The Role of Formal Structure in Liking for Popular Music

Rolison, Jonathan J.; Edworthy, Judy

doi:10.1525/mp.2012.29.3.269

Cited by 21 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…Some of the individual verses and choruses, however, were less discernable to listeners of contemporary music. These findings are in line with an earlier study, in which we asked listeners to place each of the sections of contemporary songs separately on a timeline (Rolison & Edworthy, 2012). The present findings indicate that listeners are sensitive to the overall formal structure of a song determined by the ordering of its sections.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Although the verses and choruses often alternate in popular music, in some songs choruses follow verses, and in others verses instead follow choruses (e.g., "Ain't no sunshine" by Bill Withers, "She loves you" by the Beatles). Rolison and Edworthy (2012) used a similar procedure to the one used by Deliège et al (1996) to explore listeners' sensitivity to the formal structure of popular contemporary songs. In the Rolison and Edworthy (2012) study, musically untrained participants were asked to locate the sections of unfamiliar songs on a timeline from the beginning to the end of the song.…”

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confidence: 99%

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The whole song is greater than the sum of its parts: Local and structural features in music listening.

Rolison¹,

Edworthy²

2013

Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain

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Four experiments reported here demonstrate the importance of structural as well as local features in listening to contemporary popular music. Experiment 1 established that listeners without formal musical training regard as salient the formal structure that links individual sections of songs. When asked to listen to and assemble the individual sections of unfamiliar contemporary songs to form new compositions, participants positioned the sections in ways consistent with the true structure of the music. In Experiment 2, participants were provided with only the song lyrics with which to arrange the individual sections of contemporary songs. It was found that in addition to musical features studied in Experiment 1, lyrical content of contemporary music also acts as a strong cue to a song's formal structure. Experiments 3 and 4 revealed that listeners' enjoyment of music is influenced both by structural features and local features of music, which were carried by the individual song sections. The influence of structural features on music listening was most apparent over repeated hearings. In Experiment 4, listeners' liking for contemporary music followed an inverted U-shape trend with repeated exposure, in which liking for music took a downward turn after just four repeated hearings. In contrast, liking for restructured music increased with repeated hearings and almost eliminated an initial negative effect of restructuring by the sixth hearing. In sum, our findings demonstrate that structural features as well as local features of contemporary music are salient and important to listeners.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 92%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The whole song is greater than the sum of its parts: Local and structural features in music listening.

Rolison¹,

Edworthy²

2013

Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain

Self Cite

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“…Over the last 30 years, multiple studies have explored the perception of musical form in tonal music. Most have suggested that local cues (small scale and short duration) may take priority over global relationships (large scale and overall formal structure) in the perception of musical information (Deliège et al, 1996;Tillmann and Bigand, 2004;Rolison and Edworthy, 2012). Moreover, studies which have examined the impact of rearranging segments of music on the listener have found that the participants may not be able to differentiate between the original and the rearranged pieces of music (Tillmann and Bigand, 1996) and that the listeners may not prefer an original over an arrangement (Eitan and Granot, 2008).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Determines the Perception of Segmentation in Contemporary Music?

Phillips¹,

Stewart²,

Wilcoxson³

et al. 2020

Front. Psychol.

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Background: This study concerns the perception of musical segmentation during listening to live contemporary classical music. Little is known about how listeners form judgments of musical segments, particularly when typical section markers, such as cadences and fermatas, are absent [e.g., Sears et al. (2014)] or when the music is non-tonal (e.g., in much contemporary classical music). Aims: The current study aimed to examine the listeners' segmentation decisions in a piece of contemporary music, Ligeti's "Fanfares"? Methods: Data were gathered using a smartphone application [Practice & Research in Science & Music (PRiSM) Perception App] designed for this study by the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) Centre for PRiSM and the Oxford e-Research Centre. A total of 259 audience participants were asked to "tap" when they felt that a section had ended. Subjective responses were captured, as well as contextual data about the participants. Results: The audience members demonstrated high levels of agreement regarding segmentation, mostly at places in the music involving breaks in the musical texture (one piano hand resting), changes in dynamic (volume), and changes in register/pitch. A sense of familiarity with contemporary repertoire did seem to influence the responses-the participants who self-reported being familiar with contemporary music used a wider range of cues to make their segmentation decisions. The self-report data analysis suggested that the listeners were not always aware of how they made decisions regarding segmentation. The factors which may influence their judgment of musical segmentation are, to some extent, similar to those identified by music analysis (Steinitz, 2011) but different in other ways. The effect of musical training was found to be quite small.

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“…These issues may account for the failure of listeners to distinguish modified and original musical structures; the resulting differences in coherence may be too subtle to give a large enough effect for the samples sizes used. Similar problems can also be found in the application of this paradigm to the perception of song form in popular music (Rolison & Edworthy, 2012).…”

Section: Large-scale Thematic Structurementioning

confidence: 72%

A model of large-scale thematic structure

Hall

Pearce

2021

Journal of New Music Research

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The coherent organisation of thematic material into large-scale structures within a composition is an important concept in both traditional and cognitive theories of music. However, empirical evidence supporting their perception is scarce. Providing a more nuanced approach, this paper introduces a computational model of hypothesised cognitive mechanisms underlying perception of large-scale thematic structure. Repetition detection based on statistical learning forms the model's foundation, hypothesising that predictability arising from repetition creates perceived thematic coherence. Measures are produced that characterise structural properties of a corpus of 623 monophonic compositions. Exploratory analysis reveals the extent to which these measures vary systematically and independently.

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The Role of Formal Structure in Liking for Popular Music

Cited by 21 publications

References 19 publications

The whole song is greater than the sum of its parts: Local and structural features in music listening.

The whole song is greater than the sum of its parts: Local and structural features in music listening.

What Determines the Perception of Segmentation in Contemporary Music?

A model of large-scale thematic structure

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