Music and the Mind Cognitive Elements of Music Listening Kevin D. Donohue Databeam Associate Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Kentucky

Is it Music? Identify which sounds are Music: A B C D E F G

What is Music? 1 a : the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity b : vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony Merrian-Webster Online Dictionary:

Auditory Scene: Input  Sensory organs (ears) separate acoustic energy into frequency bands and convert band energy into neural firings  The auditory cortex receives the neural responses and abstracts an auditory scene. Time Frequency

Auditory Scene: Perception  Perception derives a useful representation of reality from sensory input.  Auditory Stream refers to a perceptual unit associated with a single happening (A.S. Bregman, 1990). Acoustic to Neural Conversion Organize into Auditory Streams Representation of Reality

Auditory Stream Experiment Bergman & Campbell (1971)  Streams tend to form by grouping notes close in time and frequency (similarity and proximity).

Circularity in Pitch Judgement  Shepard’s Scale (1964) (Auditory Demonstrations CD, from the Acoustical Society of America)

Perceptual Organization Organization properties:  Belongingness – a sensory element belongs to an organization (or stream) of which is a part.  Exclusive allocation – a sensory element cannot belong to more than one organization at a time.  Bregman & Rudnicky (1975)

Perceptual Organization Organization properties:  Closure – perceived continuity, a tendency to close strong perceptual forms, response to missing evidence.

Sequential and Spectral Integration  Sequential Integration  Grouping sensory elements over time or events at different times considered to be from the same source.  Melody, rhythm  Spectral Integration  Fusing simultaneous sensory elements over frequency into one  Timbre, harmony

Timbre and Spectral Integration  The time envelope and harmonic structure give rise the timbre of the sound.

Timbre and Spectral Integration  Simultaneous tones grouped by timbre Same Note (A)2 Notes (F and A)

Auditory Scene Organization  Primitive Stream Segregation  Inherent constraints in auditory scene analysis (perceptual organization demonstrated by infants/children)  Music: Organization of musical sensory units  Schema-based segregation  Learned constraints in auditory scene analysis (differences in perceptual organization resulting from training and culture)  Music: Differences between musicians and non-musicians  Music: Differences resulting from acculturation (A.S. Bregman, Auditory Scene Analysis, MIT Press 1990, pp. 1-45)

Music Related Terms  Pitch – Perceived frequency/fundamental tone (20Hz- 20kHz Range)  Melody – Pattern of tones identified by the intervals between consecutive pitches  Contour – Shape of the melody without regard to intervals  Loudness – Perceived intensity of sound (0dB to 120dB)  Timbre – Nature of a sound defined mostly by its harmonic structure and time envelope  Rhythm – Repeated pattern of strong and weak sounds  Tempo – Rate of the rhythm

Melody Invariance  A melody can typically be recognized over changes in pitch, loudness, timbre, tempo, spatial location, and reverberations.  Contours are typically recalled better than actual melodies (intervals) for unfamiliar tunes. (Massaro, Kallman, and Kelly 1980). (Daniel J. Levitin, Memory for Musical Attributes, in Music Cognition and Computerized Sound, ed. P.R. Cook, MIT Press, 1999, pp )

Primitive Musical Perception  Distinguish between cognitive components present at an early age and those resulting from acculturation.  Infant: Grasp of musical structures  Adult: Develop cognitive strategies for applying musical structures (W. Jay Dowling, The Development of Music Perception and Cognition, The Psychology of Music Academic Press, 1999, pp )

Infant Perception  Group rules for tones similar to that of adults (Bregman and Campbell 1971, and Demany 1982)  Pitch octave equivalence and pitch constancy similar to that of adults (Kessen, Levine, and Wendrich 1979, Demany and Armand 1984)  Contour changes mostly noticed. Adults are more perceptive to changes in melodies based on the tonal scale of the culture.  Key constraints over different cultures:  Octave equivalence 2:1 (Burns and Ward 1978)  Perfect 5 th 3:2 (most consonant interval, fundamental building block of multi-cultural scales)  A limit of pitch classes within the octave (Miller 1956, argues 7 is the limit)  Acculturation can be observed by 6 months and by 1 year different responses to non-diatonic and diatonic scales can be observed.

Infant Perception  Infants discriminate between different rhythmic patterns (Chang and Trehub 1977, Demany, McKenzie, and Vurpillot 1977)  Melodies retain identity over transposition, likewise rhythm retains identity over changes in tempo (Monahan and Carterette 1985) and can notice changes in rhythm (Trehub and Thorpe 1989).  Infants are sensitive to similar cues (pitch contour and note duration) as adults when identifying musical phrases (Jusczyk and Krumhansl 1993).

Childhood Perception  9 to 18 months singing recognizable and repeatable songs.  Within phrase accents and timing of phrases follow a regular beat (Dowling and Harwood 1986).  Songs lack tonal stability with repeatable contours (Ostwald 1973).  By 5 years holding a stable tonality over duration of song.  Absolute pitch is rare in the general population of adults or children. Early learning hypothesis (Takeuchi and Hulse 1993).

Childhood Perception  Contour remains an important basis for melodic organization (Andrews and Dowling, 1991).  5-6 years recognize familiar version of tonal and atonal imitations.  9-10 distinguish familiar versions and same contour imitations.  5 years can distinguish near and far keys but not tonal imitations.  7 years can detect out-of-key and out-of-harmony changes like adults. 5 years can detect out-of-key changes (Trainor and Trehub, 1994).

Childhood Perception  Aspects of Musical Rhythm:  Control attention in temporal sequence of events  Remember and reproduce rhythm  Hidden melodies in same pitch range can be identified by adults though following rhythms.  9-10 years regularly detect hidden melodies if distracter notes in different pitch range.  5-6 year olds can reproduce rhythms at 2 levels- o f-organization (Drake 1993)

Childhood Perception  Rhythm Hierarchies:  Beat or Meter are accents at regular time intervals  Rhythmic accents can subdivide or extend over several beats  Melodic changes can also create another level of rhythm  5 years can respond to more than one level of rhythmic hierarchy and integrate it with melody (Drake, Dowling, and Palmer, 1991)  Little difference between 7 years and adult non- musicians in rhythmic organization (Drake 1993)

Childhood Perception  Emotional states of music  4 years perform well in assigning affective labels to music: happy, sad, angry, afraid (Cunningham and Stearling, 1988, Dolgin and Adelson 1990)

Summary  Innate organization for separating sounds from different sources. Grouping by pitch, contour, rhythm (phrasing), and timbre are exhibited by infants.  Acculturation refines melody distinctions and its relationship to harmonies and rhythms based on cultural scales and patterns.  Melodic memory is enhanced for melodies following note of a known scale.  Auditory scene analysis operations apply broadly to all sounds (speech, noise, music). Why some auditory streams become pleasurable/stimulating/interesting (music), and others are simply used to form a perception of reality is still not clear.

How many streams are there?

Interesting Websites  Mind, Music, and Machine  Auditory Scene Analysis  Joe Wolfe’s Web Page