Forms of Music Perception

Sara K. Lane

Psych 422, Section 2

Chris Pagano, Instructor

April 16, 2010

The first article that I read, “The Role of Melodic and Temporal Cues in Perceiving Musical Meter”, discusses what features people use to perceive musical meter. According to Hannon & Snyder (2004), meter is a “perceptual and conceptual organization of periodically alternating strong and weak beats that is superimposed on the musical surface”. Meter is not only a physical factor of music but is also a construct in the listener’s brain. One of the main questions that the experimenters had was how people perceive a meter when they are listening to a song for the first time and how people perceive meter in the course of development. The main goal of the experiment was to relate the perceptions that the listeners had on metrical structure to different accent types that come from melodic and temporal patterns in brief melodies. The authors explained the different types of accents in great detail so that their experiments could be fully understood. According to the article, an accent is an increase in the perceptual importance of a musical event that happens when the event differs in some way from other events that are going on at the same time. There are different types of accents in music. Two important kinds of accents that act as cues to meter are dynamic accents, which are a result of a change in intensity, and temporal accents, which are emphasized changes in duration and grouping position. While these accents are important, pitch accents are also important because they create points that draw attention. There are two different kinds of pitch accents – interval accent and contour accent. An interval accent occurs when a pitch is considerably higher or lower than the pitches before and after it. A contour accent occurs when the melodic form is changed. Within the contour accent is the contour pivot point, which is the point where significance is created on a note because of the position of the point at a melodic change. Many efforts have been made to predict pitch accent but most studies cannot record any significant effects, especially if other accent types are in the music. Musical context and the presence or absence of temporal accents both influence the perception and production of pitch accents (Hannon & Snyder, 2004).

Contrasting evidence states that temporal and dynamic accents can be altered by pitch accents. In a study, listeners were not as sensitive to a reduction in intensity that corresponded to a large melodic leap. Also, listeners were better able to remember melodies with concordant pitch and temporal accents instead of conflicting pitches and temporal accents. This evidence suggests that melodic and unmelodic accents interact with each other (Hannon & Snyder, 2004).

The experiment that the authors conducted involved the use of folk melodies- one was scored in 3/4 meter and the other was scored in 6/8 meter. There were 23 participants in the experiment, with 14 females and 9 males. The participants had to estimate which of the two drum accompaniments (one in 3/4 and one in 6/8) best matched each melody that they heard. They could change, start, or stop the accompaniments as often as they wanted to during the duration of a trial but they were asked to try each drum accompaniment at least one time. The experiment was a practice block with 6 trials followed by a series of 4 blocks of 32 trials. The 128 experimental stimuli were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental blocks. A given melody was never repeated in the same block or in consecutive blocks. Each participant received a random order of blocks. The participants’ answers were assessed by the use of a 6-point scale labeled strongly 6/8 (1), moderately 6/8 (2), weakly 6/8 (3), weakly 3/4 (4), moderately 3/4 (5), and strongly 3/4 (6). The participants chose a point along the scale that matched how they perceived the meter of the melody at the end of the trial. The tones in the melody were all the same duration. All of the sequences that the listeners heard were played so that the tone durations lined up exactly with the notation. Eleven predictor variables were created to evaluate the importance of different types of melodic information. These predictor variables were six pitch accent variables, two repetition variables, two harmonic variables, and one tempo variable. All of these accent variables were appropriately coded for each note of the three different excerpts that were used in the experiment. The listeners’ judgements were compared with the predictor variables that were used to predict responses for each type of melodic accent (Hannon & Snyder, 2004).

The results of the study showed that the participants’ responses on the 6-point scale were a dependent measure of perceived meter. In order to evaluate the results, the effects of tempo, scored meter, and formal musical training were recorded. Two groups were created for the participant – those with high (8 or more years musical experience) or low (less than 8 years musical experience) musical training. An ANOVA was done with tempo (fast vs. slow; within subject), scored meter (3/4 vs. 6/8; within subject), and musical training (low vs. high; between subjects) as the variables. The results of the analysis showed that there were significant main effects of tempo, F (1,21) = 7.16,