Tuning in the Right Sound (12-11-23)
Van Hedger, Bongiovanni, and Khudhair studied people’s responses to different sounds. They report that “we investigate whether the absolute tuning of music influences listener evaluations of music. Across three experiments, participants rated musical excerpts, tuned conventionally (A4 = 440 Hz) versus unconventionally (±50 cents from conventional tuning), in terms of aesthetic preference. . . . participants clearly preferred the conventionally tuned version for highly familiar recordings, they tended to prefer the version that was highest in absolute pitch if the recording was unfamiliar.