Talk:Tritone paradox

redirect

I think we should go back to the original entry as "Tritone paradox" and put a redirect on "Deutsch tritone paradox." It is more commonly referred to by the former name in the scientific literature, and we can provide suitable and appropriate links from the WP entry on Diana Deutsch. User: Daniel Levitin

Suggest revert

I think we should revert to the original WP title posted in 2003. The Tritone Paradox was discovered by Deutsch in the course of her research, and was not originally conceived by Shepard. See Deutsch JASA 1986 for the first public presentation, and Deutsch MP 1986 for the first written documentation. Moreover, it is frequently referred to as the "Deutsch Tritone Paradox."

Shepard speculates in his 1964 JASA paper that two octave-complex ("Shepard-tones") a tri-tone apart would form a bi-stable illusion. This was years before Deutsch wrote about it, so I think the earliest scientific credit naturally belongs to him. It is true that Deutsch did all the work, but referring to it as the "Deutsch Tritone Paradox" seems to be perpetuating a misunderstanding of the history. DanielLevitin 06:02, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Whether the title is “Deutsch Tritone Paradox” or just “Tritone Paradox” is actually a minor issue when compared to the erroneous implication that Shepard’s 1964 "bi-stable illusion" is the same as the “Tritone Paradox.” Shepard wrote: '‘diametrically opposed tones are ambiguous and the second tone is judged to be higher about as often as it is judged to be lower'’. The whole point of the “Tritone Paradox” is that the opposite occurs – notes are judged to be higher or lower depending largely on note name. Let’s leave the simplified title, but also not credit someone historically for work which claims the opposite. User:thenthorn 01:27, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

What does this illusion actually sound like?

The lead does not say what this illusion actually sounds like. I quit reading after the first paragraph to suggest stating the obvious in the lead. --Jtir (talk) 13:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

If it were as simple as saying "what this illusion actually sounds like," someone would have said so long ago, I suspect. The essence of the paradox has to do with how populations hear the tones, not individuals. A few minutes ago, I listened to this example of some tritone pairs of Shepard tones with someone else, a pro musician, who at first didn't believe that we really heard them differently. We sang them back to each other, quite an ear-opener. Wrapped up in a pair of David Clark headphones, I heard them differently than I did out in the room on the computer speakers. __Just plain Bill (talk) 15:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Here's a start:

• The tritone paradox is an auditory illusion in which a sequentially played pair of tones separated by an interval of a tritone is heard as ascending by some people and as descending by others.[1]

The name of the discoverer can be mentioned next.

--Jtir (talk) 16:34, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. And thanks for bringing this illusion to my attention. I'm definitely not a trained musician, but listening to the examples is very strange. I hear d-d-a-a most of the time. --Jtir (talk) 17:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

If the frequency response of your playback system is not flat, you won't hear the tones the same way. Even with the same speakers and the same room, if you're not placed in the exact same spot you're likely to hear them differently. --Labeloccura (talk) 23:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Further detail concerning origin of tritone paradox

Shepard (1964) did not propose the tritone paradox. To the contrary, he argued that it made no sense to suppose that two points separated by a half-octave could be represented on different positions along the pitch class circle. He wrote:

‘In this respect, too, tonality seems quite analogous to the attribute of being clockwise or counterclockwise. One of two nearby points on a circle can be said to be clockwise from the other; but it makes no sense to say how clockwise a single point is absolutely. (Shepard 1964, p. 2352)’

In an accompanying experiment, Shepard found that, in accordance with his surmise, averaging across a large group of subjects, tone pairs that were related by a tritone were heard as ascending and descending equally often (see Fig 3, p. 2350 of this article). Deutsch (1986) later found that his results were due to the averaging process, and that when the judgments of individual subjects were examined separately the tritone paradox emerged instead. User:thenthorn (talk) 01:49, 7 April 2016 (UTC)