Long-term representations of melodies in Western listeners: Influences of familiarity, musical expertise, tempo and structure

Abstract

We investigated the effects of familiarity, level of musical expertise, musical tempo, and structural boundaries on the identification of familiar and unfamiliar tunes. Healthy Western listeners (N = 62; age range 14–64 years) judged their level of familiarity with a preselected set of melodies when the number of tones of a given melody was increased from trial to trial according to the so-called gating paradigm. The number of tones served as one dependent measure. The second dependent measure was the physical duration of the stimulus presentation until listeners identified a melody as familiar or unfamiliar. Results corroborate previous work, suggesting that listeners need less information to recognize familiar as compared to unfamiliar melodies. Both decreasing and increasing the original tempo by a factor of two delayed the identification of familiar melodies. Furthermore, listeners had more difficulty identifying unfamiliar melodies when tempo was increased. Finally, musical expertise significantly influenced identification of either melodic category, i.e., reducing the required number of tones. Taken together, the findings support theories which suggest that tempo information is coded in melody representation, and that musical expertise is associated with especially efficient strategies for accessing long-term representations of melodic materials.

The definition of a musician in music psychology: A literature review and the six-year rule

“…Five papers required an additional practice time criterion. Of these, two papers required at least an hour of practice per week (Büdenbender & Kreutz, 2016, 2017); one paper required at least once a week of practice (Taylor & Dewhurst, 2017); one paper required at least 2.5 hours of practice per week (Weijkamp & Sadakata, 2017); and one reported “regular” practice (Castro & Lima, 2014). An analysis of the practice time criterion can be found in the “Weekly practice time” section below.…”

“…It was observed that only a portion of papers detailed the musicians’ self-reported hours of practice (26% of total papers; 10 out of 39). Of these, five papers reported a minimum number of practice hours per week to allow membership of the musician category (Büdenbender & Kreutz, 2016, 2017; Habibi et al, 2013; Marozeau et al, 2013; Weijkamp & Sadakata, 2017); four papers detailed an average number of practice hours per week (Castro & Lima, 2014; Proverbio & Orlandi, 2016; Sears et al, 2014; Woolhouse et al, 2016); and one paper reported “at least once a week” of practice (Taylor & Dewhurst, 2017). Four papers that reported an average of practice hours had a median of 13.9 hours of practice per week, while five papers reported a minimum of one hour of practice per week.…”

The famous melodies stimulus set

“…Famous melodies are also a useful stimulus for investigating the timing of melody recognition (Bailes, 2010). For example, prior work indicates that individuals can recognize musical melodies within 500 ms or a few notes (Büdenbender & Kreutz, 2016;Dalla Bella, Peretz, & Aronoff, 2003;Filipic, Tillmann, & Bigand, 2010;Huijgen et al, 2015;Tillmann, Albouy, Caclin, & Bigand, 2014). Familiar melodies are also a frequently used stimulus for evoking autobiographical memories (Belfi, Karlan, & Tranel, 2016;Ford, Addis, & Giovanello, 2011;Janata, Tomic, & Rakowski, 2007).…”

Combining Song—And Speech-Based Language Teaching: An Intervention With Recently Migrated Children

“…In addition, studies of long-term memory for songs have revealed that cultural aspects (e.g., the origin and popularity of a given tune) and their functional meaning in every-day practices (e.g., celebrations, festivities, rituals) can influence their mental representations along with their structural complexity (Büdenbender and Kreutz, 2015 , 2017 ). Songs that were developed for specific purposes such as foreign or second language learning must also be acknowledged for potentially different levels of meaning beyond their surface structures (melody and rhythm) and associated linguistic content (lyrics).…”