Psychology of Music Learning Miksza PERCEPTION

R & B – Rhythm’s Function

• A fundamental organizing component of music (Cooper & Meyer) – Perhaps more so than pitch information – May encompass cross cultural univerals • Gabrielsson – Performance – Sound Sequences – Response (experiential, behavioral, physiological) • “…anything pertaining to the temporal quality of a musical sound (Apel).”

R & B – Rhythmic Structure 1

• Mursell – Underlying beat, phrase rhythm • Cooper & Meyer – Pulse, meter, rhythm • Gordon – Macrobeats, microbeats, rhythm patterns • Creston – Meter, pace, accent, pattern • Gabriellson – Meter, accent on 1 • Confound st beat, basic pattern, prominence of basic pattern, uniformity-variation or simplicity-complexity – Descriptions of ‘perceived structure’… …is it psychological or acoustical phenomenon that defines rhythmic structure?

R & B – Rhythmic Structure 2

• Clark – heirarchical structure of symbolic and abstract rhythmic events – Notation - tempo, duration events/silences, groupings, meter – Also grouping – pitch, timbre, dynamic – Also metrical – tension and release – Also interpretive – notated duration vs. resulting duration after articulation style is applied • Clark – problems with psychological investigation of rhythm – Assuming that formal structure and perceptual properties function in same way – Subjective variability of psychological processes – Tendency to confuse cultural norms with perceptual norms

R & B – Rhythmic Structure 3

• Beat vs. Meter problems… – Discrepancy between time signature vs. actual unit receiving beat • True beat, takt, tactus, metric beat – Typically defined by bar line and emphasis, but all music is not that mechanical – More than one metric level operating in most music • More perception than structure • Hypermeter – beats as bars/measures • Dalcroze notation of ‘bottom’ in time signature

R & B – Rhythmic Structure 4

• Tempo – the speed at which beats recur (Creston) • Accents (Creston) – Dynamic, agogic, metric, harmonic, weight, pitch, pattern, embellished • Accents (Lerdahl & Jackendoff) – Metric – reinforcing groupings vs. others • Accents (Kramer) – Stress, rhythmic, metric – all others just factors that cause these

R & B – Movement, Perception, Performance • “Competing” theories – Internal clocks, mental time-keepers (cognitive) – Dynamic systems – mental and motor interactions (behavioral, neural, neuromuscular) • Types of sensory feedback – Exteroceptive – events external to the body – Proprioceptive – created by body movements • Studies of stimuli travelling to the brain suggest that proprioceptive feedback may be linked to higher mental processes

R & B – Movement, Perception, Performance • Movement and Rhythm – Moog – children w/movement limitations scored lower than children without on rhythmic tasks – Internal time-keeper • Temporal codes stored in motor programs – Dynamic systems • From organizing processes in the neuromotor system itself – Methodological approach • Tapping with steady beat • Boils down to ‘cognitive/central control’ vs. ‘proprioceptive’ explanations

R & B – Cognitive Perspectives on Rhythmic Behavior

• Beat/Tempo – Dowling & Harwood - beat serves as a cognitive framework for understanding rhythm – Fraisse - tempo defines beat also, based on Gestalt law of proximity – Methods • Tapping • Judging changes • Factors that influence beat perception

R & B – Cognitive Perspectives on Rhythmic Behavior

• Beat/Tempo findings… – Spontaneous tempo adults:100-120, musicians:60-120 (Fraisse), 4 and 6 yr olds:150 (Drake et al.) • Probably both perceptual (attention to detail) and motor factors – Musicians perceive decreases in tempo quicker than non-musicians (Kuhn) – Decreases in tempo easier to perceive than increases in general (Geringer et al.) • Sheldon - contrary findings… – Even vs. uneven rhythms, style, initial tempo affect perception of tempo change (Wang & Salzburg)

R & B – Cognitive Perspectives on Rhythmic Behavior • Meter

– It’s important to consider differences between notated and perceived meter – Tempo seems to be the biggest factor to consider – Dynamic placement and musical experience are also important factors

