Before we get too far into music cognition, I'll give you a quick review of the anatomy of the brain as I will be referring to various parts of the brain in later posts. I will add detail to any of the parts that relate most directly to music perception.
Four of the main components of the brain are the Cerebrum, Cerebellum, Limbic System, and Brain Stem.
The Cerebrum is divided into four lobes: frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital. The temporal lobe is where audio processing occurs from the ears. It is associated with speech, auditory perceptions, auditory memories, and other auditory stimuli. The right temporal lobe is the most responsible for areas specific to music- responsible for rhythm, intonation, and melody/pitch processing/
The Cerebellum helps coordinate balance and movement, like when you're dancing or keeping a beat!
The Limbic system is associated with emotion. It is buried in the brain and is made of the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus. If you have an emotional response to music, the limbic system is likely at work.
The Brain stem is what we need for survival. It controls vital operations like heart rate and breathing. How could you listen to music without your brain stem?? It is primal part of the brain underneath the Limbic system.
I will bring more details on the areas to light as they become relevant to my future posts.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Thursday, October 28, 2010
An Insight into Pitch ID
Have you ever heard someone mention that they have "perfect pitch?" For those who are unfamiliar, a person with perfect pitch can be given the name of a certain note and then immediately sing that note. In chapter 5 of Sweet Anticipation Huron gives an in depth look at some of the nuances of this rare ability.
The Hick-Hyman Law of Learning states that a relationship exists between the frequency of a certain stimulus and the amount of time it takes you to process the stimulus.
Here's an example I came up with to explain this law. Think about when you get dressed in the morning. You open up your closet to reveal your many outfit possibilities for the day. Some clothing has been in your closet for years while other articles were purchased recently. The clothing that has been there for years you've seen every single day when you've opened your closet over the past years. You usually just gaze over this clothing without thinking about it. However, your eyes will probably be drawn to what you recently purchased. You are not used to seeing it in your closet because you haven't seen it as often. You will likely spend more time focusing the new outfit deciding if you want to wear it on the given day. The more new information, the slower the mental reaction time.
Experiment 1: Back to music. A Japanese researcher named Ken'ichi Miyazaki found, in general, that those with perfect pitch could identify "white notes" more quickly than they could identify "black notes." (For the non-musical folk, these are two different types of notes on the piano- the white notes appearing more frequently).
Experiment 2: In a later experiment, researchers David Huron and Jasba Simpson found that, after listening to a large sample of music, the count of "white notes" appearing in music is greater than that of "black notes."
So now answer the question:
Why do people with perfect pitch identify "white note" tones more easily??
The answer to that question rests in the Hick-Hyman Law. Because music tends to use more white notes, white notes are more frequent so it takes the brain less time to process them than it does to process black notes.
I play violin the school orchestra. Before each rehearsal we start by tuning to the note "A." So we are always given the pitch of "A" before rehearsal so that we can tune. It is no wonder, then, that "A" is the easiest note for me to produce and recognize quickly! It appears frequently in my life.
QUIZ!! If you were asked to hum a pitch (any random pitch) on the spot, you would probably think you were just humming "some random note." What factors went into the pitch that you thought you "randomly" hummed??
Answer: It would likely be the average note pitch of all the music on your iPod or portable media player!
The Hick-Hyman Law of Learning states that a relationship exists between the frequency of a certain stimulus and the amount of time it takes you to process the stimulus.
Here's an example I came up with to explain this law. Think about when you get dressed in the morning. You open up your closet to reveal your many outfit possibilities for the day. Some clothing has been in your closet for years while other articles were purchased recently. The clothing that has been there for years you've seen every single day when you've opened your closet over the past years. You usually just gaze over this clothing without thinking about it. However, your eyes will probably be drawn to what you recently purchased. You are not used to seeing it in your closet because you haven't seen it as often. You will likely spend more time focusing the new outfit deciding if you want to wear it on the given day. The more new information, the slower the mental reaction time.
