Nuestro grupo de investigación cognitiva musical en la Universidad de las Artes Helsinki ha inves... more Nuestro grupo de investigación cognitiva musical en la Universidad de las Artes Helsinki ha investigado durante varios años la percepción de progresiones armónicas. En este artículo resumo nuestros experimentos y propongo conexiones entre este trabajo y la educación auditiva musical. Nuestra investigación se ha centrado en dos aspectos poco estudiados en el pasado: la influencia de la memoria específica y de las características extra-armónicas –como el timbre y la textura– en la percepción armónica. Después presento dos propuestas pedagógicas inspiradas por los resultados de nuestros experimentos. Primero, propongo que las características extra-armónicas se deberían discutir más en el aula; esta discusión es más fácil de integrar con el currículo existente cuando la armonía y las características extra-armónicas se discuten simultáneamente. Segundo, sugiero que los docentes deberían discutir con sus alumnos la posibilidad de que las progresiones de acordes no se almacenen en la memor...
Earlier studies seem to indicate that harmony plays a relatively unimportant role in music identi... more Earlier studies seem to indicate that harmony plays a relatively unimportant role in music identification tasks. However, identifying music from its harmony, although a difficult task, can inform our understanding of how listeners mentally represent and remember harmony. The present study is the first to examine the ability of listeners with varying musical expertise to identify wellknown classical and pop/rock pieces from their chords. In this study, well-known classical and pop/rock pieces selected in a pilot were used instead of traditional tunes because their chord progressions tend to be more distinctive and their different renditions often preserve the original harmony with little or no modifications. One hundred participants, divided into four groups according to musical expertise, listened to chord progressions of representative passages from 12 pieces and were asked to identify them. Two ways of modifying pitch information in the chord progressions were explored: (1) The pr...
Supplemental material, POM793005_Supl_Mat_ for What helps jazz musicians name tunes from harmony?... more Supplemental material, POM793005_Supl_Mat_ for What helps jazz musicians name tunes from harmony? The relationship between work with harmony and the ability to identify well-known jazz standards from chord progressions by Ivan Jimenez and Tuire Kuusi in Psychology of Music
Musicians can conceptualize harmony in terms of its connection to specific pieces of music. Howev... more Musicians can conceptualize harmony in terms of its connection to specific pieces of music. However, research appears to indicate that harmony plays a relatively unimportant role in music identification tasks. The present study examines the ability of listeners of varying levels of musical expertise to identify music from chord progressions. Participants were asked to identify well-known classical and pop/rock pieces from their chord progressions, which were recorded using either piano tones or Shepard tones and were played at six transpositional levels. Although musical training and invariance of surface melodic and rhythmic features were found to have an advantageous effect on the identification task, even some non-musicians were able to identify music from chord progressions in conditions of low invariance of surface features. Implications of these results for our understanding of how listeners mentally represent and remember harmony are discussed.
It is currently believed that timbre plays a primary role in the identification of songs from ver... more It is currently believed that timbre plays a primary role in the identification of songs from very brief excerpts of music. However, its specific contribution, and those of other characteristics of...
Although Western tonal syntax can generate a very large number of chord successions of various le... more Although Western tonal syntax can generate a very large number of chord successions of various lengths and degrees of complexity, some types of music, from Renaissance dances to recent pop, tend to rely more heavily on the repetition of relatively simple, short harmonic patterns. Doll recently identified short chord progressions commonly found in North American and British popular music and proposed that these chord progressions can be stored in long-term memory in the form of harmonic schemata that allow listeners to hear them as stereotypical chord progressions. However, considering the challenges that many listeners face when trying to consciously grasp harmony, it seems likely that the feelings of remembering chord progressions varies from listener to listener. To investigate these potential differences, we asked 231 listeners with various levels of musical training to rate their confidence on whether or not they had previously heard six diatonic four-chord progressions. To cont...
Research has shown that musical training is associated with a greater ability to aurally connect ... more Research has shown that musical training is associated with a greater ability to aurally connect chord progressions to specific pieces of music. However, it is unclear what specific aspects of musical training contribute to that ability. The present study investigated the effects of various aspects of professional and amateur jazz musicians’ formal training and work with harmony on their ability to identify well-known jazz standards from chord progressions. For participants who were able to identify songs from commercial recordings in this experiment, general long-term involvement with activities believed to increase awareness of harmony, such as playing a harmonic instrument, playing chords by ear, and transcribing harmonic progressions was often not enough to enable them to identify songs from their chord progressions alone. Additionally, the ability to identify songs from chord progressions was most strongly correlated with having played and being able to write out the chord labe...