R & B – Cognitive Perspectives on Rhythmic Behavior

• Rhythm groups – Isochronous = equal – Sloboda - rhythms are perceived categorically as patterns, like basic speech phenomes… – Lerhdal & Jackendoff - model of rhythmic understanding based on grammar and psycholinguistics • Lack of empirical evidence, heavy emphasis of musical structure-formalist – Drake - segmentation in groups vs. hierarchical segmentation • Process oriented model • Found similar rhythmic errors results across age groups • Change in hierarchical segmentation as piece is learned

R & B – Cognitive Perspectives on Rhythmic Behavior

• Rhythm groups (cont.) – Auditory stream segregation - separating pairs of sound sequences • Interaction of speed of presentation and distance (proximity) between frequencies • Frequency vs. noise may also result in stream segregation (similarity) • Context also affects rhythmic perception (e.g., melodic vs. non-melodic) – Sink - tempo, meter, rhythmic pattern, melodic patterns - four dimensions of structural perception – Gabrielsson - tempo primary grouping dimension

R & B - Expressive Timing

• Bengtsson & Gabrielsson - professional musicians systematically vary performances from mechanical norm – Changing time ratios between notated values – Placing notes before or after underlying metric beats – Elongating phrase endings • Vienesse waltz… – Onsets of jazz rhythm sections (Rose) – Phrase lengthening of harmonic and melodic tension in Beethoven (Repp) – Ritard lengths (Sundberg & Verillo) – Judgments of appropriate related to training

R & B - Melodic and Harmonic Foundations • Cognitive emphases, cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, music theory • Horizontal dimension: pitch sequences, melody – Selecting tones from a pitch continuum and placing them in temporal sequence – Attributes: pitch, rhythm, tempo, contour, timbre, loudness, spatial location, environmental reverberation – Recognition is also a function of expectancy

R & B - Melody Structure

• Melodic contour: pattern of ascending and descending pitches • Pitch height: octave location • Chroma: specific chromatic pitch • Lundin – Propinquity - nearness, prominence of smaller successive intervals vs. larger intervals – Repetition - certain tones repeat with great frequency, 1, 3, 4 – Finality - cadence, final tones

R & B - Melody Structure

• Perceptual organization: psychological factors influence apprehension of tonal sequence as a melody • Gestalt Laws • Proximity: close in time and auditory space as a melodic unit • Similarity: repeated tones as a unit • Common direction: moving in a common direction towards completion • Simplicity: organize in its simplest form – However, not rationalist or innate… …changes with experience/training • Schema - knowledge structures developed from experience, culture

R & B - Harmony

• Vertical dimension: simultaneous pitch structures, harmony – Monophonic - melody alone – Polyphonic - two or more simultaneous melodies – Homophonic - melody with tertian accompaniment • A cultural phenomenon (Lundin, Farnsworth) – Tonality, harmonic movement, finality • Context dependent principles (Krumhansl et al.) – Identity, Distance, Asymmetry • Tonality – Tonal strength equation based on sung responses (Taylor)

R & B - Harmony • Psychological processes

– Three influences • Reductionist - atomistic look at auditory elements (Seashore, Helmholtz) • Gestalt - perceptual organization (Wertheimer, Koffka) • Music theorists - tonality, terminology, music based accounts – Models are descriptions of inferred psychological events

R & B - Harmony

• Hierarchical perceptual structures – Krumhansl • Paired-similarity ratings – Triad, diatonic, chromatic • Matching exercise with interference tones – Diatonic interference tones easier to overcome than chromatic interference tones • Multidimensional scaling on similarity ratings – Tonal hierarchy cone - triad, diatonic, chromatic – Butler • Rare intervals determine tonal context – Minor seconds, tritones - represent cadences

R & B - Melodic and Harmonic Memory and Processing • Dowling & Harwood – Contour important for short-term memory of melody – Interval size and pitch chroma important for long term melody • Information theory – Relation of redundancy and uncertainty is inverse – Redundancy = expectancy – Perceptual redundancy = structural and cultural redundancy • Lack of redundancy may be a problem with contemporary music