The pitch perception of bell sounds

The physical spectrum of the sound of a bell contains a great number of harmonically unrelated eigenfrequencies (partials). Despite this inharmonicity, one can usually perceive a dear pitch when a bell is struck. In a mistuned bell this strike-note pitch often does not coincide with any frequency present in the spectrum of the sound. This paper describes how the subjective pitch of the strike note is meagured as a function of systematic frequency shift in selected partials. A digital filt ering technique is used to manipulate the sound of a real bell. The octave, the twelfth and the upper octave partials turn out to be the major contributors to the strike-note pitch.