bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Concept of Musical Consonance: A Link between Music and Psychoacoustics
Authors: Terhardt Ernst
Published: September 2012

This paper is a presentation of the essentials of a new concept and foundation of musical consonance described by the present author in German in Acustica 36,121-137 (1976). Musical consonance is considered from the terminological, musical, conceptual, and psychoacoustic aspects. An appropriate definition of musical consonance is given, based on the principles governing tonal music. Recent results on psychoacoustic evaluation of consonance, which at first glance appear to be in conflict with musical experience, can be reconciled by a two-component concept of musical consonance. The first component is called sensory consonance; it represents the graded absence of annoying factors and is not confined to musical sounds, that is, not music specific. The second component of musical consonance is called harmony; it represents the typical, musicspecific principles of tonal affinity, compatibility, and fundamental-note relation (root). This concept is discussed in the context of Helmholtz's work on Konsonanz and Klangverwandtschaft. Helmholtz's work turns out to be an excellent basis of modern solutions to the consonance problem, as much of it still is valid, while the remainder can readily be replaced by more appropriate new solutions. The psychoacoustic foundations of sensory consonance, as provided by modern psychoacoustics, are largely identical with those found by Helmholtz. With regard to harmony, that is, the music-specific component of musical consonance, a new psychoacoustic foundation is provided by the established principles of virtualpitch perception. Several consequences and prospects of the concept for musical science are briefly considered.
The Color of Melody
Authors: Cuddy Lola L.
Published: September 2012

The vocabulary of color perception often enters the description of music and musical experience. However, analysis of the color—note or colorkey associations often reported for "synesthetic" musicians is problematic: color and music associations do not appear to preserve the organizational principles contained within the separate modalities. This study, influenced by recent work on parallel principles for color and speech/timbre perception, proposed that the operation of color principles in melody occurs not at the level of single-tone recognition but at a higher level of auditory organization. This level may be represented by the relationship among key or tonal centers projected on the cycle of fifths. Experimental work tested the prediction that perceived structure of various sequential mixtures of tonal centers would follow the general principles of color mixture. The prediction was supported by the data from fifteen musical listeners; it did fail, however, with a small group of selfreportedly "tone-deaf" listeners. Implications of the color metaphor for the study of tonality are discussed.
Tonal Structures of Children's Early Songs
Authors: Davidson Lyle
Published: September 2012

This report presents findings from a longitudinal study of nine preschool children. Evidence shows that the children's grasp of tonal materials can be characterized as a set of stable and increasingly prominent tonal structures, contour schemes. The characteristics of contour schemes are the interval that serves as the top and bottom boundaries of the tonal space of a phrase, the way in which the boundary notes are connected, and the direction of the contour. During the age period studied, the space of contour schemes expands from an interval of a third to nearly an octave.
Tonal Principles as Teaching Principles in Music
Authors: Francès Robert
Published: September 2012

Numerous experiments have demonstrated the effects of acculturation to a tonal scale system among Western listeners. Programmed instruction methods for the teaching of music can take advantage of this acculturation. Here I report several studies demonstrating the effectiveness of such programs. Both nonmusicians and musicians benefitted from training, although the greatest improvement was among students with some initial capacity. Interestingly, training with tonal materials led to improved test performance with both tonal and atonal items.
Synesthetic Perception: Alexander Scriabin's Color Hearing
Authors: Peacock Kenneth
Published: September 2012

Scriabin's decision to orchestrate his fifth symphony "Prometheus" with a "counterpoint of light" resulted from his perception of sound as literal color. This phenomenon is known as synesthesia, and by the early decades of this century, well over 100 specialized case studies had appeared in the experimental literature. The present article is in two parts. The first is a general discussion of the vast literature on synesthesia. With this perspective, Scriabin's color hearing can be understood to have resulted from a typical synesthetic pairing of diverse sensory stimuli. In part two, the composer's personal perception is examined, and an analysis of the "Tastiera per luce" in the orchestral score is presented. This part for colored light serves a dual function by indicating particular colors to be projected during performance as well as all transposition levels of the six-note pitch collection employed exclusively in the composition.
Music as Time's Measure
Authors: Clynes Manfred , Walker Janice
Published: September 2012

