Musicians’ views on the role of reading music in learning, performance, and understanding

Reading music notation is not an easy skill to acquire and can take years of training to master. In addition, it is not strictly necessary to be able to read music to make music. Nevertheless, music teaching and learning in the West has traditionally centered around the skill of reading music. This study explored participants’ reasons for learning to read music and the reported benefits of this skill for musical activities. We developed an online questionnaire with open-ended questions to gather the views of 64 people, both music readers and non-readers, on their musical activities using or not using notated scores. Their responses were analyzed thematically. The analysis showed that participants believe that learning and engaging with music notation adds to their multisensory experience of music involving vision, sound, and action; that, compared to learning by ear, the visual aspects of notation support the quick learning and improved theoretical understanding of a musical work: and that the skill of reading music is valuable in the context of group music making. They also believe, however, that notation can inhibit expressive performance or improvisation, and non-readers believe that sound technologies can be used as an alternative to notation. Finally, reading music was seen by readers, but not non-readers, as integral to playing an instrument. This may reflect differences between the practices and genres of music favored by the two groups

The Creation of Consonance: How Musical Context Influences Chord Perception

This PhD study investigates how our perception of musical chords, both in isolation and in musical context, is influenced and shaped by our knowledge of the tonal hierarchy and tonal syntax in terms of consonance/dissonance, pleasantness/unpleasantness, stability/instability, and relaxation/tension. Six experiments were conducted to gather behavioural data on the perception of chords from listeners with varying levels of musical training and experience. The first study is principally concerned with the influence of frequency of occurrence on the perception of twelve types of chord in isolation, including both triads and tetrads. It also examines to what extent factors besides frequency of occurrence, namely listener familiarity with the timbre in which chords are played and the acoustic features of chords, predict listener perception. The second and third studies concern the perception of chords in musical context. The second study focuses on musical contexts in which diminished and augmented chords appear, and on the harmonic functions of chords in short sequences of IV-V-I. Using sequences containing an augmented chord, the third study investigates the ways in which a non-diatonic tone can be anchored by its succeeding tone, and considers how the perception of these sequences is influenced by the harmonic function of its succeeding chord. These studies all reveal that the way in which chords and chord sequences are perceived is not completely predetermined by their acoustic, physical dimension. In addition, we impute on them a fluidity and elasticity as a result of our knowledge of the tonal hierarchy and tonal syntax in our musical schemata

Perception of isolated chords: Examining frequency of occurrence, instrumental timbre, acoustic descriptors and musical training

This study investigated the perception of isolated chords using a combination of experimental manipulation and exploratory analysis. Twelve types of chord (five triads and seven tetrads) were presented in two instrumental timbres (piano and organ) to listeners who rated the chords for consonance, pleasantness, stability and relaxation. Listener ratings varied by chord, by timbre, and according to musical expertise, and revealed that musicians distinguished consonance from the other variables in a way that other listeners did not. To further explain the data, a principal component analysis and linear regression examined three potential predictors of the listener ratings. First, each chord’s frequency of occurrence was obtained by counting its appearances in selected works of music. Second, listeners rated their familiarity with the instrumental timbre in which the chord was played. Third, chords were described using a set of acoustic features derived using the Timbre Toolbox and MIR Toolbox. Results of the study indicated that listeners’ ratings of both consonance and stability were influenced by the degree of musical training and knowledge of tonal hierarchy. Listeners’ ratings of pleasantness and relaxation, on the other hand, depended more on the instrumental timbre and other acoustic descriptions of the chord

Evaluating the Consonance and Pleasantness of Triads in Different Musical Context

This study examines whether the consonance and pleasantness of triads (major, minor, augmented, and diminished) varies according to the musical context in which it is presented. The level of consonance and dissonance (C/D) of each chord when they were played alone without any musical contexts was judged. Following this, each chord was accommodated in a different position in a short cadence, and the level of C/D for each chord was judged. Additionally, the C/D and the pleasantness and unpleasantness (P/U) of the whole sequence were rated on a 7-point scale. The results show that, for major and minor triads, there was no significant difference in C/D levels between the ‘without musical context’ and the ‘with musical context’ conditions. However, both augmented and diminished triads were judged less dissonant when they were played in isolation than when in a cadence. Augmented triads were rated most dissonant and unpleasant when on the tonic, while diminished triads were most consonant and pleasant when on the subdominant. We interpret this result as reversely reflecting the stability of chord function