to small variations in the frequencies of sine tones, both alternating and simultaneous. We decided that we could detect a variation of about 1/8th of a semitone, although I have read that experiments in 1950’s demonstrated it to be around 1/12th of a semitone. I presume this is entirely dependent on the subject – did we score badly, I wonder? It is easier to detect the variations when the tones are played simultaneously than when they are alternated, not least because of the beating that occurs. We also tried to detect certain frequencies at the bottom and top of the range of human perception. I was pleased to note that my hearing is almost as good as the rest of youse class youngsters (which was borne out by a hearing test I had done last Monday) – yay!