Repeated public performances including Beethoven Opus 130, 133, Haydn Opus 76, No. 5, Ravel Quartet, Janacek Quartet 2 by a well-known string quartet recorded live over a number of years in various cities and concert halls (a total of 170 entire movements) when analyzed show a striking long term ultrastability of timing; of the order of 0,2–0.6% for a number of fast and moderately fast movements. Stability was as good as that previously observed for single performers including Toscanini (Clynes & Walker, 1982; Clynes 1969). This indicates that shared musical concepts can be highly stable. Slower movements tend to be relatively less stable. Tempo compensation is often present so that if parts of a piece are played somewhat faster, other parts are correspondingly played slower to tend to maintain overall timing (as had been earlier found for single performances). Seven performances of Janacek's second quartet revealed what appeared as quantized small total duration changes. When examined for quantal tempo steps, 84 other performances of movements revealed apparent preferred tempo steps of 0.5% (0.48 ± 0.02). Performances of the first five movements of Beethoven's Opus 130 were all significantly slower when the Grosse Fuge was substituted for the finale. The high degree of stability otherwise observed indicates that environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, size of the hall, and variation of acoustics had little influence on the timing. The findings are significant in relation to the properties of the psychobiologic clocks involved; they show how musical concepts can precisely govern their long-term temporal realization, involving time spans of the order of 30 min., even when shared by four individuals; and further, that such shared concepts can remain stable over periods of several years.
I. Computation of Bell Profiles Using Structural Optimization
Authors: Schoofs A. , Van Asperen F. , Maas P. , Lehr A.
Published: September 2012

This article describes the design of the profile for a major-third bell using structural optimization strategies. First a sequential linear programming method was used to find a prototype of the bell. The necessary analyses were done using the finite element method. Next, a fast analysis model was derived by numerical experimental design techniques. This analysis model led to the final geometry of the major-third bell.
The Clustering of Temporal Elements in Melody
Authors: Hutchinson William , Knopoff Leon
Published: September 2012

Drawing upon analogies with pitch and dynamics, we hypothesize that there exists a durational alphabet in music out of which rhythmic and larger temporal events are built. The alphabet consists of the clustering of note durations into one of three elemental units: R(epetition), L(engthening), and S(hortening). Examples supporting this model are drawn from melodic lines by Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Shostakovich. The study of the compositional use of R, S, and L, particularly in chains of two and three, is shown to be an effective tool for stylistic description and discrimination. Moreover, consistent and dramatic differences in the frequency of use of specific sequences of R, S, and L and chains of these symbols suggest normative, syntactical structures found in the standard Western repertoire.
Effacing the Memory of Musical Pitch
Authors: Butler David , Ward W. Dixon
Published: September 2012

Researchers who design tests involving judgments of pitch face the persistent problem that test subjects may remember a pitch associated with one test item and carry that memory over to the next item. This immediate memory does weaken with time, but it weakens quite slowly. Although a number of studies report attempts to "erase" subjects' impressions by inserting distracting sounds— white noise bursts, electronically generated tone glides, excerpts from Schoenberg's Piano Concerto— between trials, no systematic study of the efficacy of pitch eraser patterns has yet been undertaken. An initial attempt was made to identify and measure a reasonably short list of variable attributes of distractor tones that might undo a listener's memory for the pitch of a test tone. Those variables were the length of the series of distractor tones, the rate at which distractor tones were presented, and the temperament system—or lack of it—used to tune distractor tones. Test results indicate that tuning variables have little effect on listeners' accuracy at identifying test tones. Series length and presentation rate, however, both have a strong effect on accuracy levels for pitch memory.
Dynamic Pitch Perception for Complex Tones Derived from Major Triads
Authors: Nakajima Yoshitaka , Tsumura Takashi , Matsuura Seiichi , Minami Hiroyuki , Teranishi Ryunen
Published: September 2012

A new type of complex tone that demonstrates pitch circularity is described. For such tones, the spectral envelope is trapezoidal on the coordinates of logarithmic frequency and logarithmic amplitude, and remains constant. The components of each tone form a major triad within each octave. The component frequencies were increased by steps of 1/10 octave from tone to tone, until the first tone was obtained again. According to our paired comparison experiments for pitch, which were analyzed using the multidimensional scaling technique, two kinds of pitch circularities appear. One group of subjects shows a pitch circularity corresponding to the exact spectral periodicity of an octave, and the other group a circularity corresponding to the roughly viewed spectral periodicity of 1/3 octave. The human ear seems to detect a global pitch movement when some spectral components move in the same direction by similar degrees on the logarithmic frequency dimension.
A Declarative Model of Atonal Analysis
Authors: Roeder John
Published: September 2012

Most computational models of musical understanding have focused on procedural aspects of analysis, suggesting techniques for parsing, comparing, and transforming various representations of a piece, or adapting discovery procedures of artificially intelligent (AI) inference systems, which plan and follow agendas and goals. Much contemporary AI research, however, also focuses on declarative aspects of knowledge, attempting to define data representations and relations that are commensurate with human cognition. Naturally, musical analysis has both procedural and declarative aspects: the declarative determines what the form of the analysis is, and the procedural determines how the analysis is obtained. However, a predominantly procedural analysis risks sacrificing the form of musical understanding to obtain efficiency or compatibility with a particular computer language. In this article I argue that, for a significant body of twentieth-century music, a declarative system models the structure of analytical understanding better than do existing procedural programs, and I present a functioning declarative system that infers complex musical structures from the elementary musical relations that it identifies.
Effects of Musical Soundtracks on Attitudes toward Animated Geometric Figures
Authors: Marshall Sandra K. , Cohen Annabel J.
Published: September 2012

