Ascending and Descending Melodic Intervals: Statistical Findings and Their Perceptual Relevance

Abstract

Evidence is reported for the existence and the perceptual relevance of a hitherto rather unattended regularity of melodic patterns in Western music. An inquiry into the occurrence of within-octave melodic intervals in a large variety of examples of Western music showed small intervals to be predominantly descenders and large ones to be ascenders. The perceptual relevance of the distributional regularity in question was tested. Subjects were required to discriminate between computer-generated melodic patterns that were endowed either with the discovered regularity of shape distribution over intervals or with the reversed structure. The results were convincingly positive. Music-theoretical intuitions of Meyer (1956, 1973) are used to account for the data and to claim their generalizability to non-Western melodic patterns. Finally, the outcome of this study is discussed with respect to its relevance to various musicological and music-psychological issues.

An interval size illusion: The influence of timbre on the perceived size of melodic intervals

“…One explanation for this effect relates to familiarity. Large intervals such as the tritone and perfect fifth occur more often in the ascending direction than in the descending direction (Meyer, 1973, p. 145;Vos & Troost, 1989). Trained participants may have particularly stable mental representations of these ascending intervals, leading to better discrimination and reduced susceptibility to the effects of timbre.…”

EPS Prize Lecture: Characterizing congenital amusia

“…In Western music, most melodies are constructed with small intervals between consecutive tones; 70% of intervals are either repeated pitches or 1 or 2 semitones (Vos & Troost, 1989). Thus, an inability to discriminate adjacent pitches would probably have far-reaching consequences for the representation of higher order musical features such as contour (the pattern of ups and downs of a melody) and key (the set of hierarchically related pitches from which the melody is composed).…”

Expectation in Melody: The Influence of Context and Learning

“…In a statistical analysis of a large variety of Western melodic music, for example, Vos and Troost (1989) found that smaller intervals tend to be of a predominantly descending form while larger ones occur mainly in ascending form. A behavioral experiment demonstrated that listeners are able to correctly classify artificially generated patterns that either exhibited or failed to exhibit the regularity.…”