User:Grady/Harmonic similarity: Difference between revisions

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=== Limited hearing range ===

We humans have a finite hearing range of only around 10 octaves, and only around six or seven octaves of that range is actually musically useful. Because of this, it may be impossible for any number of stacked octaves that fits within our musical hearing range to have a lower similarity than the tritave for most listeners, since the dissimilarity induced by each successive octave doesn't accumulate quickly enough. This may mean that if we could experience sound perception with a wider hearing range, that it would be possible to hear two notes a very high number of octaves apart as no longer sounding very equivalent due to the accumulation of dissimilarity.

We humans have a finite hearing range of only around 10 octaves, and only around six or seven octaves of that range is actually musically useful. Because of this, it may be impossible for any number of stacked octaves that fits within our musical hearing range to have a lower similarity than the tritave for most listeners, since the dissimilarity induced by each successive octave doesn't accumulate quickly enough. (Again, the tritave is assumed to have significantly higher dissimilarity than the octave.) This may mean that if we could experience sound perception with a wider hearing range, that it would be possible to hear two notes a very high number of octaves apart as no longer sounding very equivalent due to the accumulation of dissimilarity.

Revision as of 07:51, 3 August 2025 view source Grady (talk \| contribs) 55 edits →Explanation of octave equivalence: Added limited hearing range hypothesis Tag: Visual edit ← Older edit		Revision as of 07:52, 3 August 2025 view source Grady (talk \| contribs) 55 edits m →Limited hearing range: Clarification Tag: Visual edit Newer edit →
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	=== Limited hearing range ===		=== Limited hearing range ===
	We humans have a finite hearing range of only around 10 octaves, and only around six or seven octaves of that range is actually musically useful. Because of this, it may be impossible for any number of stacked octaves that fits within our musical hearing range to have a lower similarity than the tritave for most listeners, since the dissimilarity induced by each successive octave doesn't accumulate quickly enough. This may mean that if we could experience sound perception with a wider hearing range, that it would be possible to hear two notes a very high number of octaves apart as no longer sounding very equivalent due to the accumulation of dissimilarity.		We humans have a finite hearing range of only around 10 octaves, and only around six or seven octaves of that range is actually musically useful. Because of this, it may be impossible for any number of stacked octaves that fits within our musical hearing range to have a lower similarity than the tritave for most listeners, since the dissimilarity induced by each successive octave doesn't accumulate quickly enough. (Again, the tritave is assumed to have significantly higher dissimilarity than the octave.) This may mean that if we could experience sound perception with a wider hearing range, that it would be possible to hear two notes a very high number of octaves apart as no longer sounding very equivalent due to the accumulation of dissimilarity.