Combination Tone

combination tone, in musical acoustics, faint tone produced in the inner ear by two simultaneously sounded musical tones. Because such tones are caused by the ear rather than by the external source of the sound, they are sometimes called subjective, or resultant, tones. There are two varieties: difference tones (D) and summation tones (S), generated respectively by the frequency differential of the two pitches or the sum of their frequencies. The most commonly heard are difference tones lying below the original pitches; these were discovered by the celebrated violinist-composer Giuseppe Tartini (1692–1770), who regarded the “third tone” as an excellent means of correcting faulty intonations of double stops on the violin.

Combination tones are heard when two pure tones (i.e., tones produced by simple harmonic sound waves having no overtones), differing in frequency by about 50 cycles per second or more, sound together at sufficient intensity. Other, more-complex waveforms, such as those produced by singing voices, also occasionally produce combination tones.

A similar subjective phenomenon, aural harmonics, results from the ear’s distortion of a single pure tone. The distortions produce frequencies in the ear corresponding to multiples of the original frequency (2f, 3f, 4f,…), and aural harmonics thus have the same pitch as externally produced harmonics.