We investigated the effects of musical soundtracks on attitudes to figures in a short animated film. In a preliminary study and in the main experiment, subjects saw the film accompanied by one of two soundtracks or with no soundtrack, or they heard one of the two soundtracks alone. In the main experiment, Semantic Differential judgments on Activity and Potency dimensions, obtained for the music, predicted effects of the soundtracks on corresponding ratings of the film as compared to ratings in a no soundtrack condition. As well, ratings on the Activity dimension of the film characters themselves were altered by the soundtracks. It is hypothesized that congruent auditory and visual structure directs the encoding of particular visual features of the film. In addition, associations generated by the music provide a context for the interpretation of the action in the film. As a result, stimulus features and concepts that are initially encoded as disjunctive conjoin in perception and memory.
Perceived and Imagined Tempos of Familiar Songs
Authors: Halpern Andrea R.
Published: September 2012

Two studies investigated the similarity of metronome settings to perceived and imagined familiar songs by subjects unselected for musical ability. In Study 1, mean tempo settings in the two tasks were about 100 beats per minute. Songs with slower perceived tempos tended to be faster in the imagery task and vice versa. In Study 2, subjects set fastest and slowest acceptable tempos for the same set of songs in the imagery mode. These settings were positively correlated with the preferred tempo for the song. Most subjects thought that there were limits on how fast or slow a song could be imagined. These results suggest that tempo is explicitly represented in auditory imagery.
Relationship of Musical Preference to Collative, Ecological, and Psychophysical Variables
Authors: Martindale Colin , Moore Kathleen
Published: September 2012

Two experiments were conducted in order to test predictions derived from Berlyne's theory of aesthetic preference. According to the theory, preference is an inverted-U function of arousal potential; the determinants of arousal potential are summed, with the consequence that an increase in the amount of one determinant leads to a decrease in the maximally preferred level of other determinants; and collative properties, such as dissonance, are the most important predictors of preference. The experiments supported none of these predictions. Preference tended to be related to its determinants by monotonic or U-shaped functions. The predicted trade-off among the determinants of preference was not clearly present. Semantic factors rather than collative properties were the most important determinants of preference. In Experiment 1, uncertainty was related to preference in an inverted-U manner, but it was shown that this may be an artifact of a U-shaped relationship between preference and melodic typicality. In Experiment 2, it was found that subject-rated meaningfulness is highly related to preference for melodies, whereas subjectively perceived complexity is essentially unrelated to preference. The results are explained in terms of a cognitive theory of aesthetic preference.
The Speed of Musical Pitch Identification by Absolute-Pitch Possessors
Authors: Miyazaki Ken'ichi
Published: September 2012

Three experiments on absolute- pitch identification were performed to examine how quickly and accurately subjects with absolute pitch could respond to different pitch classes. Sixty different pitches in a five-octave range were tested. Subjects with absolute pitch tried to identify the tones as rapidly as possible by pressing corresponding keys on a musical keyboard or a numerical keypad, or by naming vocally. Converging evidence was obtained indicating that the speed and accuracy of responses were directly related. In general, responses to the white-key notes on the musical keyboard were faster and more accurate than those to the black-key notes, C and G being most quickly and accurately identified. This seems to reflect the differential accessibility of pitch classes in the long-term memory of the absolute-pitch possessors, which may be interpreted as a consequence of the acquisition process of absolute pitch in early life.
Perceptual Scaling of Simultaneous Wind Instrument Timbres
Authors: Kendall Roger A. , Carterette Edward C.
Published: September 2012

