The effect of piano accompaniment type and harmonic context on the tuning performance of college-level choral musicians

This study was designed to evaluate the effect of piano accompaniment style on the intonation performance of college-level choral musicians. It was hypothesized that using a piano accompaniment comprised solely of referential tones (RT), as opposed to having all voice parts doubled by the piano (PD), would encourage more desirable intonation performance. Participants (N = 34) sang a researcher-composed melody harmonized with traditional Western functional harmony under both accompaniment conditions. Accompaniment type was not found to have a significant effect on the tuning performance of target intervals, but harmonic context did significantly affect the singers' intonation. Most notably, intonation of major 3rds in the I and IV chords closely approximated just intonation, regardless of accompaniment type. In the context of the V chord, performances more closely approximated the high Pythagorean 3rd, which was attributed to a tendency to heighten the leading tone. When comparing intonation performance to the just intonation, equal temperament, and Pythagorean tuning systems, results indicated that performances did not conform perfectly to any one tuning system, supporting the conclusion that the singers' intonation performance was dependent on harmonic context.

A Perceptual Study of Scale-degree Qualia in Context

A perceptual study investigated the ability of scale degrees to evoke qualia, and the impact of harmonic context in shaping a scale degree’s qualia. In addition, the following questions were addressed: What role does music training have in shaping qualia? Are listeners consistent in their descriptions? Are experiences similar across participants, or are they individual and subjective? Listeners with or without music-theoretic training were asked to rate the qualia of scale degrees following various chord progressions, each ending with a different final harmony. Scale degrees were found to exhibit relatively consistent musical qualia; however, the local chord context was found to significantly influence qualia ratings. In general, both groups of listeners were found to be fairly consistent in their ratings of scale-degree qualia; however, as expected, musician listeners were more consistent than nonmusician listeners. Finally, a subset of the musical qualia ratings were compared against Krumhansl and Kessler’s (1982) scale-degree “profiles.” While profiles created from the present data, overall, were correlated with the K&K profiles, their claim that tonal stability accounts for the high ratings ascribed to tonic triad members was found to be better explained by the effect of the local chord context.

Memory of a Tonal Center After Modulation

This study examines how long the percept of a tonal center is retained in memory following a modulation to a new key, and how harmonic context in the new key area affects recall of the original key. In Experiment 1, musically trained listeners (N = 50) were asked to rate perceived harmonic tension while listening to chord sequences that consisted of three parts: the first section established an initial key, the second section modulated to a new key, and the last section modulated back to the original key. The duration of the new key section ranged from 3 to 21 seconds. The tension slopes following the modulations indicated a gradual decay in the memory of the previous key as the length of the new key section increased. When sequences lacked cadences, traces of the initial key appeared to persist longer. In Experiment 2, musically trained listeners (N = 31) were asked to rate harmonic tension while listening to sequences with longer timescales of up to 45 s in a new key area. Additionally, responses to “closed” modulations, which returned to the original key, and “open” modulations, which departed from both the original and new keys, were compared. The combined results of Experiments 1 and 2 showed that the original key was retained in memory after 15-20 s in a new key. However, there was not enough evidence to conclude it persisted beyond 20 s.

Event-Related Potentials to Expectancy Violation in Musical Context

The present study addressed neuronal processing of musical tones that violate expectancies primed by auditorily and visually presented musical material. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded while the musically trained subjects were presented with short melodies composed for the experiment. The subject's expectations for the most likely ending were strengthened by displaying the melody score on a computer screen simultaneously with its auditory presentation. In about half of the melodies, the expected ending was randomly replaced by a tone violating the subjective expectancies in physical (frequency) and cognitive (harmonic) dimensions. The present ERP results indicate that the melodic expectations cover the tone pitch as well as its harmonic function. At least with highly repetitive melodies when the listener is provided with simultaneous visual information of the expected ending of the melody, the expectations are predominantly formed in the physical dimension: Significant effects of expectancy violation were found in N1, N2, P3, and N4 ERP deflections for physically most distant but harmonically best fitting ending tone. In addition to physical distance between the expected and unexpected ending tone, harmonic context of the given melody modulated N2 deflection already at 200 ms after the unexpected ending.

Different Brain Mechanisms Mediate Sensitivity to Sensory Consonance and Harmonic Context: Evidence from Auditory Event-Related Brain Potentials

The goal of this study was to analyze the time-course of sensory (bottom-up) and cognitive (top-down) processes that govern musical harmonic expectancy. Eight-chord sequences were presented to 12 musicians and 12 nonmusicians. Expectations for the last chord were manipulated both at the sensory level (i.e., the last chord was sensory consonant or dissonant) and at the cognitive level (the harmonic function of the target was varied by manipulating the harmonic context built up by the first six chords of the sequence). Changes in the harmonic function of the target chord mainly modulate the amplitude of a positive component peaking around 300 msec (P3) after target onset, reflecting top-down influences on the perceptual stages of processing. In contrast, changes in the acoustic structure of the target chord (sensory consonance) mainly modulate the amplitude of a late positive component that develops between 300 and 800 msec after target onset. Most importantly, the effects of sensory consonance and harmonic context on the event-related brain potentials associated with the target chords were found to be independent, thus suggesting that two separate processors contribute to the building up of musical expectancy.

Brain Indices of Music Processing: “Nonmusicians” are Musical

Only little systematic research has examined event-related brain potentials (ERPs) elicited by the cognitive processing of music. The present study investigated how music processing is influenced by a preceding musical context, affected by the task relevance of unexpected chords, and influenced by the degree and the probability of violation. Four experiments were conducted in which “nonmusicians” listened to chord sequences, which infrequently contained a chord violating the sound expectancy of listeners. Integration of in-key chords into the musical context was reflected as a late negative-frontal deflection in the ERPs. This negative deflection declined towards the end of a chord sequence, reflecting normal buildup of musical context. Brain waves elicited by chords with unexpected notes revealed two ERP effects: an early right-hemispheric preponderant-anterior negativity, which was taken to reflect the violation of sound expectancy; and a late bilateral-frontal negativity. The late negativity was larger compared to in-key chords and taken to reflect the higher degree of integration needed for unexpected chords. The early right-anterior negativity (ERAN) was unaffected by the task relevance of unexpected chords. The amplitudes of both early and late negativities were found to be sensitive to the degree of musical expectancy induced by the preceding harmonic context, and to the probability for deviant acoustic events. The employed experimental design opens a new field for the investigation of music processing. Results strengthen the hypothesis of an implicit musical ability of the human brain.

Effects of Global and Local Contexts on Harmonic Expectancy

Several psycholinguistic studies have investigated the influence of local and global semantic contexts on word processing. The first aim of the present study was to examine local and global level contributions to harmonic priming. The second was to test a spreading-activation account of harmonic context effects (Bharucha, 1987). The expectations for the last chord (the target) of eight-chord sequences were varied by simultaneously manipulating the harmonic relationship of the target to the first six chords (global context) and to the seventh chord (local context). Human performances demonstrated that harmonic expectancies are derived from both the global and local levels of musical structure. Bharucha's connectionist model provides a possible account of local and global context effects. In isochronous chord sequences, harmonic priming seems to result from activation spreading via a schematic knowledge of tonal hierarchies.