Hope+F

Hope F. 2011-2012
 * THE STUDY OF THE ABILITY TO IDENTIFY INSTRUMENTS AS MISSING BY THEIR PITCH **


 * ABSTRACT **

The purpose of this study was to determine which instrument was the most identifiable when missing from a group of instruments, to see if pitch affects how easily identifiable an instrument is. Sound is a wave created when something is pushed back and forth so that the air around it moves to the sides. The pitch of a sound wave depends on how wide the sound waves are, on string instruments the pitch changes when the strings are longer, which allows the strings to move back and forth more freely and force the air particles further apart. A group of 6th graders were asked to listen to the four string instruments (violin, viola, cello, and bass) playing Happy Birthday, and then the quartet where all of the instruments played at the same time. They were then asked to listen to four recordings where one of the four instruments was missing from the quartet and identify which instrument was missing. It was found that the bass was the most identifiable instrument when missing, 87.5% of people tested correctly identified the bass as missing and 12.5% couldn’t identify it, while both the cello and viola only had 37.5% of people correctly identify it as missing and 62.5% could not, and the violin was the opposite of the cello and viola with 62.5% of people correctly identified it as missing and 37.5% not able to. This was most likely because the pitch of the bass is much lower than the viola and cello because of the sheer size of the instrument, so the sound when played with the other instruments is much louder and deeper than the others.


 * CONCLUSION **

The instruments with lower pitches, like the cello and bass, were more easily identifiable as missing from a group of instruments than higher pitched instruments like the viola and violin. This information would be important to audiologists if they needed to identify problems in a person’s ability to hear pitch, and also to music teachers if they were training their students. It was expected that the bass would be the most identifiable because of the pitch difference between it and the other instruments. Interesting future experiments might be if age affects the ability to identify missing instruments, or if gender affects the ability to identify missing instruments.

