In music, the listener depends upon serial time to order sounds and silences so that tonal relationships can be ascertained. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of presentation time asynchronies on the identification of music intervals. Freshmen and graduate music majors identified music intervals on a test with the second tone of each interval delayed by 0,10,20,70,500, or 520 ms. A comparison of correct identifications for each of the six onset time delay conditions using a split-plot ANOVA resulted in a significant interaction between student class and delay condition, with significant main effects for both class and time delay conditions. Graduate students identified music intervals more accurately than freshmen students. In addition, there was a significant increase in scores across the six delay conditions for both groups. Freshmen exhibited a significant difference between the 0 ms delay condition and the 10 ms delay condition, indicating the tendency to hear physically simultaneous events as one sound. Scores for both freshmen and graduate students were significantly different between the 70 ms delay condition and the 500 ms delay condition, when the tones became successive. Successive tones were more accurately identified than tones with overlapping presentations.Measurements of perceptual onset time and resulting music label (harmonic or melodic) further showed the dissimilar experiences of the simultaneous and successive intervals. Melodic intervals were more accurately identified than harmonic presentations with most subjects separating the two tones of the interval to judge interval size. These findings suggest that training in music aural skills may influence the cognitive process used to identify the music interval.The art of music originates in the interaction of a listener with patterns of sound and silences unfolded across event time. The perception of sounds in music is based on the listener's ability to attend to selected acoustical signals and to organize the resulting sound images into perceptual units at varying levels of abstraction (Deutsch, 1982). Like all acoustic phenomena, the organization of music sounds is directly related to the physical characteristics of the signal (Balzano, 1986;Deutsch, 1982;Sloboda, 1985). These qualities of sound are frequency, time, and intensity, with which all variations in acoustical signals are possible.Discernment of multiple sound images is clearly illustrated in music perception in which a listener apprehends separate simultaneous complex tones and organizes them into meaningful relationships. Sloboda (1985) proposes, "The principal characteristic of music is that sounds stand in significant relation to one another, not in isolation" (p. 154). Groupings occur because, "elements belonging to an event are maximally similar and predictable, whereas elements belonging to different events are maximally dissimilar" (Handel, Weaver, & Lawson, 1983, p. 637).

In melodic perception research, presentation tempo of melodies under consideration has been widely varied. A review of recent melodic perception and cognition studies showed that tempi used ranged from "uniformly slow" and J = 72 MM to J = 200 MM. In addition, most studies stated no rationale for the presentation tempo chosen. The purpose of this study was to determine whether presentation tempo affects respondents' performance on melodic memory tasks. Subjects were 301 college undergraduate nonmusic majors enrolled in introductory music appreciation classes from Spring, 1987 through Spring, 1989. Paired, seven-note melodies were presented at tempi in 20 MM increments ranging from 40 to 480 MM. Subjects' task was to determine whether the melodies were the same or different. Sixteen melodies of varying tonal strength were used, and each subject heard them at each of three tempi, constituting a 48-item set. Presentation of melodies and recording of responses was done via microcomputer, allowing for a unique randomization of items for each subject. Results indicated a "maximum performance plateau" between 100 and 240 MM, within which tempo variation seems not to affect melodic memory performance. Below 100 MM performance fell off sharply. From 260 to 360 MM performance was significantly lower than in the 100 to 240 MM range, and above 360 MM fell off sharply, approaching chance level at 480 MM. These results have important implications for future melodic perception and cognition research, as well as possible implications for practical music training tasks such as melodic dictation.

Thirty-two, 7-note melodic fragments representing a wide range of tonal strengths were presented to 98 college undergraduate students not majoring in music. Each melody appeared in two test items-once as a single presentation, and once presented six times in succession. Following each item listeners rated the tonal strength of the melody they heard on a five-point scale. Tonal strength ratings were significantly higher (.05) for melodies when presented six times than when presented once. Increase in perceived tonal strength with repetition was present for both high and low tonal strength melodies.

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