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Shepard tone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Shepard tone, named after Roger Shepard (born 1929),

is a sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves
separated by octaves. When played with the base pitch of
the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as
the Shepard scale. This creates the auditory illusion of a
tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet
which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower.[1]
Spectrum view of ascending Shepard
tones (linear frequency scale)

Contents
1 Construction
2 The tritone paradox
3 Examples
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

Construction
Each square in the figure indicates a tone, with any set of squares in
vertical alignment together making one Shepard tone. The color of each
square indicates the loudness of the note, with purple being the quietest
and green the loudest. Overlapping notes that play at the same time are
exactly one octave apart, and each scale fades in and fades out so that
hearing the beginning or end of any given scale is impossible. As a
conceptual example of an ascending Shepard scale, the first tone could be
an almost inaudible C4 (middle C) and a loud C5 (an octave higher). The
Figure 1: Shepard next would be a slightly louder C♯4 and a slightly quieter C♯5; the next
tones forming a would be a still louder D4 and a still quieter D5. The two frequencies
Shepard scale, would be equally loud at the middle of the octave (F♯4 and F♯5), and the
illustrated in a eleventh tone would be a loud B4 and an almost inaudible B5 with the
sequencer addition of an almost inaudible B3. The twelfth tone would then be the
same as the first, and the cycle could continue indefinitely. (In other
words, each tone consists of two sine waves with frequencies separated by octaves; the intensity of
each is e.g. a gaussian function of its separation in semitones from a peak frequency, which in the

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above example would be B4. According to Shepard, "(...) almost any smooth distribution that tapers
off to subthreshold levels at low and high frequencies would have done as well as the cosine
[gaussian] curve actually employed."[1])

The acoustical illusion can be constructed by

A descending Shepard–Risset
creating a series of overlapping ascending or glissando
descending scales. Similar to a barber's pole, the
basic concept is shown in Figure 1.

The scale as described, with discrete steps between Problems playing this file? See media help.
each tone, is known as the discrete Shepard scale.
The illusion is more convincing if there is a short time between successive notes (staccato or
marcato instead of legato or portamento).

Jean-Claude Risset subsequently created a version of the scale where the tones glide continuously,
and it is appropriately called the continuous Risset scale or Shepard–Risset glissando. When
done correctly, the tone appears to rise (or fall) continuously in pitch, yet return to its starting note.
Risset has also created a similar effect with rhythm in which tempo seems to increase or decrease
endlessly[2]

The tritone paradox

A sequentially played pair of Shepard tones separated by an interval of a tritone (half an octave)
produces the tritone paradox. In this auditory illusion, first reported by Diana Deutsch in 1986, the
scales may be heard as either descending or ascending.[3] Shepard had predicted that the two tones
would constitute a bistable figure, the auditory equivalent of the Necker cube, that could be heard
ascending or descending, but never both at the same time.[1] Deutsch later found that perception of
which tone was higher depended on the absolute frequencies involved, and that different listeners
may perceive the same pattern as being either ascending or descending.[4]

Examples
In a film by Shepard and E. E. Zajac, a Shepard tone accompanies the ascent of an analogous
Penrose stair.[5]
In his book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas Hofstadter explains how
Shepard scales can be used on the Canon a 2, per tonos in Bach's Musical Offering (called the
Endlessly Rising Canon by Hofstadter[6]:10) for making the modulation end in the same pitch
instead of an octave higher.[6]:717–719
In Super Mario 64, a modified Shepard tone is incorporated into the music of the endless
staircase.[7] Much like a real Shepard tone, the staircase itself gives players the impression
that they are constantly running upwards, when in reality the game has simply locked them in
place, and turning around reveals that they were actually running in place halfway up the

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stairs.
In the film The Dark Knight and its follow-up The Dark Knight Rises, a Shepard tone was
used to create the sound of the Batpod, a motorcycle that the filmmakers didn't want to
change gear and tone abruptly but to constantly accelerate.[8]
Used as a compositional technique for digital orchestral music on a piece by composer
Renaldo Ramai entitled "The Journey".[9]
The Shepard tone was a key aspect in Stephin Merritt's song "A Million Faces", composed for
NPR's "Project Song".[10]
The ending of the song "Echoes" from the album Meddle by Pink Floyd features a Shepard
tone that fades out to a wind sound (actually a white noise processed through a tape echo
unit).
The Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas uses Shepard tone effect towards the end of his
orchestral piece In Vain.
The song "Slow Moving Trains" from Godspeed You! Black Emperor's album F♯ A♯ ∞
begins with the sound of a Shepard tone.

See also
Chorus effect
Flanging
Phaser (effect)
Pitch circularity
Strange loop
Wave interference

References
1. Shepard, Roger N. (December 1964). "Circularity in Judgements of Relative Pitch". Journal of the
Acoustical Society of America. 36 (12): 2346–53. doi:10.1121/1.1919362.
2. Risset rhythm (http://swiki.hfbk-hamburg.de:8888/MusicTechnology/826)
3. Deutsch, Diana (1986). "A musical paradox" (PDF). Music Perception. 3: 275–280.
doi:10.2307/40285337. Retrieved 26 May 2012.
4. Deutsch, D. (1992). "Some New Pitch Paradoxes and their Implications". Philosophical Transactions of
the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 336 (1278): 391–397. doi:10.1098/rstb.1992.0073.
PMID 1354379.
5. Shepard, Roger N.; Zajac, Edward E. (1967). A Pair of Paradoxes. AT&T Bell Laboratories.
6. Hofstadter, Douglas (1980). Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1st ed.). Penguin Books.
ISBN 0-14-005579-7.
7. "Shepard Tones". Get High Now. 2009. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
8. King, Richard (4 February 2009). " 'The Dark Knight' sound effects". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved
12 September 2012.
9. Ramai, Renaldo. The Journey.

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10. Stephin Merritt: Two Days, 'A Million Faces' (video). NPR. 4 November 2007. Retrieved 9 October
2015. "It turns out I was thinking about a Shepard tone, the illusion of ever-ascending pitches."

External links
Yadegari, Shahrokh D. (August 25, 1992). "The Shepard Tone (The partials of a Shepard
tone)". Self-similar Synthesis: On the Border Between Sound and Music (Master thesis).
Archived from the original on 2013-02-08.
BBC science show, Bang Goes the Theory, explains the Shepard Tone (http://www.bbc.co.uk
/programmes/p00gfdg1)
Demonstration of discrete Shepard tone (requires Macromedia Shockwave)
(http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/highest_note/ex.about.fr.html)
Visualization of the Shepard Effect using Java (http://www.netalive.org/tinkering/shepard-
effect/)
A demonstration of a rising Shepard Scale as a ball bounces endlessly up a Penrose staircase
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCs1lckF5vI) (and down (https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=boJD_gTLavA))
Shepard tone Keyboard (http://codepen.io/yukulele/pen/PPgxbG) on CodePen

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Categories: Auditory illusions

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