Timbral similarities among wind instrument duos were studied. Flute, oboe, E♭ alto saxophone, B♭ clarinet, and B♭ trumpet instrumentalists performed in all possible duo pairings (dyads). Source material included B♭4 unisons, unison melody, major thirds, and harmonized melody. Nonunison combinations had each instrument of the pair as the soprano, creating a total of six contexts. Music major and nonmusic major subjects rated the similarity of all possible pairs of dyads in each of the six contexts. Classical multidimensional scaling (MDS) was performed; contexts were treated as " subjects" in an individual differences scaling (INDSCAL) analysis of composite data. The resulting spaces had two stable, interpretable dimensions. From verbal attribute rating experiments ( Kendall & Carterette, in preparation, a), these were identified as " nasal" vs. " not nasal," and " rich" vs. " brilliant." A third dimension was interpreted as "simple" vs. "complex."Extrema in the space were associated with three of the five instruments: Trumpet (brilliant), saxophone (rich), and oboe ( nasal). Data that were amalgamated over contexts and plotted in two dimensions yielded a circumplicial configuration. Implications for orchestration are discussed and a theoretical model of timbre combinations and groupings is presented.
The Effects of Structural Interventions in the First Movement of Mozart's Symphony in G Minor K. 550 on Aesthetic Preference
Authors: Karno Mitchell , Konečni Vladimir J.
Published: September 2012

In a debate in this journal concerning the importance of structure in the effects of musical compositions, Robert Batt suggested the first movement of Mozart's Symphony in G Minor K. 550 as the ideal example on which research could contravene the minimal effects of structural interventions that have been observed in prior research by Konečni. This article reports the results of putting Batt's suggestion to empirical test. As Batt pointed out, the first movement of K. 550 can be broken down into nine segments that can be broadly defined as expository (two themes), developmental, and recapitulative (two themes). The original and four differentially intrusive versions of the piece were presented to 42 college non—music-student subjects and 11 college music-student subjects. On the dimensions of pleasingness, interestingess, and a desire to own a copy of the piece, the original version consistently failed to elicit greater preference than the altered versions did in both subject populations, although all versions were much liked by these nonmusician and musician subjects.
Vibration Sensation in Humans
Authors: Verrillo Ronald T.
Published: September 2012

The proposition that the performer of music can use vibrotactile sensations to supplement auditory cues as feedback signals in order to enhance tonal control of the instrument is examined. As a basis for evaluating this proposition, we present some fundamental characteristics of human vibrotactile sensation, including measurements at the threshold of detectability, at suprathreshold levels, and of subject variables that could affect sensation. It is reasonable to assume that the sensory capacities of skin could enable tactile feedback cues to be used by singers and some instrumentalists in controlling the tone of their instruments.
The Development of Referential Meaning in Music
Authors: Trainor Laurel J. , Trehub Sandra E.
Published: September 2012

We explored the development of children's ability to relate musical forms to extramusical concepts. In Experiment 1, we presented four excerpts from Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and asked 4-and 6-yearold children to match each excerpt to a picture of a wolf, bird, cat, or duck (four-alternative forced choice). Children matched appropriate animal pictures to musical excerpts significantly better than chance but identified the wolf and bird more readily than the cat and duck excerpts. In Experiment 2, 3-year-olds participated in a simplified version of the task (two-alternative forced choice). The order of difficulty of matching the various music-animal pairs was comparable across all age groups. In Experiment 3, we replicated Experiment 1 with less familiar music, specifically Saint Saen's Carnival of the Animals. Again, performance was above chance, increasing the likelihood that children's success in Experiments 1 and 2 was not attributable to previous exposure to the music. We discuss the results in relation to theories of musical meaning.
Listening with Two Ears
Authors: Schroeder Manfred R.
Published: September 2012

This informal overview of binaural hearing covers directional hearing (in the horizontal and vertical planes), the precedence and Haas effects and their applications in public-address and "assisted-resonance" systems, artificial reverberation, pseudo-stereophony, binaural release from masking, the cocktail-party effect, central-pitch phenomena, Deutsch's octave illusion, the creation of virtual sound images, and the faithful reproduction of concert hall recordings in an anechoic environment for acoustical quality studies. The article concludes with a brief review of sound-diffusing surfaces based on a number theory.
Verbal Attributes of Simultaneous Wind Instrument Timbres: I. von Bismarck's Adjectives
Authors: Kendall Roger A. , Carterette Edward C.
Published: September 2012

A study on the verbal attributes of timbre was conducted in an effort to interpret the dimensional configuration of the similarity spaces of simultaneously sounding wind instrument timbres. In the first experiment, subjects rated 10 wind instrument dyads on eight factorially pure semantic differentials from von Bismarck's (1974a) experiments. Results showed that the semantic differentials failed to differentiate among the 10 timbres. The semantic differential methodology was changed to verbal attribute magnitude estimation (VAME), in which a timbre is assigned an amount of a given attribute. This procedure resulted in better differentiation among the 10 timbres, the first factor including attributes such as heavy, hard, and loud, the second factor involving sharp and complex, a contrast with von Bismarck's results. Results of the VAME analysis separated alto saxophone dyads from all others, but mapped only moderately well onto the perceptual similarity spaces. It was suggested that many of the von Bismarck adjectives lacked ecological validity.
Musical Training Improves Processing of Tonality in the Left Hemisphere
Authors: Pechstedt Polly Henninger , Kershner John , Kinsbourne Marcel
Published: September 2012