Experiment 1: Back to music. A Japanese researcher named Ken'ichi Miyazaki found, in general, that those with perfect pitch could identify "white notes" more quickly than they could identify "black notes." (For the non-musical folk, these are two different types of notes on the piano- the white notes appearing more frequently).
Experiment 2: In a later experiment, researchers David Huron and Jasba Simpson found that, after listening to a large sample of music, the count of "white notes" appearing in music is greater than that of "black notes."
So now answer the question:
Why do people with perfect pitch identify "white note" tones more easily??
The answer to that question rests in the Hick-Hyman Law. Because music tends to use more white notes, white notes are more frequent so it takes the brain less time to process them than it does to process black notes.
I play violin the school orchestra. Before each rehearsal we start by tuning to the note "A." So we are always given the pitch of "A" before rehearsal so that we can tune. It is no wonder, then, that "A" is the easiest note for me to produce and recognize quickly! It appears frequently in my life.
QUIZ!! If you were asked to hum a pitch (any random pitch) on the spot, you would probably think you were just humming "some random note." What factors went into the pitch that you thought you "randomly" hummed??
Answer: It would likely be the average note pitch of all the music on your iPod or portable media player!
Sunday, October 17, 2010
ITPRA!
What is ITPRA you ask? In Sweet Anticipation, Huron presents a model of a string of anticipatory responses in relation to music. He calls this model "The ITPRA Theory of Expectation."
Imagination Response- encourages behavior in ways that will make a forseen possible outcome the most beneficial
Tension Response- adjusts levels of tension to prepare for event
Prediction Response- forms expectations of what is to come
Reaction Response- causes organism to immediately resort to a protecting state by assuming a worse-case-scenario outcome
Appraisal Response- gives positive or negative reinforcement and re-evaluation
Clearly these responses happen in a timeline, that is, one after the other.
Based on my readings up to this point, I will attempt to relate this model to listening to music by focusing on the relationship between 7th chords and their resolutions. For those who are not musicians, please remember the follow statement before I continue "7th chords usually 'like' to resolve to I/i chords"
We IMAGINE the 7th chords will resolve to i chords because they sound like they should. Since they normally do resolve this way in pop culture, our TENSION levels are low because we think we've PREDICTED what the next chord will be (a i chord). We all of a sudden find that the 7th chord does not resolve as it "should" causing our musical minds to REACT by cringing. Perhaps the 7th resolves to a vi chord (deceptive cadence) instead. As the song continues, we APPRAISE what we've heard and decide, be it subconsciously for those who are not into music theory, that we like the deviation from the usual progression. Our brain then gives us a feeling of reward for making sense of something unfamiliar and having the realization that what was unexpected ended up being GOOD.*
Here's a simple analogy. Imagine if your Aunt Annie always bakes a blueberry pie whenever you visit her. One day you find yourself on your way to Aunt Annie's house. You start to salivate as you think about the delicious blueberry pie you will soon be consuming. However, as she greets you at the door you realize that what you smell coming from the kitchen is not blueberry. It's apple! For years Annie has always baked you blueberry pie and now all of a sudden she presents you with apple pie! As you tentatively take a bite and chew, you decide that you like the apple pie just as much if not more than the blueberry pie. Though you were expecting blueberry, apple ended up being a welcome change even though it wasn't what you had predicted.
Congratulations if you've made it through this whole post! It was a dense journey, but hopefully now you will have a new way of thinking about how you listen to music and react.
*Please note that I may edit this description, or anything I post, if further studying causes me to need to refine what I have written.
Imagination Response- encourages behavior in ways that will make a forseen possible outcome the most beneficial
Tension Response- adjusts levels of tension to prepare for event
Prediction Response- forms expectations of what is to come
Reaction Response- causes organism to immediately resort to a protecting state by assuming a worse-case-scenario outcome
Appraisal Response- gives positive or negative reinforcement and re-evaluation
Clearly these responses happen in a timeline, that is, one after the other.
