Summary Music Cognition
Suzanne de Vries | IBP 2018-2019 | Year 2 | Block 3
,Chapter 5: perception of musical pitch and melody
Amusia: deficits when pitches are presented in melodic context, cannot identify well-known
melodies. But: could comprehend isolated pitches.
The elements of melody
Melody: sequence of pitches that sound like they belong together. Whole is more important (Gestalt).
Pitch is more than high versus low
Pitches are basic units of melody. In music, experience of pitch becomes multidimensional and
nonlinear. Shepard: pitches have five dimensions, of which two are pitch height, the frequency of
vibration, and pitch chroma, the category/class represented, s.a. the names of notes. Identical when
separated by an octave. Octave equivalence: tones separated by an octave inhabit the same chroma
category. Relationships among chromas are said to form a circle rather than line, the chroma circle.
For the two dimensions interacting: pitch helix. Every change in chroma necessarily involves a
change in pitch height, not vice versa. Categorize and encode pitches based on absolute pitch
(individual properties) or relative pitch (relationship to context).
Absolute (‘perfect’) pitch: rare gift or common ability?
About relationship between selected pitch labels and piano keys. Semitone: difference between any
adjacent piano keys. Absolute pitch (AP): pitch defined independently of any surrounding context.
Useful for notation and theory.
Labeling the absolute pitch of musical tones
Most listeners don’t encode the AP of melodies. Task: label individual pitches without being provided
a reference pitch. Source of skill: training, associate pitches with verbal categories, ‘sensitive period’
,at 5-6 years, type of training (like fixed-do solfege system), language (s.a. tone language, where pitch
also conveys meaning), genes (even specific chromosomes). Pitch perception changes with age.
Memory for absolute pitch
Ability to remember AP may be common: AP memory. Good pitch memory seems to be widespread.
However, complications in measuring, is it not muscle memory? No: most people able to identify
original versions of songs, despite altered versions being very close in pitch.
Relative pitch and pitch intervals
When every pitch is shifted by same amount: melodic transposition. Intervals that pitches form are
retained. Intervallic relationships between adjacent pitches or between pitches and a larger context
(s.a. key). Relative pitch involves kind of perceptual abstraction based on comparing pitches. Code
pattern of change in semitones. Possibly more salient and important than absolute pitch. Use implied
harmonic structure to group notes together. Harmony: multiple pitches produced simultaneously.
Melody can imply a harmony. Limitations: use of contextual information goes beyond single
intervals.
Melodic contour: the importance of direction
Shape of melody line, minus and plus symbols. Highly salient. One of the primary features likely to
be remembered. Perception of similarity across melodies may be based on contour patterns across
both adjacent and non-adjacent pitches. Applies mainly to unfamiliar melodies, for familiar ones
interval information is stored as well.
Key and tonality: a global context for melody
Tonality: pitches in the melody imply specific musical key.
Scales, key and tonality
Key: specific musical scale on which melody is based. Western world: diatonic scale, with 7 chromas
and asymmetric spacing of pitch intervals. Certain pitches also heard as more important or dominant:
hierarchical. Tonic pitch: chroma that gives scale its name (s.a. C major). Tonic as kind of central
pitch. Atonal music: does not imply any key. Tonality is learned implicitly, using cognitive schemas.
, The influence of tonality on pitch perception
Probe-tone techniques: listeners could hear hierarchical relationships among notes based on diatonic
scale implied by the context. Multidimensional scaling: perceptual experiences that are similar
should be represented as nearby points in space. Pitches within scale cluster together, pitches outside
scale sound disconnected and free-floating.
Name that tune: memory for melodies
Musical phrases: sequences of notes within melody that are heard as belonging to the same musical
group, some kind of closure. Musical features that facilitate memory can be found by comparing the
structure of given melody to other melodies one might know.
Involuntary memory for melodies: earworms and priming
Earworm: tune gets stuck in your head. Priming: perception of stimulus makes related items from
memory more easily accessible. Related to implicit memory. Harmonic priming: processing of
chord seems to be faster and more accurate when preceded by chord that is harmonically related or
‘schematically probable’. Repetition priming: melody with repeating pitches, enhances perception of
it.
Hearing multiple melodies
Auditory scene analysis for music
Segregate sounds that belong to different parts, integrate sounds that belong to same part. Auditory
scene analysis: ability to perceive the auditory signal as coming from set of distinct sources. Happens
before we can recognize melodies, infer tonality etc. Computational demands are significant. Gestalt
grouping principles: perceptual systems prioritize experience of wholes.
The power of proximity
Principle of proximity: elements that are near to each other in space tend to be perceived as a group.
Same for closeness in pitch height. Interleaved melodies: playing alternate tones between two
familiar melodies. When share same pitch range → become impossible to identify. Integration of
pitches within one melody is also dependent on proximity. F.ex. in octave-scrambled melodies:
play each note in different octave.
Other grouping principles
Principle of similarity: timbre → organize input of individual sounds into organized groups, s.a.
different instruments. The scale illusion suggests that grouping based on pitch prevails over
grouping based on spatial location. If tones are played in sufficiently different pitch ranges,
timbres or when tone sequence does not imply orderly scale, effect is likely to be weakened or
absent. Principle of closure: fill in missing parts of easily recognizable aggregate. Requires
knowledge of context. Music: perceptual restoration. Increase in restoration is associated with
increased musical expectations.