Melodies that had been rated by music professors on degree of tonality and melodiousness were paired with noise and presented dichotically to 48 musically trained and untrained subjects. The subjects' abilities to recognize a transposed version of a melody among four similar choices designed to elicit training differences were compared. Trained subjects showed the greatest performance advantage on tonal, relatively amelodic melodies, indicating that musical training increases effective use of tonality. Neither group showed a laterality effect for correct choices; error patterns revealed lateralized strategies. Subjects in both groups showed a right-ear advantage discriminating the true transposition from a distractor that conserved tonality. Trained subjects preferred the true transposition, but untrained preferred the distractor, indicating that untrained subjects' mental representations were inadequate. Neither group discriminated between these two choices reliably in left-ear presentations. Results support left hemispheric specialization for analytic processing but fail to support lateralized strategy differences between trained and untrained subjects. The results suggest that training makes the left hemisphere less vulnerable to perceptual similarities.
A Constraint on the Expressive Timing of a Melodic Gesture: Evidence from Performance and Aesthetic Judgment
Authors: Repp Bruno H.
Published: September 2012

Discussions of music performance often stress diversity and artistic freedom, yet there is general agreement that interpretation is not arbitrary and that there are standards that performances can be judged by. However, there have been few objective demonstrations of any extant constraints on music performance and judgment, particularly at the level of expressive microstructure. This study illustrates such a constraint in one specific case: the expressive timing of a melodic gesture that occurs repeatedly in Robert Schumann's famous piano piece, "Traumerei." Tone onset timing measurements in 28 recorded performances by famous pianists suggest that the most common " temporal shape" of this (nominally isochronous) musical gesture is parabolic and that individual variations can be described largely by varying a single degree of freedom of the parabolic timing function. The aesthetic validity of this apparent constraint on local performance timing was investigated in a perceptual experiment. Listeners judged a variety of timing patterns (original parabolic, shifted parabolic, and nonparabolic) imposed on the same melodic gesture, produced on an electronic piano under control of a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI). The original parabolic patterns received the highest ratings from musically trained listeners. (Musically untrained listeners were unable to give consistent judgments.) The results support the hypothesis that there are classes of optimal temporal shapes for melodic gestures in music performance and that musically acculturated listeners know and expect these shapes. Being classes of shapes, they represent flexible constraints within which artistic freedom and individual preference can manifest themselves.
The Function of Accompanying Chords in the Recognition of Melodic Fragments
Authors: Povel Dirk-Jan , Van Egmond René
Published: September 2012

The function attributed to chords accompanying melodies depends on the theory of music perception adhered to. In a hierarchical model of music perception, chords can be viewed as local frames of reference that are used to code the tones of the melody they accompany. This view predicts that the recognition of a melody may be disturbed if the melody is presented with different chordal accompaniments. A less hierarchical conception of music perception may assume that the coding of the melodic line is relatively independent of the coding of the chords. This view leads to the prediction that melody recognition will not be influenced by the accompanying chords. These contrasting predictions were tested in an experiment in which subjects compared nine-tone melodies by using a standard-comparison paradigm. In different conditions, the standard and comparison melodies were presented with and without accompaniment, or with different accompaniments. Results show that melody recognition is unaffected by the variations in accompaniments, supporting the view that melody and accompaniment are processed relatively independently. Consequences for a model of music perception and, especially, for the perceptual function of chords are discussed.
Interval-Class Content in Equally Tempered Pitch-Class Sets: Common Scales Exhibit Optimum Tonal Consonance
Authors: Huron David
Published: September 2012

Pitch-class sets (such as scales) can be characterized according to the inventory of possible intervals that can be formed by pairing all pitches in the set. The frequency of occurrence of various interval classes in a given pitch-class set can be correlated with corresponding measures of perceived consonance for each interval class. If a goal of music-making is to promote a euphonious effect, then those sets that exhibit a plethora of consonant intervals and a paucity of dissonant intervals might be of particular interest to musicians. In this paper, it is shown that the pitch-class sets that provide the most consonant interval-class inventories are the major diatonic scale, the harmonic and melodic minor scales, and equally tempered equivalents of the Japanese Ritsu mode, the common pentatonic scale, and the common "blues" scale. Consonant harmonic intervals are more readily available in these sets than in other possible sets that can be drawn from the 12 equally tempered pitch chromas.
A Perceptual Model of Pulse Salience and Metrical Accent in Musical Rhythms
Authors: Parncutt Richard
Published: September 2012