Based on my readings up to this point, I will attempt to relate this model to listening to music by focusing on the relationship between 7th chords and their resolutions. For those who are not musicians, please remember the follow statement before I continue "7th chords usually 'like' to resolve to I/i chords"
We IMAGINE the 7th chords will resolve to i chords because they sound like they should. Since they normally do resolve this way in pop culture, our TENSION levels are low because we think we've PREDICTED what the next chord will be (a i chord). We all of a sudden find that the 7th chord does not resolve as it "should" causing our musical minds to REACT by cringing. Perhaps the 7th resolves to a vi chord (deceptive cadence) instead. As the song continues, we APPRAISE what we've heard and decide, be it subconsciously for those who are not into music theory, that we like the deviation from the usual progression. Our brain then gives us a feeling of reward for making sense of something unfamiliar and having the realization that what was unexpected ended up being GOOD.*
Here's a simple analogy. Imagine if your Aunt Annie always bakes a blueberry pie whenever you visit her. One day you find yourself on your way to Aunt Annie's house. You start to salivate as you think about the delicious blueberry pie you will soon be consuming. However, as she greets you at the door you realize that what you smell coming from the kitchen is not blueberry. It's apple! For years Annie has always baked you blueberry pie and now all of a sudden she presents you with apple pie! As you tentatively take a bite and chew, you decide that you like the apple pie just as much if not more than the blueberry pie. Though you were expecting blueberry, apple ended up being a welcome change even though it wasn't what you had predicted.
Congratulations if you've made it through this whole post! It was a dense journey, but hopefully now you will have a new way of thinking about how you listen to music and react.
*Please note that I may edit this description, or anything I post, if further studying causes me to need to refine what I have written.
Monday, October 11, 2010
The 3 P's: Psychology, Physics, and Pitch!
I am currently reading two books on music cognition as part of my studies: This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin, and Sweet Anticipation- Music and the Psychology of Expectation by David Huron.
According to Levitin, musical pitch is "a purely psychological construct, related both to the actual frequency of a particular tone and to its relative position in the musical scale...refers to the mental representation an organism has [of sound]." (p.15-22) This certainly makes sense seeing as our emotional response to music is based primarily on the melody, which is made up of many pitches. Without the psychological element, we're just talking about air molecules vibrating at certain frequencies.
Quiz time! Could you hear music in a vacuum?
Nope! Pitches produced at different frequencies cause surrounding air molecules to vibrate at the given frequency. Your ear drum in turn vibrates at that same frequency. We then use our inner ears and brain to analyze the way our ear drums vibrate and make connections. However, in a vacuum there are no air molecules so the tone "produced" would never make it to your ear. What if you were underwater??
According to Levitin, musical pitch is "a purely psychological construct, related both to the actual frequency of a particular tone and to its relative position in the musical scale...refers to the mental representation an organism has [of sound]." (p.15-22) This certainly makes sense seeing as our emotional response to music is based primarily on the melody, which is made up of many pitches. Without the psychological element, we're just talking about air molecules vibrating at certain frequencies.
Quiz time! Could you hear music in a vacuum?
Nope! Pitches produced at different frequencies cause surrounding air molecules to vibrate at the given frequency. Your ear drum in turn vibrates at that same frequency. We then use our inner ears and brain to analyze the way our ear drums vibrate and make connections. However, in a vacuum there are no air molecules so the tone "produced" would never make it to your ear. What if you were underwater??
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Britney Spears meets Kol Nidre
[edited]
How could a song performed by a pop-artist share commonalities with a holy Jewish prayer melody?
A couple weeks ago I was accompanying Yom Kippur services at Temple and for one of the preludes I played "Kol Nidre" which is a standard tune used at this service. It utilizes the chord progression: i --> V4/3. Note that the 5th of the chord is in the bass. This is invoked in me, and would in most listeners, a sense of tension as the bass tone does not immediately resolve and is rather unstable. We anticipate an immediate resolution due to the tension caused by such a seventh chord but we do not get it right away.
