Yvonne Leung

The current study investigates the learning of microtonal tuning systems, which have a different pitch interval structure than the Western tonal system (12-tone equal temperament). To examine the influence of structural similarity, we included systems that differed from the 12-tone equal temperament system in different degrees in terms of temperament, pitch ratio, and pitch differences. After a brief exposure phase in which participants became acquainted with the previously unfamiliar systems, we assessed aspects of their learning. We measured pitch memory performance and the knowledge of pitch membership using a pitch deviant detection task and a goodness-of-fit perception task. In the pitch deviant detection task, participants were required to detect pitch shifts in a second playing of a given melody, whereas in the goodness-of-fit task, they made judgments about whether the last tone (probe) fits or does not fit with the context of the just presented melody. A total of 30 musically untrained individuals were tested in each experiment, and results showed that learning was limited; hence the task was difficult in such a short period. Pitch deviant detection was better in the microtonal system that is well-formed with two step sizes than that in the other systems in the test. Goodness-of-fit perception was similar between 12-tone equal temperament and the other microtonal systems, and participants who were fundamentally better at pitch discrimination and contour perception were better at rejecting incongruent probes (nonmember of the system) in the goodness-of-fit task. This study has implications for music perception of pitch ratio- and pitch difference-based tuning systems.

While mastering a musical instrument takes years, becoming familiar with a new music system requires less time and skills. In this study, we examine whether musically untrained Western listeners can incidentally learn an unfamiliar, microtonal musical scale from simply engaging in a timbre discrimination task. The experiment is comprised of an Exposure and a Test phase. During Exposure, 21 non-musicians were instructed to detect a timbre shift (TS) within short microtonal melodies, and we hypothesised that they would incidentally learn about the pitch interval structure of the microtonal scale from attending to the melodies during the task. In a follow-up Test phase, the tone before the TS was either a member (congruent) or a non-member (incongruent) of the scale. Based on our statistical manipulation of the stimuli, incongruent tones would be a better predictor of an incoming TS than the congruent tones. We therefore expect a faster response time to the shift after the participants...

Phrasing facilitates the organization of auditory information and is central to speech and music. Not surprisingly, aspects of changing intensity, rhythm, and pitch are key determinants of musical phrases and their boundaries in instrumental note-based music. Different kinds of speech (such as tone- vs. stress-languages) share these features in different proportions and form an instructive comparison. However, little is known about whether or how musical phrasing is perceived in sound-based music, where the basic musical unit from which a piece is created is commonly non-instrumental continuous sounds, rather than instrumental discontinuous notes. This issue forms the target of the present paper. Twenty participants (17 untrained in music) were presented with six stimuli derived from sound-based music, note-based music, and environmental sound. Their task was to indicate each occurrence of a perceived phrase and qualitatively describe key characteristics of the stimulus associated w...