Experimental Methods in Tonality Induction Research: A Review

Tonality induction is the natural outcome of acoustic redundancies in music and the predisposition of the brain to represent these redundancies. In the simplest case, tonality induction relies on frequency resolution and a memory accumulator. A review of the literature suggests that these and other more sophisticated building blocks (analysis of complex tones and sensitivity to sequential characteristics of musical patterns) are in place to contribute to tonality induction in the first year of life. As further revealed by life-span studies of preference and recognition for stylistically different popular music excerpts, two other constraints must also be considered: (1) brain plasticity and (2) degree of exposure to music of particular styles. The importance of a final factor, (3) formal music performance training, is shown in studies of (a) the benefits of the major triad frequency ratio relations (4: 5: 6) on memory (absolute judgment) for tones in an unfamiliar context (b) the applicability of a model based on a key-finding algorithm to pitch memory in a tonal context, and (c) the probe-tone task.

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of Tonality Induction: Plasticity, Exposure, and Training

Cohen¹

2000

“…Listeners are given a keyboard and allowed to play tones on the keyboard to select a final tone. The basic assumption underlying this method is that the tone selected as a final tone is likely to be the tonic or the nuclear tone , or a bias that was produced by playing several tones on a keyboard (Auhagen & Vos, 2000). Therefore, we tried to minimize the effect of these other factors.…”

Section: Cues For Key Perceptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cues for Key Perception of a Melody

Matsunaga¹,

Abe²

2005

STUDIES HAVE SHOWN THAT PITCH SET, which refers to a set of pitches of constituent tones of a melody, is a primary cue for perceiving the key of a melody. The present study investigates whether characteristics other than pitch set function as additional cues for key perception. In Experiment 1, we asked 13 musicians with absolute p itch t o select k eys for 60 stim ulus t one sequences consisting of the same pitch set differing in pitch sequence. In Experiment 2, we asked 31 nonmusicians to select tonal centers for the 60 stimulus tone sequences. Responses made by the musicians and the nonmusicians yielded essentially equivalent results, suggesting that key perception is never unique to musicians. The listeners' responses were limited to a few keys/tones, and some tone sequences elicited agreement among the majority of the listeners for each of the keys/tones. These findings confirm that key perception is not only defined by pitch set but also influenced by characteristics other than pitch set such as pitch sequence.

“…Issues related to many of the design choices in the probe tone experiment, including the use of Shepard tones, the use of a small number of musical experts as participants, and the length of experiment are discussed at length in Auhagen and Vos (2000). However, it is clear that any specific experiment has to make tradeoffs between possibly incompatible goals.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Spectral Pitch Class Model of the Probe Tone Data and Scalic Tonality

Milne

Laney²,

Sharp

2015

IN THIS PAPER, WE INTRODUCE A SMALL FAMILY OFnovel bottom-up (sensory) models of the Krumhansl and Kessler (1982) probe tone data. The models are based on the spectral pitch class similarities between all twelve pitch classes and the tonic degree and tonic triad. Cross-validation tests of a wide selection of models show ours to have amongst the highest fits to the data. We then extend one of our models to predict the tonics of a variety of different scales such as the harmonic minor, melodic minor, and harmonic major. The model produces sensible predictions for these scales. Furthermore, we also predict the tonics of a small selection of microtonal scales-scales that do not form part of any musical culture. These latter predictions may be tested when suitable empirical data have been collected.