Comments on: Sometimes higher is lower

Sometimes higher is lower

ozomatli — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:30:17 -0800

An audio illusion called the tritone paradox is based on Shepard Tones, a finite self-similar sequence of tones that seem to contiually rise or fall in pitch. Diana Deutch has found that how you percieve these illusions can be strikingly different from person to person and that most people have some form of pefect pitch.

By: TechnoLustLuddite

TechnoLustLuddite — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:45:46 -0800

neat

By: ivey

ivey — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:46:02 -0800

Neat. I saved some of the heavy reading for later, but enjoyed listening to the MP3 found at the 3rd link. I found that if didn't actively listen to pitch, it sounded consistently descending. However, if I listened actively for "what pitch is that?" I could tell when it went high again. The brain's a funny thing, isn't it?

By: Brainy

Brainy — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:50:15 -0800

Try humming along. It's pretty disorienting.

By: Mr. Six

Mr. Six — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:52:29 -0800

Rotate the mouse around the circular "keyboard" and the illusion melts away. I suspect something about the speed and order of the tones changes the brain's interpretation.

By: Mr. Six

Mr. Six — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:52:54 -0800

That is, rotate the mouse quickly...

By: TechnoLustLuddite

TechnoLustLuddite — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 09:53:08 -0800

the shockwave sounds in the 4th link are even harder to distinguish.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:05:13 -0800

This is fascinating stuff, thanks. Here's the sticking point for me: I don't get how they get "ambiguous" tones for the stated experiment(s) unless they're playing multiple tones in different octaves. For instance, if there are two simultaneous C's an octave apart, followed by two F#s, one down a tritone from the lower C and one up a tritone from the upper C, that would be "ambiguous." But that's not described. The details of the research seem to describe using one tone at a time, and yet these are still called "ambiguous" in terms of pitch height. How can that be? I can readily believe that some people might hear them ascending and others descending. But if they're simple tones rather than groups of tones, the two notes are in fact either ascending or descending. One group of hearers is wrong, the other right. The wording "there is literally no right or wrong answer" is, um, the wrong answer. Can anyone clarify this for me? What am I missing?

By: jon_kill

jon_kill — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:06:56 -0800

Level 1.2, Super Mario Bros anyone?

By: Faint of Butt

Faint of Butt — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:07:12 -0800

This is amazing. I've seen a million optical illusions in my time, but this is the first audio illusion I've encountered. I feel like it broke my brain.

By: 517

517 — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:10:17 -0800

(Slip into water over his head) Dude, this so reminds me of Mario Brothers.

By: 517

517 — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:10:44 -0800

...and jinx.

By: plinth

plinth — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:22:02 -0800

There used to be a demo app for the Mac years ago that featured a ball moving along an Escher staircase to Shepherd tones.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:26:34 -0800

I first heard Shepard tones in the intro to Macrometasomakosmos by Ubar Tmar (extended version of intro here). If you think it sounds weird when you listen to it knowing it's an audio illusion, imagine listening to it go on for 5 or so minutes without knowing it's an audio illusion. I believe my impression was somewhere along the lines of "What the hell?! This can't keep going up any higher, I'm going to blow out the speakers or wake up all the dogs in a 10 mile radius. And, wait, why the hell can I still hear it, anyway?"

By: ozomatli

ozomatli — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:27:02 -0800

On the Deutsch page she has this mystery melody, has anyone figured out what it is? I have no clue, but I guess if someone tells me then I will be able to hear it.

By: Opposite George

Opposite George — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:33:05 -0800

This is good.

By: boo_radley

boo_radley — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:37:02 -0800

This is enormously good.

By: dogsbody

dogsbody — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:40:52 -0800

Ozomatli, The mystery melody's fun (remember a similar exercise at college when someone played Happy Birthday with all the octaves randomised). This one's harder though, as (nearly) all the notes are the same length, so there aren't any rhythmic clues. The last two notes, in fact, are how I got it: popular tune that ends it's first phrase on two long notes; tonic then leading note? *SPOILER* Why yes, it's Yankee Doodle!

By: nomisxid

nomisxid — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:43:02 -0800

I've owned her CD for several years, and it's quite interesting to break out at a party.

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:47:42 -0800

Can anyone clarify this for me? What am I missing? No, I think you're right, at least if the explanation on this page applies.

By: vertriebskonzept

vertriebskonzept — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:49:55 -0800

Funny, depending on which "part" of the second sound I concentrate on (at the tritone paradox) I can "choose" to hear either a descending or an ascending tone. Anyone else?

