Abstract :
Experiments in binaural listening show that the two ears provide almost independent effects on the brain¿namely, a sound message confined entirely to one ear does not interfere appreciably with a sound message confined entirely to the other ear. A result of this independence is that harmony, in a restricted sense, between binaurally heard tones does not exist. This fact might be used to create new effects in two-part music. In the most general sense, the experiments described in this article show that any two messages¿ whether in music, in words, or in symbols¿can be separated more easily by the brain when the messages are heard binaurally, a finding that raises certain interesting implications.
