What helps jazz musicians name tunes from harmony? The relationship between work with harmony and the ability to identify well-known jazz standards from chord progressions

Abstract

Research has shown that musical training is associated with a greater ability to aurally connect chord progressions to specific pieces of music. However, it is unclear what specific aspects of musical training contribute to that ability. The present study investigated the effects of various aspects of professional and amateur jazz musicians’ formal training and work with harmony on their ability to identify well-known jazz standards from chord progressions. For participants who were able to identify songs from commercial recordings in this experiment, general long-term involvement with activities believed to increase awareness of harmony, such as playing a harmonic instrument, playing chords by ear, and transcribing harmonic progressions was often not enough to enable them to identify songs from their chord progressions alone. Additionally, the ability to identify songs from chord progressions was most strongly correlated with having played and being able to write out the chord labels of the target pieces from long-term memory. Implications of these and other results of this experiment for our understanding of jazz musicians’ processing and memory of harmonic information are discussed.

Common Chord Progressions and Feelings of Remembering

“…For instance, musical training has been associated with greater attention (Farbood, 2012; Norgaard, 2017; Sears et al, 2014; Williams, 2005) and sensitivity to harmony (Bigand & Poulin-Charronnat, 2009; Brattico et al, 2013; Corrigall & Trainor, 2009; Koelsch et al, 2002; Kopiez & Platz, 2009; Loui & Wessel, 2007; Steinbeis et al, 2006; Wolpert, 2000) as well as a greater ability to identify songs from their chord progressions (Jimenez & Kuusi, 2018). Additionally, the amount of improvisation that musicians have done (Goldman et al, 2020) and the specific pieces they have played (Cullimore, 1999; Jimenez & Kuusi, 2020) have also been found to affect how musicians perceive, remember, and conceptualize harmony. Those findings are consistent with the common perception that the identification of chord progressions is one of the most challenging tasks in aural skills and ear training courses (Chittum, 1969; Radley, 2008; Rogers, 1984) and that those challenges do not seem to be limited to young musicians or professionals who do not play harmonic instruments (Jimenez & Kuusi, 2018).…”

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

“…Earlier studies have shown that general music training relates to greater attention (Williams, 2005) and sensitivity to harmony (Farbood, 2012;Kopiez & Platz, 2009) in experimental tasks that involve implicit or explicit schematic knowledge of harmony. Further, the tasks that heavily rely on veridical memory for harmony-such as the identification of songs from chord progressions-seem to be facilitated by music training (Jimenez & Kuusi, 2018), by having played the songs, and by being able to write their chord labels from long-term memory (indicating conceptual knowledge, hereafter named as ''specialized harmonic familiarity;' ' Jimenez & Kuusi, 2020;Kuusi et al, 2021).…”

“…By this procedure we could concentrate on veridical and schematic knowledge of harmony on one hand and general and specialized knowledge of harmony on the other. Previous studies on identification of songs from chord progressions had made a distinction between general and specialized ''specialized harmonic familiarity''; Jimenez & Kuusi, 2020;Kuusi et al, 2021). To our knowledge, our study is the first to make a distinction between general and specialized aspects of both veridical and schematic memory, a distinction that was largely suggested by how the participant variables grouped via component analysis.…”

Future Directions of Music Cognition

“…It has been shown that various aspects of musical training sharpen listeners' attention to harmony (Farbood, 2012;Norgaard, 2017;Sears, Caplin, & McAdams, 2014;Williams, 2005). For example, identifying well-known pieces of classical music as well as pop and rock songs from the harmony appears to be easier for musicians than for non-musicians (Jimenez & Kuusi, 2018;Jimenez, Kuusi, & Doll, 2020), and having played the target piece and being able to retrieve the chord labels of the pieces from the long-term memory (referred to as "specialized harmonic familiarity") facilitate the identification of jazz standards from their chord progressions among jazz musicians (Jimenez & Kuusi, 2020). Additionally, identifying popular songs and pieces of classical music from chord progressions has been shown to be easier when stimuli are played using piano tones as opposed to Shepard tones, an effect that may be at least partially driven by the melodic ambiguity that Shepard tones create (see, e.g., Jimenez & Kuusi, 2018).…”