By: solotoro

solotoro — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:28:15 -0800

soyjoy, I'm not getting that from the link. They seem to be using the word "tone" to apply to a waveform consisting of many octaves of a particular note: "The tones that are used to create the tritone paradox are so constructed that their note names (C, C#, D and so on) are clearly defined, but they are ambiguous with respect to which octave they are in. For example, one tone might clearly be a C, but in principle it could be middle C, or the C an octave above, or the C an octave below. This ambiguity is built into the tones themselves." vertriebskonzept, I too found I could force myself to hear them either way. This is neat stuff. Thanks ozomatli!

By: weston

weston — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:31:08 -0800

I could swear that this has been used in a television show... maybe a Dr. Who episode?

By: bjrubble

bjrubble — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:39:32 -0800

The Pink Floyd song Echoes fades out with this effect. I often wondered how they did that; now I see there's a Wikipedia page answering that and many other late night bong hit questions.

By: dr. fresh

dr. fresh — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 11:41:57 -0800

The Queen album "A Day At The Races" starts and ends with something quite like a Shepard Tone. Brian May states that he came up with it independently while trying to emulate the endless staircases of an M.C. Escher painting. Brian May's explanation (search for Shepard)

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:10:07 -0800

Warning: the continuous rising tone on headphones hurt my ears.

By: interrobang

interrobang — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 12:34:57 -0800

This is cool, thanks.

By: SmileyChewtrain

SmileyChewtrain — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:00:45 -0800

The Doppler Effect is an auditory illusion of sorts and we hear it every time a car or siren passes by. And this Tritone thing is neat, though I'm tired and can't really understand it fully at the moment.

By: soyjoy

soyjoy — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 13:24:03 -0800

solotoro, you must be right, though it mystifies me why they would a) use the word "tone" which has a specific meaning that does not include multiple tones, and then b) never use the phrase "multiple tones" or "multiple octaves" to clarify how the tone itself could contain built-in "ambiguity." But not all the most interesting research is done by the people who write it up most clearly. Still a fascinating phenomenon.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:12:20 -0800

The Doppler Effect is an auditory illusion of sorts and we hear it every time a car or siren passes by. That's not really an illusion that's what the sound actually sounds like when it gets to your years, whereas optical illusions are caused your visual processing systems. Anyway, I feel like you really need to know a lot about music theory to appreciate (or even notice) these.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:17:28 -0800

It's interesting to play the samples before reading the text, to see if the effect works on you. In any event, the 'Cambiata' illusion didn't work on me.

By: SmileyChewtrain

SmileyChewtrain — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:40:39 -0800

Okay, okay, I've been caught - I knew that about The Doppler Effect before posting but I wanted to test to see if the MetaFilter crowd was smart enough to catch me! Ha-HA! You *are* smart enough! Or at least, delmoi is. delmoi, you get a cracker. I'll sit down now. It's still a neat effect, however, that continues to mystify me even though I understand why it happens.

By: digaman

digaman — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:02:17 -0800

Pardon my French, but what a fucking synchronicity. Just yesterday I stumbled across Deutsch's Phantom Words and Other Curiosities as I was cleaning out my CD shelf!

By: ozomatli

ozomatli — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:23:46 -0800

I've been watching you digaman.......

By: edd

edd — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 16:43:55 -0800

If SmileyChewtrain finds the Doppler Effect mystifying, he should try getting his head round the relativistic Transverse Doppler Effect (wikilink).

By: rdone

rdone — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:16:32 -0800

The MP3 of tritone paradox versions on the Deutsch site contains four examples. The last one is ambiguous and can be heard both as rising and as falling. This suggests a species of quantum indeterminacy, where the listener's election to hear one direction of tritonal interval change determines the phenomenon.

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 20:45:58 -0800

This suggests a species of quantum indeterminacy, where the listener's election to hear one direction of tritonal interval change determines the phenomenon. Or it just goes down:

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 21:13:05 -0800

Shepard tones:

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 22:02:20 -0800

cillit bang, what software is that?

By: Jon Mitchell

Jon Mitchell — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 02:09:04 -0800

Ah, sweet, I've been thinking about plotting a frequency map of that MP3 all day....it's looks pretty much like I imagined it... The odd thing is, the Shepard tone illlusion is, at least for me, very easy to re-create in your head...just think of an ever increasing, or decreasing tone, and you get much the same effect. It raises an odd question, though - I'm nearly 30 now, and I've definitely lost the 20Khz+ hearing I used to have....but listening to19Khz sounds now, I'm completely unable to imagine the sounds I'm now missing - why should this be, given that I've got experince of what they sound like?

By: cillit bang

cillit bang — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 03:00:38 -0800

It's a free Java app called Sonogram Visible Speech. (If it complains that it needs Java 1.5, you actually need to install Java 2 SE 5.0)

By: sunexplodes

sunexplodes — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 08:27:13 -0800

The radio show Radiolab has a great program about this, and other, sound candy. link

By: Shave

Shave — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 04:58:38 -0800

I love the misspelling of 'perfect' ozomatli. *shows finger to pedants*