Non-musicians’ and musicians’ perception of bitonality

Abstract

Bitonal music is characterized by a certain, dissonant effect that had been believed to be clearly audible by everyone. However, Wolpert found that non-musicians were unable to identify bitonal versions of originally monotonal musical passages as such in a free response task. The present study replicated Wolpert’s findings, but also had participants rate song clips for likeableness, correctness and pleasantness. Bitonal music was rated lower on all dimensions independent of the individual’s level of musical training, with no difference in ratings by non-musicians and musicians. In addition, following a brief training session, non-musicians (less than one year of musical training) identified whether clips were monotonal or bitonal at equivalently high rates as the intermediate (mean 2.4 years) and expert (mean 9.2 years) musician groups.

Musical training and musical ability: Effects on chord discrimination

“…Other studies show, however, that there is no difference in responses to tonal stimuli from listeners with formal musical training and those without it (for a survey, see Bigand & Poulin-Charronnat, 2006; see also Hamamoto, Botelho, & Munger, 2010). It seems that musical training is not necessary for processing tonal music, since it is possible to learn musical idioms by enculturation -that is, through everyday exposure to them (Hannon & Trainor, 2007).…”