Roll Over Beethoven? An Initial Investigation of Listeners’ Perception of Chords Used in Rock Music

Abstract

Popular mainstream music (hereafter, rock) employs the basic set of chords built on the diatonic scale but also many others (de Clercq & Temperley, 2011; Stephenson, 2002). In an initial investigation of listeners’ perception of rock harmony, we adapted a rating task developed by Krumhansl (1990) in her pioneering studies of the common-practice harmonic hierarchy. Participants provided surprise and liking ratings for 35 (major, minor, dominant 7, and control) target chords that followed short key-establishing musical passages (a major scale + tonic major triad, or a major pentatonic scale + tonic major triad) or white noise. Liking ratings for targets that followed a musical passage indicated that listeners prefer some chords that are common in rock, but that lie outside the basic diatonic set, to atypical chords; this effect depended on chord quality and was clearest for major target chords. The findings provide an impetus for further research exploring the harmonic hierarchy in listeners with varying musical backgrounds; it appears to be more inclusive and less differentiated than is commonly thought.

Results May Vary: Overcoming Variability in Consumer Response to Advertising Music

“…Huron () proposed that correctly predicting what will happen next in a musical piece leads to a positive hedonic response, which he calls a “prediction effect”; incorrect predictions lead to a negative hedonic response. Consistent with this, predictable music is rated as more pleasant (Koelsch, Fritz, & Schlaug, ), more liked (Craton, Juergens, Michalak, & Poirier, ), and more positive and less arousing (Egermann, Pearce, Wiggins, & McAdams, ) than less predictable music. Other expectancy‐based affective responses that have been proposed but are largely untested include interest, anxiety, surprise, thrills/chills, hope, and disappointment (Huron & Margulis, ; Juslin, ).…”

It’s only rock ‘n roll (but I like it): Chord perception and rock’s liberal harmonic palette

“…Third, both experiments tested the effect of register on listeners’ ratings by presenting low and high register versions of a subset of target chords. Fourth, to provide a firmer basis comparing our results with previous chord rating studies, we replicated results from Craton et al (2016) using liking ratings (Experiment 1) and then obtained goodness of fitness ratings (Experiment 2) for the same stimuli.…”

“…The first experiment was a partial replication and extension of Craton et al (2016) with a much larger sample. As in the previous study, participants in the current experiment provided liking ratings (1 = dislike extremely ; 10 = like extremely ) for target chords that followed a short passage that established C as the tonal center (a C major scale + C tonic major triad).…”

“…As will become clear, we believe our findings are likely to apply more broadly to the many types of Western tonal music that people listen to daily. In fact, recent chord rating data confirm that listeners experience many, but not all, chords outside the basic diatonic set as musically appropriate (Craton, Juergens, Michalak, & Poirier, 2016). Craton et al (2016) obtained surprise and liking ratings for major, minor, and dominant seven-target chords that followed a key-establishing passage (a major scale + tonic major triad, or a major pentatonic scale + tonic major triad).…”

“…In fact, recent chord rating data confirm that listeners experience many, but not all, chords outside the basic diatonic set as musically appropriate (Craton, Juergens, Michalak, & Poirier, 2016). Craton et al (2016) obtained surprise and liking ratings for major, minor, and dominant seven-target chords that followed a key-establishing passage (a major scale + tonic major triad, or a major pentatonic scale + tonic major triad). They used Stephenson’s (2002) rock harmony framework and unpublished data from the de Clercq and Temperly Rolling Stone rock corpus (de Clercq & Temperley, 2011; D. Temperley, personal communication, August 13, 2013) to operationalize a “rock-typical” chord condition consisting of chords that are used in rock but that lie outside the basic diatonic set.…”