Sensory dissonance curves with ADSR envelope & partial type analysis as an additive synthesis strategy

Abstract

This research focuses on the concept of sensory dissonance and its relation to the complex nature of tone and timbre systems. It can be described as the amount of harmonic beating occurring between two tones which corresponds to the fluctuation in the perception of their amplitude. Two research questions are set to investigate this concept. The first one is whether the envelope components of a partial, which are also known as ADSR parameters, affect the sensory dissonance calculation of that timbre which consists of the sine wave partials or not. Previous studies used pure amplitude values of partials for calculation and focused on theoretical aspects of sensory dissonance. The aim of adding envelope information and testing it is an attempt to extend the concept of sensory dissonance to more practical usage. The second question is, does the type of a harmonic partial affect the total sensory dissonance? In this research, there are virtual tests which were held to find possible answers to these questions. In the introduction section, the scope of computational analysis of sound and music is investigated through its components and methods. In addition to that, the concept of sensory dissonance is described with its mechanisms and is contextually connected to the research questions in terms of structure. The second section shows the test designs regarding the concepts in the introduction section. The first test includes timbre data generation consisting of sine waves, calculation of the weight for those timbres, and their effects on the amplitude weights of the partials. The second test includes the different types of harmonic partials and their effects on the sensory dissonance curves as well as the attempts to replace the integer frequency ratios of harmonic partials with inharmonic partial ratios consisting of different tone systems. Section 3 contains the results of two tests and Section 4 has the remarks on the tests.