Perceptual Tests of an Algorithm for Musical Key-Finding.

Abstract

Perceiving the tonality of a musical passage is a fundamental aspect of the experience of hearing music. Models for determining tonality have thus occupied a central place in music cognition research. Three experiments investigated 1 well-known model of tonal determination: the Krumhansl-Schmuckler key-finding algorithm. In Experiment 1, listeners' percepts of tonality following short musical fragments derived from preludes by Bach and Chopin were compared with predictions of tonality produced by the algorithm; these predictions were very accurate for the Bach preludes but considerably less so for the Chopin preludes. Experiment 2 explored a subset of the Chopin preludes, finding that the algorithm could predict tonal percepts on a measure-by-measure basis. In Experiment 3, the algorithm predicted listeners' percepts of tonal movement throughout a complete Chopin prelude. These studies support the viability of the Krumhansl-Schmuckler key-finding algorithm as well as a model of listeners' tonal perceptions of musical passages.

Impaired Explicit Processing of Musical Syntax and Tonality in a Group of Mandarin-Speaking Congenital Amusics

“…Because the sense of tonality is the basis for the processing of chord and key structures (Patel, 2008;Schmuckler & Tomovski, 2005), and tonality reflects an important component of tonal music grammar (Steinke, Cuddy, & Holden, 1997), it is reasonable to expect that amusia is also associated with poor tonality processing in explicit tasks.…”

“…In Western music, both tonality and syntax play especially prominent roles in music perception and experience, presumably because semantic processing is less specific for music than for language (Koelsch, 2005;Koelsch, Gunter, Wittfoth, & Sammler, 2005;Schmuckler & Tomovski, 2005;Steinbeis & Koelsch, 2008). As such, exploring syntax and tonality perception in amusia is essential for clarifying the relationship between (low-level) pitch discrimination and (higher-level) musical structure processing.…”

“…Musical syntax and tonality play important roles in the enjoyment of Western tonal music (Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983;Patel, Gibson, Ratner, Besson, & Holcomb, 1998;Schmuckler & Tomovski, 2005). During a listening experience, listeners draw on their knowledge of the tonal functions of musical events in order to predict subsequent events.…”

Probing the Minor Tonal Hierarchy

“…One such prominent model, the Krumhansl-Schmuckler key-finding algorithm (Krumhansl, 1990;Krumhansl & Schmuckler, 1986;Schmuckler & Tomovski, 2005), uses values derived from to match the pattern of the pitch class duration distributions in the musical excerpt with its best-fit tonal hierarchy in order to resolve the key of the excerpt. Temperley (2001) has proposed a modified version of the model, in which musical excerpts are segmented and then pitch class present/absent distributions are calculated (in place of the duration distributions used by Krumhansl and colleagues).…”

“…Of the 26 studies employing minor keys, 22 did not specify the minor type, three used natural minor contexts, one used harmonic minor contexts, and none used melodic minor contexts. These 26 minor key studies focused on an array of themes, including key finding (Brown, 1988;Cohen, 1991;Corso, 1957;Frankland & Cohen, 1996;Schmuckler & Tomovski, 2005;Toiviainen & Krumhansl, 2003;Yoshino & Abe, 2004), the representation of tonality across the life span (Delzell, Rohwer, & Ballard, 1999;Feierabend, Saunders, Holahan, & Getnick, 1998;Guilbault, 2004), the neural instantiation of tonality (Janata, et al, 2002;Mizuno & Sugishita, 2007;Otsuka, Kuriki, Murata, & Hasegawa, 2008), the relationship between emotion and tonality (Kellaris & Kent, 1993;Mizuno & Sugishita, 2007), the effect of tonality on memory (Feierabend et al, 1998;Mead & Ball, 2007), and tonal priming (Hutchins & Palmer, 2008;Otsuka et al, 2008). Finally, of the four studies that did use a particular minor type context, none explicitly distinguished between representations of the minor key in general and the representation of the particular minor type that was employed.…”