Identifying songs from their piano-driven opening chords

Abstract

It is currently believed that timbre plays a primary role in the identification of songs from very brief excerpts of music. However, its specific contribution, and those of other characteristics of the music, remain unclear. The aim of the present study was to investigate the contributions of timbre and chord type, voicing, and duration to participants’ ability to identify songs from their opening chords, played on the piano alone or on the piano and one other instrument. Ninety-three participants were asked to identify 20 songs from their opening chords. They were also asked to estimate the similarity between pairs of chords. We evaluated the contribution of 10 characteristics of chords to song identification rates, including brightness, pitch register, and duration, because of their high perceptual salience, and others chosen on the basis of theoretical predictions relating to auditory long-term memory. Song identification rates were associated with the chords’ brightness, familiarity and, to a lesser extent, pitch register, but not participants’ musical background. The results of the study suggest that listeners with and without musical training can identify songs from their opening chords, cued by both their timbral and non-timbral characteristics.

Dos aspectos poco discutidos en la percepción de progresiones armónicas

“…Interesados en aprender más sobre la influencia de las características armónicas y extra-armónicas en la identificación de canciones al escuchar acordes placados, diseñamos un quinto experimento (Jimenez et al 2023). Esta vez tuvimos en cuenta las características extra-armónicas de las canciones, pidiendo a los participantes que las identificaran escuchando tan solo el primer acorde.…”

Veridical and Schematic Memory for Harmony in Melody-and-Accompaniment Textures

“…Most studies related to memory for harmony have focused on the syntactic aspects of harmony (for a review, see Pearce & Rohrmeier, 2018). These studies have found some evidence that Western-enculturated listeners, even those without music training, possess schematic knowledge about harmony, such as tonal hierarchies (Krumhansl, 1990) and chord transitions (Lhost & Ashley, 2006;Vuvan & Hughes, 2019), and that their perception of harmony is affected by the relative frequency of occurrence of certain chord types (Jimenez, Kuusi, Czedik-Eysenberg, & Reuter, 2021;Jimenez, Kuusi, & Ojala, 2022). There is also some evidence that this type of knowledge can be acquired implicitly (via mere exposure to music), stored in long-term auditory memory, and activated automatically when listening to music informing harmonic expectations (Vuvan & Hughes, 2019).…”