Rapid Communication: Pianists exhibit enhanced memory for vocal melodies but not piano melodies

Abstract

Nonmusicians remember vocal melodies (i.e., sung to la la) better than instrumental melodies. If greater exposure to the voice contributes to those effects, then long-term experience with instrumental timbres should elicit instrument-specific advantages. Here we evaluate this hypothesis by comparing pianists with other musicians and nonmusicians. We also evaluate the possibility that absolute pitch (AP), which involves exceptional memory for isolated pitches, influences melodic memory. Participants heard 24 melodies played in four timbres (voice, piano, banjo, marimba) and were subsequently required to distinguish the melodies heard previously from 24 novel melodies presented in the same timbres. Musicians performed better than nonmusicians, but both groups showed a comparable memory advantage for vocal melodies. Moreover, pianists performed no better on melodies played on piano than on other instruments, and AP musicians performed no differently than non-AP musicians. The findings confirm the robust nature of the voice advantage and rule out explanations based on familiarity, practice, and motor representations.

Remembering the melody and timbre, forgetting the key and tempo

“…Memory for timbre, however, was expected to be longer lasting than memory for key and tempo. Musically trained listeners have exhibited enhanced memory for melodies in some studies but not others, although music training does not appear to influence memory for surface features (Dowling, Kwak, & Andrews, 1995;Schellenberg et al, 2014;Weiss et al, 2012Weiss et al, , 2015b. Thus, we had no predictions regarding music training in the present study, except that it would not affect the recognition advantage for melodies that were identical at exposure and test.…”

“…Similar inconsistencies were evident in previous studies (e.g., Dowling et al, 1995;Schellenberg et al, 2014;Weiss et al, 2012Weiss et al, , 2015b. Indeed, when the present data were analyzed in terms of d' scores (see the supplementary materials), musically trained participants showed no memory advantage in either experiment.…”

“…When the raw data were analyzed (supplementary materials), on the other hand, musically trained individuals exhibited a recognition advantage in both experiments. Advantages on melodic-memory tasks for musically trained individuals may be more reliable when comparing musicians with many years of lessons to individuals with no formal training (Weiss et al, 2015b). In any event, the detrimental effects of changes in surface features on recognition memory were independent of music training in both experiments and in all analyses.…”

“…This result implies either that memory for timbre is approximate or that a similar timbre provides a match between the test melody and the mental representation that is strong enough to confer the same recognition benefit as the original timbre. Other studies have provided converging evidence of memory for timbre (Wolpert, 1990) and tempo (Bergeson & Trehub, 2002), and also have shown that memory for melodies presented in some timbres (i.e., the human voice) is better than memory for melodies presented in other timbres (instruments; Weiss, Schellenberg, Trehub, & Dawber, 2015a;Weiss, Trehub, & Schellenberg, 2012;Weiss, Vanzella, Schellenberg, & Trehub, 2015b). Melody recognition is also impaired when the articulation format (i.e., legato or staccato) changes from exposure to test (Lim & Goh, 2013).…”

Preface to the Special Issue on Animal Music Perception

“…As such, timbre has been referred to as a "surface feature" rather than a deeper structural feature of music (e.g., Halpern & Müllensiefen, 2008;Schellenberg, Stanlinski, & Marks, 2013;Warker & Halpern, 2005). However, we know that timbre contributes to how pitch information is processed (Lange & Czernochowski, 2013;Weiss, Vanzella, Schellenberg, & Trehub, 2015). In addition, it is so difficult to extract pitch information from a recording of modern music that there is so far no trusted algorithm to do so (Benetos, Dixon, Giannoulis, & Kirchhoff, 2013).…”