Psychology of Music

Lerdahl and Jackendoff's recent book A Generative Theory of Tonal Music brings together a range of ideas that are of common interest to music theorists, music analysts and psychologists of music. For this reason, as well as for its specific theoretical contributions, the book is an important landmark. However, it is argued that not only are there shortcomings in the theory when viewed from each of these three perspectives, but that it also fails to pay sufficient attention to the different aims and conceptual frameworks of the three disciplines. This leads to certain difficulties in applying the theory and assessing the status of its constructs. If the three disciplines are to contribute significantly to one another, their method- ological and conceptual differences must be recognised and accommodated.

Twenty melodic tone sequences varying in harmonic structure were first presented once each to listeners selected from three different levels of previous musical training. Listeners rated each sequence on a 6-point scale of "pleasingness". Next, 5 sequences from the original set of 20 were each repeated 10 times in a row and rated after each repetition. The 5 sequences were assigned to listeners so that across listeners the 20 original sequences were equally represented. Finally, all 20 sequences were again each presented once for rating. At all levels of musical training, listeners showed a monotonic relationship between "pleasingness" and level of harmonic structure, with highest ratings of "pleasingness" associated with the highest level of structure. During repeated exposures, judged "pleasingness" increased at all levels of harmonic structure except the highest level, where a decrease of "pleasingness" with exposure was obtained. The effects of repetition did not, however, extend to the final ratings of the original set of 20 sequences. The data are discussed with reference to the optimal- complexity model of aesthetic judgement; specific attention is directed toward the cognitive processes determining sequence complexity.

To examine the usefulness of applying experimental aesthetics techniques to popular music, two experiments studied interrelationships between pleasingness and familiarity ratings and recordings' past chart performance. There was a moderate positive linear correlation between pleasingness and familiarity. Records which had the greatest chart success were the most familiar but they were not necessarily the most pleasing. Comparison of different methods of obtaining pleasingness and familiarity ratings suggested that, for this kind of material, ratings made from memory, cued by artist and title, accord closely with ratings made immediately after hearing a recording.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that the neural part of the auditory system employs a temporal mechanism, referred to as a spiral processor, to determine whether sounds are periodic, and that this type of mechanism would explain the form of consonance observed in Western music. Pitch is our perception of periodicity in a sound wave, and harmony is the set of rules that explain which pitches go well together. The octave, the diatonic scale and its modes are the basic ingredients of harmony in Western music. For over a hundred years we have known that the logarithmic spiral (base 2) provides a good description of the cyclic aspect of musical scales, that is, the octave. But the implications for the internal structure of the octave, that is the diatonic scale and its two main modes, have largely been ignored. A periodic sound like a musical note generates regular streams of pulses in primary auditory neurones. As these pulse streams flow through the spiral processor they form a pattern of spokes radiating from the centre of the spiral. The shape of the pattern is fixed; the orientation of the pattern determines the pitch. The primary intervals of the diatonic scale are produced by pairs of notes whose main spokes coincide, and the intervals fall naturally into two groups, major and minor.