Two Ways of Defining Tonal Strength and Implications for Recognition of Tone Series

Croonen, W. L. M.

doi:10.2307/40285687

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Although we have derived tonal magnitude as a power transformation of the standardized key profile, on reflection it is clear that tonal magnitude is in many ways comparable to the more familiar concept of tonal strength. Research on tonal strength has occupied a central place in work on musical cognition, with such investigations extensively studying, for example, the consequences of varying tonal strength on the processing of and memory for musical passages (e.g., Croonen, 1994Croonen, , 1995Cuddy, Cohen, & Mewhort, 1981;Cuddy, Cohen, & Miller, 1979;Cuddy & Lyons, 1981;Dowling, 1978Dowling, , 1991. In addition, this work has identified characteristics that make a passage tonally strong, with music heard as tonally strong if it (a) is diatonic, in that it is composed primarily of pitches of the diatonic set; (b) begins and ends on the tonic; and (c) exhibits cadential structure (e.g., contains a sequence of chords built on Pitch Class 0, followed by Pitch Class 7, and ending on Pitch Class 0).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perception of Tonal Structure Through the Differentiation and Organization of Pitches.

Smith

Schmuckler

2004

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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The role of 2 psychological processes, differentiation and organization, were examined in the perception of musical tonality. Differentiation distinguishes elements from one another and was varied in terms of the distribution of pitch durations within tone sequences. Organization establishes relations between differentiated elements and was varied in terms of either conformity with or deviation from a hierarchical description of tonality. Multiple experiments demonstrated that the perception of tonality depended on a minimal degree of differentiation in the distribution of the duration-but not frequency of occurrence-of pitches and only when pitch distributions were hierarchically organized. Moreover, the mere differentiation of the tonic from nontonic pitches was not sufficient to induce tonal percepts. These results are discussed in relation to tonal strength, musical expressiveness, and principles of auditory pattern processing.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Perception of Tonal Structure Through the Differentiation and Organization of Pitches.

Smith

Schmuckler

2004

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…First, it was assumed that prototypic instances of tonality could be created (Cuddy, 1991;Jones, 1981Jones, , 1982Jones, , 1991Krumhansl, 1990a). Second, it was assumed that four or five distinct levels (at least) could be discriminated along a tonality continuum (Cuddy, Cohen, & Mewhort, 1981; see also Croonen, 1994;Dowling, 1991). The sense of tonality does not merely involve a categorical distinction between tonality and absence of tonality.…”

Section: Stage 1-music Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dissociation of musical tonality and pitch memory from nonmusical cognitive abilities.

Ll²,

Rr³

1997

Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology / Revue canadienne

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The main purposes of this study were to replicate, validate, and extend measures of sensitivity to musical pitch and to determine whether performance on tests of tonal structure and pitch memory was related to, or dissociated from, performance on tests of nonmusical cognitive skills -standardized tests of cognitive abstraction, vocabulary, and memory for digits and nonrepresentational figures. Factor analyses of data from 100 neurologically intact participants revealed a dissociation between music and nonmusic variables, both for the full data set and a set for which the possible contribution of levels of music training was statistically removed. A neurologically impaired participant, C.N., scored within the range of matched controls on nonmusic tests but much lower than controls on music tests. The study provides further evidence of a functional specificity for musical pitch abilities.How various types of cognitive abilities are related, and further, how musical abilities are related to other abilities are questions with both a long history and current importance in cognitive psychology and the psychology of music. Music listening and performance engage a variety of processing levels -from elementary sensory-motor encoding to higher-level relational and symbolic representations. Music perception and cognition invite comparisons to other perceptual and cognitive processes, both in terms of commonalities and of differences.For example, both music and speech are highly structured forms of communication processed by the auditory system. It has been suggested that precocious abilities in music and speech emerge from common origins (e.g.,

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Testing Models of Melodic Contour Similarity

Schmuckler

1999

Music Perception

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In two experiments, descriptions of melodic contour structure and predictions of perceived similarity relations between pairs of contours produced by a number of different models are examined. Two of these models, based on the music- theoretic approaches of Friedmann (1985) and Marvin and Laprade (1987), characterize contours in terms of interval content or contour subset information. The remaining two approaches quantify the global shape of the contours, through the presence of cyclical information (assessed via Fourier analysis) and the amount of oscillation (e. g., reversals in direction, pitch deviations) in the contours. Theoretical predictions for contour similarity generated by these models were examined for 20th century, nontonal melodies (Experiment 1) and simplistic, tonal patterns (Experiment 2). These experiments demonstrated that similarity based on Fourier analysis procedures and oscillation measures predicted a derived measure of perceived similarity, with both variables contributing relatively independently; the music- theoretic models were inconsistent in their predictive power. These results suggest that listeners are sensitive to the presence of global shape information in melodic contour, with such information underlying the perception of contour structure and contour similarity.

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Two Ways of Defining Tonal Strength and Implications for Recognition of Tone Series

Cited by 4 publications

References 22 publications

The Perception of Tonal Structure Through the Differentiation and Organization of Pitches.

The Perception of Tonal Structure Through the Differentiation and Organization of Pitches.

Dissociation of musical tonality and pitch memory from nonmusical cognitive abilities.

Testing Models of Melodic Contour Similarity

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