Nuestro grupo de investigación cognitiva musical en la Universidad de las Artes Helsinki ha inves... more Nuestro grupo de investigación cognitiva musical en la Universidad de las Artes Helsinki ha investigado durante varios años la percepción de progresiones armónicas. En este artículo resumo nuestros experimentos y propongo conexiones entre este trabajo y la educación auditiva musical. Nuestra investigación se ha centrado en dos aspectos poco estudiados en el pasado: la influencia de la memoria específica y de las características extra-armónicas –como el timbre y la textura– en la percepción armónica. Después presento dos propuestas pedagógicas inspiradas por los resultados de nuestros experimentos. Primero, propongo que las características extra-armónicas se deberían discutir más en el aula; esta discusión es más fácil de integrar con el currículo existente cuando la armonía y las características extra-armónicas se discuten simultáneamente. Segundo, sugiero que los docentes deberían discutir con sus alumnos la posibilidad de que las progresiones de acordes no se almacenen en la memor...
Earlier studies seem to indicate that harmony plays a relatively unimportant role in music identi... more Earlier studies seem to indicate that harmony plays a relatively unimportant role in music identification tasks. However, identifying music from its harmony, although a difficult task, can inform our understanding of how listeners mentally represent and remember harmony. The present study is the first to examine the ability of listeners with varying musical expertise to identify wellknown classical and pop/rock pieces from their chords. In this study, well-known classical and pop/rock pieces selected in a pilot were used instead of traditional tunes because their chord progressions tend to be more distinctive and their different renditions often preserve the original harmony with little or no modifications. One hundred participants, divided into four groups according to musical expertise, listened to chord progressions of representative passages from 12 pieces and were asked to identify them. Two ways of modifying pitch information in the chord progressions were explored: (1) The pr...
Supplemental material, POM793005_Supl_Mat_ for What helps jazz musicians name tunes from harmony?... more Supplemental material, POM793005_Supl_Mat_ for What helps jazz musicians name tunes from harmony? The relationship between work with harmony and the ability to identify well-known jazz standards from chord progressions by Ivan Jimenez and Tuire Kuusi in Psychology of Music
Musicians can conceptualize harmony in terms of its connection to specific pieces of music. Howev... more Musicians can conceptualize harmony in terms of its connection to specific pieces of music. However, research appears to indicate that harmony plays a relatively unimportant role in music identification tasks. The present study examines the ability of listeners of varying levels of musical expertise to identify music from chord progressions. Participants were asked to identify well-known classical and pop/rock pieces from their chord progressions, which were recorded using either piano tones or Shepard tones and were played at six transpositional levels. Although musical training and invariance of surface melodic and rhythmic features were found to have an advantageous effect on the identification task, even some non-musicians were able to identify music from chord progressions in conditions of low invariance of surface features. Implications of these results for our understanding of how listeners mentally represent and remember harmony are discussed.
It is currently believed that timbre plays a primary role in the identification of songs from ver... more It is currently believed that timbre plays a primary role in the identification of songs from very brief excerpts of music. However, its specific contribution, and those of other characteristics of...
Although Western tonal syntax can generate a very large number of chord successions of various le... more Although Western tonal syntax can generate a very large number of chord successions of various lengths and degrees of complexity, some types of music, from Renaissance dances to recent pop, tend to rely more heavily on the repetition of relatively simple, short harmonic patterns. Doll recently identified short chord progressions commonly found in North American and British popular music and proposed that these chord progressions can be stored in long-term memory in the form of harmonic schemata that allow listeners to hear them as stereotypical chord progressions. However, considering the challenges that many listeners face when trying to consciously grasp harmony, it seems likely that the feelings of remembering chord progressions varies from listener to listener. To investigate these potential differences, we asked 231 listeners with various levels of musical training to rate their confidence on whether or not they had previously heard six diatonic four-chord progressions. To cont...
Research has shown that musical training is associated with a greater ability to aurally connect ... more Research has shown that musical training is associated with a greater ability to aurally connect chord progressions to specific pieces of music. However, it is unclear what specific aspects of musical training contribute to that ability. The present study investigated the effects of various aspects of professional and amateur jazz musicians’ formal training and work with harmony on their ability to identify well-known jazz standards from chord progressions. For participants who were able to identify songs from commercial recordings in this experiment, general long-term involvement with activities believed to increase awareness of harmony, such as playing a harmonic instrument, playing chords by ear, and transcribing harmonic progressions was often not enough to enable them to identify songs from their chord progressions alone. Additionally, the ability to identify songs from chord progressions was most strongly correlated with having played and being able to write out the chord labe...
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