Effects of Tone-Quality Changes on Intonation and Tone-Quality Ratings of High School and College Instrumentalists

We investigated the effects of variations in tone quality on listeners' perception of both tone quality and intonation. University music and nonmusic major instrumentalists and high school students participating in instrumental ensembles served as listeners ( N = 116). High-quality digital samples of clarinet, trumpet, and trombone tones were used. The original tone quality of each instrument was manipulated to produce experimental stimuli of “bright” and “dark” relative to the unaltered tone quality. Results indicated that the more inexperienced instrumentalists rated stimuli that were relatively “brighter' in tone quality as sharper in intonation, and conversely, stimuli of relatively ”darker' tone quality were judged to be flatter in intonation. For the brass instruments, listeners judged the unaltered and bright tones as better in tone quality than tones that were relatively dark. However, for the clarinet tones, the bright tone quality was judged to be worse than unaltered or dark-quality stimuli.