BCS Midterm 2

cross-culturally, scales seem to share the property that they don’t have equally spaced steps

working memory capacity; we can remember groups of things from 5 to 9; most scales around the world are 5 to 9; George Miller

triad (strongest), diatonic pitches, then chromatic (weakest)

the inability to distinguish pitch/small intervals; tone-deafness; congenital: born with; acquired: lost the ability

discovered tonal hierarchy by playing a scale with a probe tone and having people rate 1 through 7 for completeness

sequence of keys where each is a fifth apart form the next so that they are distinguished by one sharp or flat; way to measure close keys vs. distant keys

in a major scale, tritons and minor seconds are rare; key-finding: if you hear apiece of music, how are you able to find the tonic; you actively seek tritones and minor seconds and those assist you in finding the tonic

competing with rare interval; people determine the key by what notes appear most frequently; we carry the hierarchy template in our brain and we monitor how often scale degrees appear

the drawing on the board showing relation of notes

emotional qualities associated to a particular scale degree; we acquire them by tracking the probabilities of ‘given this note, how likely is it that the next note will appear’; David Huron (tonality chapter)

the strongest type of cadence is authentic (V-I); often manipulated in experiments looking at expectation; expected strongest resolution

a tone that is melodically unstable and tends to resolve; related to qualia; they usually resolve so we expect it to

a piece with tonal closure will end with the key it started in; people are more likely to prefer pieces that end in the original key; unclear if it’s psychologically real; we are usually happy to stay within a modulation

learning based on how frequently something occurs

how often something occurs with another (one pitch predicts another pitch)

how often something occurs regardless of it’s relation to another note

ch 9 and 10 about tonality and scale degree qualia and meter and hypermeter; it’s not just mere exposure that makes us prefer something, but it’s about our expectations being satisfied

the idea that when you become exposed to something, if that thing reoccurs in a grouip of unfamiliar items, you tend to prefer what you’ve been exposed to

Huron says that expectation and prediction play into this, we get physical pleasure from our expectations being satisfied

a hierarchical system of strong and weak beats; shown by time signature; the framework that rhythm exists within

the actual durations of long and short sounds and silence

evenly spaced beats or notes

the recursive segmentation of music into progressively larger units; it is both a learned phenomenon and a Gestalt phenomenon

rules that define what our expected based on gestalt principles; Lairdall and Jackendoff?; when you listen to a melody you might prefer to group something based on timbre or non similarity of rhythmic grouping

each bar is thought of as it’s own beat; meter with larger groups; larger way of looking at meter; David Huron; you can explain hypermemter by how often pitches start of particular measures

listeners attention is attenuated to metric qualities; meter affects the perception of pitch; people are better at identifiying a tone on a strong beat; Maury Reese Jones?; if you set up an isochronous pulse, your attention attunes to that pulse; you pay better attention on the pulse and can discriminate pitches better there

the time between two stimuli; if the interval is <100ms it is perceived as continuous; from beginning of event to beginning of event

the characteristics of metric features; downbeat is considered strong and upbeat is considered leading

Balkan music; conclusion: infants were better at perceiving differences in strange rhythms and meter from different countries and cultures;

vocal mimicry and echoing; animals can entrain to beat: dancing birds and elephants

tapping along with the beat; ability as humans to be able to understand an external rhythm and tap along with it

being able to learn aspects of music from culture and experience; acquire music from surroundings; increases as you age; includes statistical learning and explicit musical instruction

ability to hear while in the womb; aids musical enculturation; you can hear mother speaking or singing and heartbeat; acts like a low pass filter

critical window of opportunity when you are best able to learn something

becoming accustom to a repeated stimulus over time; rats and loud noise

when a new stimulus is introduced, the rat lost its habituation and was once again afraid of the original loud sound

determine preference for stimulus by time spent looking at one stimulus

they train the baby to turn it’s head when there is a change or introduction of a stimulus by offering a reward; eventually they anticipate the change and turn their head before the reward

how you talk to babies; higher pitch. slower pace, made up words; slower tempo; exaggerated contour

used to heighten connection between mother and child; softer like lullabies; slower tempo; exaggerated contour

8 and 9 month olds; testing for distinctions between within key or our of key change; infants had ability to distinguish in and out of key shit