Contributions of pitch contour, tonality, rhythm, and meter to melodic similarity.

Abstract

The identity of a given melody resides in its sequence of pitches and durations, both of which exhibit surface details as well as structural properties. For the purposes of this research, pitch contour (pattern of ups and downs) served as pitch surface information, and tonality (musical key) as pitch structure; in the temporal dimension, surface information was the ordinal duration ratios of adjacent notes (rhythm), and metre (beat, or pulse) comprised the structure.Manipulating factorially the preservation or alteration of all of these forms of information in 17 novel melodies (typifying Western music) enabled measuring their effect on perceived melodic similarity. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 34, varied musical training) rated the perceived similarity of melody pairs transposed to new starting pitches. Rhythm was the largest contributor to perceived similarity, then contour, metre, and tonality. Experiment 2 used the same melodies but varied the tempo within a pair, and added a prefix of three chords, which oriented the listener to the starting pitch and tempo before the melody began. Now contour was the strongest influence on similarity ratings, followed by tonality, and then rhythm; metre was not significant. Overall, surface features influenced perceived similarity more than structural, but both had observable effects. The primary theoretical advances in melodic similarity research are that (1) the relative emphasis on pitch and temporal factors is flexible, (2) pitch and time functioned independently when manipulated factorially, regardless of which dimension is more influential, and (3) interactions between surface and structural information were unreliable and never occurred between dimensions.Running head: MELODIC SIMILARITY

Domain-Generality of Timing-Based Serial Order Processes in Short-Term Memory: New Insights from Musical and Verbal Domains

“…In Experiment 1, using a standard probe sequence recognition paradigm, many participants reported using a visual strategy, favoring global matching procedures based on the comparison of contour-based relational shape patterns of the target and probe musical sequences [72] rather than storage of separated item representations and item-serial position associations. Previous experiments in musical cognition showed that the salience of a dimension such as pitch or temporal structure can prioritize the processing of one of them at the expense of the other [76–78]. Providing full melodic context at encoding and recognition, as we did in Experiment 1, could therefore have prioritized the processing of global contour shape information, at the expense of detailed, item-based pitch processing.…”

Modelling Melodic Discrimination Tests: Descriptive and Explanatory Approaches

“…Instead of detecting differences between melodies, the participant's task is to evaluate the similarity of these melodies (e.g. Eerola & Bregman, 2007;Müllensiefen & Frieler, 2007;Prince, 2014). However, whether the task is to evaluate melodic similarity or to detect melodic differences seems to make little difference to response patterns (Bartlett & Dowling, 1988).…”

Dancers’ Somatic of Musicality

“…We note that some preliminary support for the separation of brain activities during rhythm-related movement from brain activities during non-rhythm-related movement was reported (Brown et al, 2005; Phillips-Silver, 2009). Some experiments demonstrated that the perception of rhythm may influence the perception of melody (Prince, 2014). The consistency of the somatic of musicality of dancers, as well as the reasons for it, needs further investigation.…”