IMPORTANCE OF MUSIC PERCEPTION
Music can affect your mood. In class he gave the example of the opening scene in the movie "Up" and how it can go from happy to dramatic to sad and then back again. His point was that, although the movie/picture that goes with the music is important you can still get the emotion from the song without the movie/pictures.
Music as a Therapy
There are many mental and physical health benefits. Some of the physiological changes include serotonin levels rise, change in heart rate and muscle activity, etc.
So how do we perceive music? To understand this you need to break music down into it's basic features so first, what are some of the basic features of music? These include notes and pitch (pitch = frequency). When we talk about pitch equalling frequency then the assumption is that closer pitches will be closer in pitch, however, we see that octaves seem to break this rule. For example, 440 Hz is an A and 880 Hz is an A and even though there are notes between them in frequency these two sound more similar in pitch than any of those notes between these two A's. So musical pitch has more to it.
MUSICAL PITCH
Musical pitch has tone height and tone chroma. As you increase the frequency the tone height gets higher. Tone chroma is based off of octave relationships where doubling the frequency results in an octave where the two notes in the octave are perceived as the same note. So why does tone chroma have this effect. The answer could be in place coding and in temporal coding.
Place Coding
This is the audio map. It is based on where the neurons are in the cochlea which tells us where that frequency is at.
Temporal Coding
This allows the neuron to fire at a different rate based on that frequency. This does not work above 5000 Hz which makes octave relationships hard to discern and melodies are not perceptually organized as melodies at that level.
When it comes down to it we don't really know if place coding or temporal coding is the answer to tone chroma but they seem to be a piece of the puzzle.
Cultural Effects
Different scales use different number of notes between octaves. The fewer notes there are between octaves then the more acceptable variation in frequency to create a note (e.g., 440 Hz is always an A in heptatonic scale. Pentatonic or Javanese scales could play a note at 410 Hz and it would still be an A because there are fewer notes between scales).
How many notes we put between octaves, the octave relationship, is a learned behavior. Infants can notice bad notes in either scale (heptatonic or Javanese) equally well. Adults however seem to be more limited to detection of bad notes in the scale they are familiar with.
PUTTING PITCHES TOGETHER
Chords are three or more pitches played simultaneously. You can have consonant chords or dissonant chords both of which are based on ratios consistent with chroma. No matter what tone height you play a chord at you will have the same variation between notes.
MELODY PERCEPTION
Melodies can be perceived at a very young age. Testing 7 and 8-month-old babies are behaviorally able to discriminate both simple and complex melodies that they've heard from new melodies.
So what is a melody exactly? Perception scientists define it as a sequence of pitches that is perceived as one coherent stream or structure based on the pattern of rising and falling pitches, not the pitches themselves. That is to say, the melody pattern is more important than the key that the melody is played in. The pattern is dependent on pitch height, duration of pitches, speed at which sounds are presented (tempo), and durations relative to each other to create rhythm.
RHYTHM
Rhythm is not unique to music since many activities have rhythm. We impose rhythm even when there isn't any. Thomas Bolton did a study where he presented a series of evenly spaced, identical sounds and listeners reported sound groups of two, three, or four and even perceived an accent on the first note in their perceived groups.
Listeners expect a fairly constant beat such as the first note in a group will be accented and the accent will occur in a steady pattern. Composers then use a technique called syncopation where the accents are varied to create more exciting rhythms.
Music can affect your mood. In class he gave the example of the opening scene in the movie "Up" and how it can go from happy to dramatic to sad and then back again. His point was that, although the movie/picture that goes with the music is important you can still get the emotion from the song without the movie/pictures.
Music as a Therapy
There are many mental and physical health benefits. Some of the physiological changes include serotonin levels rise, change in heart rate and muscle activity, etc.
So how do we perceive music? To understand this you need to break music down into it's basic features so first, what are some of the basic features of music? These include notes and pitch (pitch = frequency). When we talk about pitch equalling frequency then the assumption is that closer pitches will be closer in pitch, however, we see that octaves seem to break this rule. For example, 440 Hz is an A and 880 Hz is an A and even though there are notes between them in frequency these two sound more similar in pitch than any of those notes between these two A's. So musical pitch has more to it.
MUSICAL PITCH
Musical pitch has tone height and tone chroma. As you increase the frequency the tone height gets higher. Tone chroma is based off of octave relationships where doubling the frequency results in an octave where the two notes in the octave are perceived as the same note. So why does tone chroma have this effect. The answer could be in place coding and in temporal coding.
Place Coding
This is the audio map. It is based on where the neurons are in the cochlea which tells us where that frequency is at.
Temporal Coding
This allows the neuron to fire at a different rate based on that frequency. This does not work above 5000 Hz which makes octave relationships hard to discern and melodies are not perceptually organized as melodies at that level.
When it comes down to it we don't really know if place coding or temporal coding is the answer to tone chroma but they seem to be a piece of the puzzle.
Cultural Effects
Different scales use different number of notes between octaves. The fewer notes there are between octaves then the more acceptable variation in frequency to create a note (e.g., 440 Hz is always an A in heptatonic scale. Pentatonic or Javanese scales could play a note at 410 Hz and it would still be an A because there are fewer notes between scales).
How many notes we put between octaves, the octave relationship, is a learned behavior. Infants can notice bad notes in either scale (heptatonic or Javanese) equally well. Adults however seem to be more limited to detection of bad notes in the scale they are familiar with.
PUTTING PITCHES TOGETHER
Chords are three or more pitches played simultaneously. You can have consonant chords or dissonant chords both of which are based on ratios consistent with chroma. No matter what tone height you play a chord at you will have the same variation between notes.
MELODY PERCEPTION
Melodies can be perceived at a very young age. Testing 7 and 8-month-old babies are behaviorally able to discriminate both simple and complex melodies that they've heard from new melodies.
So what is a melody exactly? Perception scientists define it as a sequence of pitches that is perceived as one coherent stream or structure based on the pattern of rising and falling pitches, not the pitches themselves. That is to say, the melody pattern is more important than the key that the melody is played in. The pattern is dependent on pitch height, duration of pitches, speed at which sounds are presented (tempo), and durations relative to each other to create rhythm.
RHYTHM
Rhythm is not unique to music since many activities have rhythm. We impose rhythm even when there isn't any. Thomas Bolton did a study where he presented a series of evenly spaced, identical sounds and listeners reported sound groups of two, three, or four and even perceived an accent on the first note in their perceived groups.
Listeners expect a fairly constant beat such as the first note in a group will be accented and the accent will occur in a steady pattern. Composers then use a technique called syncopation where the accents are varied to create more exciting rhythms.
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