In Experiment 1, six cyclically repeating interonset interval patterns (1,2:1,2:1:1,3:2:1,3:1:2, and 2:1:1:2) were each presented at six different note rates (very slow to very fast). Each trial began at a random point in the rhythmic cycle. Listeners were asked to tap along with the underlying beat or pulse. The number of times a given pulse (period, phase) was selected was taken as a measure of its perceptual salience. Responses gravitated toward a moderate pulse period of about 700 ms. At faster tempi, taps coincided more often with events followed by longer interonset intervals. In Experiment 2, listeners heard the same set of rhythmic patterns, plus a single sound in a different timbre, and were asked whether the extra sound fell on or off the beat. The position of the downbeat was found to be quite ambiguous. A quantitative model was developed from the following assumptions. The phenomenal accent of an event depends on the interonset interval that follows it, saturating for interonset intervals greater than about 1 s. The salience of a pulse sensation depends on the number of events matching a hypothetical isochronous template, and on the period of the template—pulse sensations are most salient in the vicinity of roughly 100 events per minute (moderate tempo). The metrical accent of an event depends on the saliences of pulse sensations including that event. Calculated pulse saliences and metrical accents according to the model agree well with experimental results (r > 0.85). The model may be extended to cover perceived meter, perceptible subdivisions of a beat, categorical perception, expressive timing, temporal precision and discrimination, and primacy/recency effects. The sensation of pulse may be the essential factor distinguishing musical rhythm from nonrhythm.
Cue Trading in the Perception of Rhythmic Structure
Authors: Tekman Hasan Gürkan
Published: September 2012

The effects of variations in three pairs of variables on identification and discrimination of rhythmic patterns in pure-tone sequences were investigated. It was found that adding a timing difference to two sequences that differed in terms of the pattern of tone intensities improved discrimination if variations of the two variables converged on the same rhythmic pattern but did not help if the variation in timing undermined the rhythmic pattern created by the intensity variation. Adding a difference in the intensities of tones to two sequences that differed in terms of the pitch structure produced a similar pattern of results. The effect of adding a difference in pitch structure to two sequences that differed in terms of timing was not reliably related to the way the differences were combined. The results showed that, at least for some variables, predicting discrimination performance from probabilities of detecting a rhythmic pattern is possible. The relationship of the results to cue trading in speech perception and research possibilities with similar methods are discussed.
The Dependence of Coherence Estimates of Spontaneous EEG on Gender and Music Training
Authors: Johnson Julene K. , Petsche Hellmuth , Richter Peter , Von Stein Astrid , Filz Oliver
Published: September 2012

This study examined differences in the spontaneous electroencephalographic (EEG) signal in terms of music training and gender. Coherence estimates obtained by spectral analysis provided an efficacious method to study these differences. In the first study, differences in the spontaneous EEG between subjects with and without music training were observed. Subjects with music training exhibited significantly higher coherence values both within and between cerebral hemispheres when compared with subjects without music training. The most striking differences were observed in the two lowest (delta and theta) and two highest (beta 1 and beta 2) bands, with differences in the temporoparietal regions of both hemispheres being most prominent. The findings are discussed in terms of specialized organization of brain activity that influences cortical connectivity. Using the same method, differences in spontaneous EEG were also found between male and female subjects. Females tended to have significantly higher interhemispheric coherence values when compared with males. Both findings are also supported by recently discovered anatomic differences.
A Parallel-Processing Key-Finding Model
Authors: Vos Piet G. , Van Geenen Erwin W.
Published: September 2012

A model of key finding is presented for single-voiced pieces of tonal music. Each tone is input as a pitch class and a duration. The model makes a parallel search for the key in the scalar and chordal domains, taking into account primacy and memory constraints. The model has been tested for a range of tonal music including the fugue subjects of J. S. Bach's Wohltemperierte Klavier (WTK). The notated key was usually found after a few processing steps and from then on remained stable— but was still sensitive to modulation. The performance of the parallel-processing model was compared with the performance of key-finding models previously proposed by Krumhansl and Schmuckler and by Longuet-Higgins and Steedman. The comparison showed that the new model's most distinctive features, implementation of parallel key search in the scalar and chordal domains, as well as the implementation of search-restricting factors, primacy and memory, make the new model a powerful and plausible alternative to the other models. Subsequently, the parallel-processing model's perceptual plausibility has been tested in two experiments, in which 20 musically well-trained subjects had to produce the key(s) of eight WTK fugue themes (Experiment 1) and to rate the key transparency for seven contrapuntal variations of the A minor subject of J. S. Bach's Kunst der Fuge (Experiment 2). A substantial concordance between listeners' judgments and the key inferences produced by the model was found in both experiments. Conceptual limitations, such as the model's disregard for the potential impact of recency on key finding and for expectations from functional implications of tone order, are discussed. Potential extensions of the model are suggested, as well as ideas for further perceptual studies in which the model might be tested in a more advanced manner than in the present study.
The Communicative Force of Wagner's Leitmotifs: Complementary Relationships between Their Connotations and Denotations
Authors: Hacohen Ruth , Wagner Naphtali
Published: September 2012