A little while after the service, I was watching a GLEE episode featuring Britney Spears. I wasn't thinking at all about the service I had played at earlier until Rachel started singing "Baby, One More Time." After GLEE's faithful rendition of this hit track, something sparked in my head, I wasn't sure what, but it was something important, so I went online to listen to the song again. I then realized I felt unsettled as I did during Kol Nidre. But wait, these two pieces are totally different! Why would I make this connection? After analyzing the first couple bars of "Baby One More Time" I realized the chorus uses a seventh in a similar way: the i to V6/5. This time the leading tone is in the bass of the chord instead. However, just like in Kol Nidre, the seventh chord is used in a way that it dangles unstably instead of comfortably resolving right away to minor tonic as any listener would anticipate,whether he/she was conscious of this or not.
Later I plan to look more closely at chord progressions and how other chord progressions affect emotion. It is so interesting that two totally different songs can evoke a similar emotional response just based on the way they treat chords!
(credit to my conductor and teacher for helping me with this post!)
How could a song performed by a pop-artist share commonalities with a holy Jewish prayer melody?
A couple weeks ago I was accompanying Yom Kippur services at Temple and for one of the preludes I played "Kol Nidre" which is a standard tune used at this service. It utilizes the chord progression: i --> V4/3. Note that the 5th of the chord is in the bass. This is invoked in me, and would in most listeners, a sense of tension as the bass tone does not immediately resolve and is rather unstable. We anticipate an immediate resolution due to the tension caused by such a seventh chord but we do not get it right away.
A little while after the service, I was watching a GLEE episode featuring Britney Spears. I wasn't thinking at all about the service I had played at earlier until Rachel started singing "Baby, One More Time." After GLEE's faithful rendition of this hit track, something sparked in my head, I wasn't sure what, but it was something important, so I went online to listen to the song again. I then realized I felt unsettled as I did during Kol Nidre. But wait, these two pieces are totally different! Why would I make this connection? After analyzing the first couple bars of "Baby One More Time" I realized the chorus uses a seventh in a similar way: the i to V6/5. This time the leading tone is in the bass of the chord instead. However, just like in Kol Nidre, the seventh chord is used in a way that it dangles unstably instead of comfortably resolving right away to minor tonic as any listener would anticipate,whether he/she was conscious of this or not.
Later I plan to look more closely at chord progressions and how other chord progressions affect emotion. It is so interesting that two totally different songs can evoke a similar emotional response just based on the way they treat chords!
(credit to my conductor and teacher for helping me with this post!)
Music and the Brain as an Independent Study
Hi all,
As an Independent Study this year, I will be engaging in a year-long investigation of music cognition. The study will include the biology, psychology, and musicality behind how we respond to music and why. What makes music memorable? How do different pieces induce different feelings in us? What makes music "sticky," that is, what causes us to remember certain segments and not others? How can music be used therapeutically? Which parts of our brain are active when we listen to music, compose, and perform? I will attempt to address all of these questions and more through research, analysis, and lab studies.
Some posts will be general while other posts will be more directly related to music theory. So if you are not fluent in "music talk", please bear with me! Hopefully everyone will be able to get something out of my posts.
Being a student organist, violinist, composer, and conductor, I have always been interested in this area and hope you will join me on this intellectual and musical investigation and follow the blog!
As an Independent Study this year, I will be engaging in a year-long investigation of music cognition. The study will include the biology, psychology, and musicality behind how we respond to music and why. What makes music memorable? How do different pieces induce different feelings in us? What makes music "sticky," that is, what causes us to remember certain segments and not others? How can music be used therapeutically? Which parts of our brain are active when we listen to music, compose, and perform? I will attempt to address all of these questions and more through research, analysis, and lab studies.
Some posts will be general while other posts will be more directly related to music theory. So if you are not fluent in "music talk", please bear with me! Hopefully everyone will be able to get something out of my posts.
Being a student organist, violinist, composer, and conductor, I have always been interested in this area and hope you will join me on this intellectual and musical investigation and follow the blog!
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