An Investigation of Adult Listeners’ Conservation of Melody Under Harmonic Deformations

Abstract

This study extends Zimmerman’s research on children’s music conservation to adult listeners, investigating participants’ ability to conserve melody under different harmonic conditions. Specifically, I investigated whether listeners in the study could identify melody when primary, diatonic, and secondary chords were added (Task 1) and when melody was harmonized differently (Task 2). Additionally, could they dissociate melody from harmony (Task 3)? Participants ( N = 80) listened to 34 pairs of examples and identified if the melody was the same or different in each pair. Results indicated that (a) listeners could conserve melody with addition of harmony regardless of harmonic conditions, (b) they could conserve melody when harmony was changed but were significantly better conserving melody when harmony was changed from primary to diatonic chords than from primary to secondary chords, and (c) they could dissociate melody from harmony but were significantly better with diatonic chords than secondary chords. As Task 3 was the reverse of Task 1, the finding that adult listeners conserved in one direction (Task 1) but not necessarily in the opposite direction (Task 3) and vice versa may suggest the existence of musical reversibility.

Conservation of Melody With Varied Harmonizations: A Comparison of Adult Listeners From China and the United States

“…All participants were currently enrolled in a music class whose content included basic Western music theory such as knowledge about intervals and scales and reading music notation—including both Chinese numeral and Western staff notation. The data for U.S. participants ( N = 80) were drawn from the earlier study (Liu, 2018). The U.S. participants were female education majors, ages 18 to 24 ( M = 19.35), from a large university in the southwestern United States taking a music class for elementary classroom teachers.…”

“…The entire music conservation test was exactly taken from the original study (Liu, 2018). It included six melodies (M1 to M6) selected from Petzold’s (1966) harmonic test with established validity and reliability, with two melodies harmonized in each of three harmonic conditions, by using primary (Hp), diatonic (Hd), or secondary chords (Hs).…”

“…I also used two identical pairings, with one pair being the melody itself and the other pair being the melody with harmony, as a check on participants’ melodic memory (Webster & Zimmerman, 1983; Zimmerman & Sechrest, 1968) and response consistency (Vispoel, 1993). Therefore, the entire test included 34 pairs of listening examples (for more information and the examples of harmonization, please refer to the supplementary material and figures in Liu, 2018).…”

“…Based on previous research, I (Liu, 2018) extended Zimmerman’s research in the following aspects: (a) The participants were extended to young adults (U.S. college students), (b) harmony was not limited to primary chords as in previous research but also expanded to diatonic and secondary chords, and (c) there were three melodic conservation tasks, including Task I, a task commonly used in previous music conservation research in which listeners heard the melody first, followed by the melody with harmony; Task II, a more advanced task but rarely seen in music conservation research in which listeners heard a melody with harmony first, followed by the same melody with different harmony; and Task III, a researcher-designed task in which listeners heard the melody with harmony first, followed by the melody alone.…”

“…The original study (Liu, 2018) showed that U.S. young adult listeners had well-developed abilities to conserve melody in all three music tasks. Statistically speaking, there was no significant difference between Task I and Task III, the two inverse tasks with the same listening materials but in reversed presentation orders.…”