Wagner's leitmotifs were intentionally constructed as compact, discrete musical units charged with extramusical meaning. Should they be considered merely as arbitrary signifiers, whose signifieds are discovered only through the dramatic context of their appearance? The research reported here rejects this possibility, demonstrating experimentally that the leitmotifs bear inherent meaning. It is this meaning that grants them their communicative potential and provides a basis for the specific message given them in the setting of the specific musical work. A selection of nine representative leitmotifs from Wagner's Ring cycle was played to subjects during the course of a two-part experiment. The first part, which was designed on the basis of the semantic differential technique, yielded several significant factors that defined an inclusive connotative space. The second part of the experiment was designed and evaluated according to the "semantic integral" method, which was developed for the purpose of adding a denotative dimension, using titles given to the leitmotifs by the subjects. The results substantiated the existence of complementary relations between the connotative and denotative aspects of the leitmotifs. Findings of this sort should assist in explaining how the leitmotifs function within the dramatic context. The methods applied, as well as the findings arrived at, disclose, we believe, essential characteristics of the semantic structure of music in general.
Syntactic Processing in Language and Music: Different Cognitive Operations, Similar Neural Resources?
Authors: Patel Aniruddh D.
Published: September 2012

Does the processing of structural relations in music have anything in common with the syntactic processing of language? Important differences in the form, purpose, and use of syntactic structures in the two domains suggest that the answer should be "no." However, recent eventrelated brain potential (ERP) data suggest that some aspect of syntactic processing is shared between domains. These considerations lead to a novel hypothesis that linguistic and musical syntactic processing engage different cognitive operations, but rely on a common set of neural resources for processes of structural integration in working memory ("shared structural integration resource" hypothesis). This hypothesis yields a nonintuitive prediction about musical processing in aphasic persons, namely, that high-and low-comprehending agrammatic Broca's aphasics should differ in their musical syntactic processing abilities. This hypothesis suggests how comparison of linguistic and musical syntactic processing can be a useful tool for the study of processing specificity ("modularity") in cognitive neuroscience.
The Role of Prosody in Semantic Interpretation
Authors: Pynte Joel
Published: September 2012

Four psycholinguistic experiments are reported, the aim of which was to examine whether and how the perceptual grouping of words into higher order units imposed by prosody can influence on-line sentence comprehension. The results suggest that prosodic phrasing does not directly influence syntactic decisions, but rather operates at the semantic interpretation level, in relation with lexical and discourse-level factors (e. g., verbs' argument structure and referential completedness of noun phrases).
Topic in Music: An Empirical Study of Memorability, Openness, and Emotion in Mozart's String Quintet in C Major and Beethoven's String Quartet in A Minor
Authors: Krumhansl Carol L.
Published: September 2012

This study examines possible parallels between large-scale organization in music and discourse structure. Two experiments examine the psychological reality of topics in the first movements of W. A. Mozart's String Quintet No. 3 in C major, K. 515, and L. van Beethoven's String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132. Listeners made real-time judgments on three continuous scales: memorability, openness, and amount of emotion. All three kinds of judgments could be accounted for by the topics identified in these pieces by Agawu (1991) independently of the listeners' musical training. The results showed hierarchies of topics. However, these differed for the three tasks and for the two pieces. The topics in the Mozart piece appear to function as a way of establishing the musical form, whereas the topics in the Beethoven piece are more strongly associated with emotional content.
Testing Models of Melodic Contour Similarity
Authors: Schmuckler Mark A.
Published: September 2012

In two experiments, descriptions of melodic contour structure and predictions of perceived similarity relations between pairs of contours produced by a number of different models are examined. Two of these models, based on the music- theoretic approaches of Friedmann (1985) and Marvin and Laprade (1987), characterize contours in terms of interval content or contour subset information. The remaining two approaches quantify the global shape of the contours, through the presence of cyclical information (assessed via Fourier analysis) and the amount of oscillation (e. g., reversals in direction, pitch deviations) in the contours. Theoretical predictions for contour similarity generated by these models were examined for 20th century, nontonal melodies (Experiment 1) and simplistic, tonal patterns (Experiment 2). These experiments demonstrated that similarity based on Fourier analysis procedures and oscillation measures predicted a derived measure of perceived similarity, with both variables contributing relatively independently; the music- theoretic models were inconsistent in their predictive power. These results suggest that listeners are sensitive to the presence of global shape information in melodic contour, with such information underlying the perception of contour structure and contour similarity.
Redefining Pitch Proximity: Tessitura and Mobility as Constraints on Melodic Intervals
Authors: Von Hippel Paul
Published: September 2012

