Incremental change of key perception in hearing a non-scale tone

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  • 非音階音の出現に伴う調知覚の漸進的変化
  • ヒオンカイオン ノ シュツゲン ニ トモナウ チョウチカク ノ ゼンシンテキ ヘンカ

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Abstract

Many studies have demonstrated that a listener, who is familiar with Western music, perceives the key of a melody by assimilating all of its constituent pitches into a Western diatonic tonal schema. This study investigated how a listener perceives a key when hearing a series of diatonic scale tones which is followed by an additional non-scale tone. We prepared “basic tone sequences” by selecting all constituent tones that could be interpreted as scale tones of four keys (i.e., two major keys and their parallel minor keys). Four stimulus conditions were developed by adding a tone to a basic tone sequence: (a) 2-keys-F condition presented an additional tone which fitted into one major key (i.e., one key with fewer key signatures of the above two keys) and one minor key (ditto); (b) 2-keys-M condition presented an additional tone which fitted into the other major key (i.e., the other key with more key signatures of the above two keys) and the other minor key (ditto); (c) 0-key condition presented an additional non-scale tone which did not fit into all diatonic keys; (d) 4-keys-condition presented an additional tone which fitted into the above two major keys and their parallel minor keys. Twelve musicians were given 20 basic tone sequences and 80 tone sequences from the four conditions. They had to select a key (or an atonal) category along with a confidence rating for all sequences. Results for basic tone sequences showed that majority of participants offered responses of a major key with fewer key signatures. In 2-keys-F condition, responses of a key with more key signatures (i.e., responses being selected by a minority of participants for basic tone sequences) were changed to those of other diatonic keys when an additional non-scale tone presented. In 2-keys-M condition, responses of a key with fewer key signatures (i.e., responses being selected by a majority of participants for basic tone sequences) were retained even if a non-scale tone presented. In 0-key condition, diatonic key responses for basic tone sequences were basically retained. These results suggested that if intra- and inter-individual variability in key perception is stable, participants prefer to remain in the current key; otherwise participants prefer to change to other keys. In short, key perception in hearing a non-scale tone is influenced by that in earlier point in time.

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