Memory and Musical Expectation for Tones in Cultural Context

WE EXPLORED HOW MUSICAL CULTURE SHAPES ONE\u27S listening experience.Western participants heard a series of tones drawn from either the Western major mode (culturally familiar) or the Indian thaat Bhairav (culturally unfamiliar) and then heard a test tone. They made a speeded judgment about whether the test tone was present in the prior series of tones. Interactions between mode (Western or Indian) and test tone type (congruous or incongruous) reflect the utilization of Western modal knowledge to make judgments about the test tones. False alarm rates were higher for test tones congruent with the major mode than for test tones congruent with Bhairav. In contrast, false alarm rates were lower for test tones incongruent with the major mode than for test tones incongruent with Bhairav. These findings suggest that one\u27s internalized cultural knowledge may drive musical expectancies when listening to music of an unfamiliar modal system

Online Detection of Tonal Pop-Out in Modulating Contexts

We investigated the spontaneous detection of wrong notes in a melody that modulated continuously through all 24 major and minor keys. Three variations of the melody were composed, each of which had distributed within it 96 test tones of the same pitch, for example, A2. Thus, the test tones would blend into some keys and pop out in others. Participants were not asked to detect or judge specific test tones; rather, they were asked to make a response whenever they heard a note that they thought sounded wrong or out of place. This task enabled us to obtain subjective measures of key membership in a listening situation that approximated a natural musical context. The frequency of observed wrong-note responses across keys matched previous tonal hierarchy results obtained using judgments about discrete probes following short contexts. When the test tones were nondiatonic notes in the present context they elicited a response, whereas when the test tones occupied a prominent position in the tonal hierarchy they were not detected. Our findings could also be explained by the relative salience of the test pitch chroma in short-term memory, such that when the test tone belonged to a locally improbable pitch chroma it was more likely to elicit a response. Regardless of whether the local musical context is shaped primarily by bottom-up or topdown influences, our findings establish a method for estimating the relative salience of individual test events in a continuous melody

Perceived harmonic structure of chords in three related musical keys

This study investigated the perceived harmonic relationships between the chords that belong to three closely related musical keys: a major key, the major key built on its dominant, and the relative minor key. Multidimensional scaling and hierarchical clustering techniques applied to judgments of two-chord progressions showed a central core consisting of those chords that play primary harmonic functions in the three keys. Th & separation of chords unique to the keys and the multiple functions of chords shared by the different keys were simultaneously represented. A regular pattern of asymmetries was also found that suggests a hierarchy among different types of chords. In addition, there was a preference for sequences ending on chords central to the prevailing tonality. Comparison with earlier results on single tones points to differences between melodic and harmonic organization. The most striking characteristic of Western music is its harmonic structure, that is, the prevalent use of simultaneously sounded tones in chords. Indeed, music theory describes in detail the construction of chord sequences, the function of chords in establishing tonal organization, and the intimate connection between harmonic and melodic organization. There is no objective empirical basis, however, for this extensive literature on harmonic structures. Instead, music theorists attempt to characterize the common practice of composers in using chords in music. Nor have psychological studies on music addressed the question of how these harmonic properties are perceived. Virtually all earlier studies employing organized musical stimuli have used melodic sequences, that is, sequences of single tones (cf. Cudd

Tonal centers and expectancy : facilitation or inhibition of chords at the top of the harmonic hierarchy?

Harmonic priming studies have shown that a musical context with its tonal center influences target chord processing. In comparison with targets following baseline contexts, which do not establish a specific tonal center, processing is facilitated for a strongly related target functioning as the tonic, but inhibited for unrelated (out-of-key) and less related (subdominant) targets. This study investigated cost and benefit patterns for the processing of the 3 most important chords of the harmonic hierarchy. Response time patterns reflected the chords' ranking: Processing was fastest for the tonic, followed by the dominant, and then the subdominant. The comparison with baseline contexts replicated the benefit of processing for tonic targets (Experiments 1 and 3) and the cost of processing for subdominant targets (Experiment 3), while dominant targets were situated at baseline level (Experiments 1 to 3). Findings indicate that listeners implicitly understand fine differences in tonal stabilities and confirm the special status of the tonic being the most expected and solely facilitated chord at the end of a tonal context. Findings are discussed with references to sensory and cognitive approaches of music perception