In descriptions of melodic structure, "pitch proximity" is usually defined as the tendency for small pitch intervals to outnumber large ones. This definition is valid as far as it goes; however, an alternative definition is preferable. The alternative defines pitch proximity in terms of two more basic constraints—a constraint on tessitura (or pitch distribution) and a constraint on "mobility" (or freedom of motion). This new definition offers several advantages. Whereas the usual definition predicts only interval size, the new definition predicts interval direction as well. The usual definition predicts small intervals generally, whereas the new definition predicts context- sensitive variations in interval size. Finally, if the new definition is given the first few notes in a melody, it can assign a probability to each of the pitches that could occur next. In sum, the new definition offers a more precise and detailed description of melodic structure.
Tonality Induction: Theoretical Problems and Dilemmas
Authors: Vos Piet G.
Published: September 2012

Fundamental problems and dilemmas for the study of tonality induction are reviewed. I focus on two different, although related types of research impediments. The first is the fuzziness of the key notion "tonality" itself, which leads to divergent conceptualizations of tonality induction, such as "key finding," "tonal induction," "tonal center perception," and "tonal feeling." I argue that the fuzziness is largely due to the lack of welldefined historical or otherwise categorical boundaries of "Western tonal music." The second impediment arises from various dualities in music, notably tone versus note representations, tonal versus intervallic representations, horizontal ("leading voice") cues for tonality induction versus vertical ones ("fundamentals"), and tonal versus temporal tonality induction cues. (Dis) advantages of various interpretations of tonality induction and of solutions of the dualities in question are considered. A few recommendations for reconciliation between currently divergent theoretical approaches to tonality induction are suggested.
Tone Profiles following Short Chord Progressions: Top-down or Bottom-up?
Authors: Parncutt Richard , Bregman Albert S.
Published: September 2012

Three experiments explored the relationship between chroma-salience profiles of individual chords and tone profiles obtained after short chord progressions. Musicians' tone profiles for diatonic progressions of one, two, and three chords were compared with predictions of three models: a bottom- up stimulus model (number of times each chroma occurs in the progression), a top-down or schema-driven key model (best-fitting key profile of C. L. Krumhansl & E. J. Kessler, 1982), and an intermediate pitch model that includes both top-down and bottom-up components (cumulative pitch salience; R. Parncutt, 1989, 1993). For single chords, all predictors significantly matched tone profiles, except the key model applied to the diminished triad. For pairs of chords, the pitch and key models consistently outperformed the stimulus model, consistent with the assumption that a (top- down) key had been established; in the pitch model, the second chord influenced the tone profile more than the first (recency effect). Progressions of three chords comprised forward (e. g., FG-C) and backward (C-G-F) cadences in major and minor keys. The pitch and key models were successful for all progressions, but the key model predicted the tonic of backward cadences in C major and minor to be F. Predictions of the stimulus model were clearly worse than those of the other models, especially for backward cadences. Both primacy and recency effects were observed. In summary, the pitch model was the most consistently successful model over all experiments. To successfully predict tone profiles following chord progressions, it was necessary to account not only for recency (and primacy) but also for variations in pitch salience within chords. Results are consistent with a model of tonality induction in which bottom-up processes interact in real time with top-down processes of two kinds: recognition of harmonic pitch patterns and recognition of key profiles.
The Avoidance of Part-Crossing in Polyphonic Music: Perceptual Evidence and Musical Practice
Authors: Huron David
Published: September 2012

A number of experimental studies have demonstrated that the perceptual tracking of auditory streams is confounded when streams cross with respect to pitch. A study of part-crossing in 105 polyphonic works by J. S. Bach shows a marked reluctance to have parts cross—even when the effects of pitch distribution (tessitura) are controlled. Moreover, when the textural density increases beyond two concurrent voices, Bach becomes more vigilant to avoid part-crossing even though an increase in part- crossing is preordained. In light of evidence that perceptual confusion increases with the number of concurrent voices, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that Bach endeavors to minimize perceptual confusion as the density of auditory images increases.
Courtly Behaviors
Authors: Gjerdingen Robert O.
Published: September 2012

In addition to preserving a record of tones, chords, intervals, and other musical features, the historical text known as Mozart's Keyboard Sonata in Et Major, K. 282 (189g), also preserves traces of complex musical behaviors that were developed and replicated within eighteenth-century court society. The article focuses on several musical behaviors that would have been obvious to courtiers in Mozart's time and relates his presentation of them in K. 282 to courtly norms.