Elizabeth West Marvin

Absolute pitch among American and Chinese conservatory students: Prevalence differences, and evidence for a speech-related critical perioda)

Absolute pitch is extremely rare in the U.S. and Europe; this rarity has so far been unexplained. This paper reports a substantial difference in the prevalence of absolute pitch in two normal populations, in a large-scale study employing an on-site test, without self-selection from within the target populations. Music conservatory students in the U.S. and China were tested. The Chinese subjects spoke the tone language Mandarin, in which pitch is involved in conveying the meaning of words. The American subjects were nontone language speakers. The earlier the age of onset of musical training, the greater the prevalence of absolute pitch; however, its prevalence was far greater among the Chinese than the U.S. students for each level of age of onset of musical training. The findings suggest that the potential for acquiring absolute pitch may be universal, and may be realized by enabling infants to associate pitches with verbal labels during the critical period for acquisition of features of their native language.

Early childhood music education and predisposition to absolute pitch: Teasing apart genes and environment

Twelve years ago in this journal, Pro®ta and Bidder [1988] reported the ®rst evidence for familial aggregation of a rare cognitive phenotype known commonly as ``perfect pitch, also designated ``absolute pitch. Since that report, several studies [Baharloo et al., 1998; Gregersen et al., 1999] provided evidence for genetic and environmental effects in predisposing to the development of absolute pitch (AP). Absolute pitch is a relatively uncommon cognitive ability possessed by a minority of professional and amateur musicians, characterized by their ability to identify pitch names, or to recall speci®c pitches, without bene®t of a reference pitch; this is usually accomplished in a relatively effortless and instantaneous fashion [Ward and Burns, 1982; Gregersen, 1998]. The prevalence of AP in the general population is unknown because it cannot be ascertained in subjects unless they possess at least a minimum amount of musical education. The prevalence of AP in populations of students in professional level music schools or in the personnel of major orchestras is in the range of 10±15% [Baharloo et al., 1998; Gregersen et al., 1999]. This is in contrast to the prevalence estimate of 1/1,500 in amateur music students reported previously [Pro®ta and Bidder, 1988]. A history of formal musical training before age 7 is widely acknowledged to predispose to AP; however, such training is neither necessary nor suf®cient in most persons. As noted above, substantial familial aggregation of AP occurs, although it is unclear to what degree this re ̄ects genetic factors [Baharloo et al., 1998; Gregersen et al., 1999]. We report the results of a survey of 1067 music students who were enrolled in music theory classes in one of 13 educational institutions in the United States. In addition to questions concerning AP ability and family history, we attempted to establish the nature of the musical training that these students received before the age of 7. Some types of early childhood education are designed with the express purpose of developing AP ability. These include the Yamaha method, the Royal College method, and other methods termed ``®xed do. ``Fixed do pedagogy expressly associates solfeÂge syllables (do-re-mi, etc.) with particular standard pitches: for example ``do is always C, ``sol is always G. Other types of training are more geared to the development of overall musicality, and emphasize the development of relative pitch ability, with minimal if any attempt to train for absolute pitch recognition. These include the Suzuki method, and other ``moveable do techniques. ``Moveable do pedagogy associates solfeÂge syllables with a scalar function within a key, so that ``do can associate with different pitches, depending on the key being utilized for the training exercise. Instrumental music lessons generally place no emphasis on absolute pitch ability, and we did not categorize them as part of ``®xed do pedagogy, although of course, practice on most instruments does reinforce the association of particular note names with speci®c pitches. We also asked about other forms of exposure to music, such as the presence of a parent or sib who either studied or taught music in the home. Respondents were speci®cally asked to indicate which of these types of exposure to music they had received before the age of 7. The overall rate of AP in this population was 12.2%. Similar to results we reported previously [Gregersen et al., 1999], there was a markedly increased rate of AP among Asian students (42/80; 47.5%) compared with Caucasian students (75/834; 9.0%). The relatively higher rate in Asians was present among all the major ethnic subgroups Japanese (26% APx87), Korean (37% APx87) and Chinese (65% APx87). One possible explanation for this difference might be that early childhood music exposure is more frequent in Asian students. There was no signi®cant difference, however, between these two ethnic groups, with 80% of Asians and 71% of Caucasians reporting early music exposure of at least some type (Px880.09). When the type of early childhood music training was compared, however, Asians were signi®cantly more likely to have been exposed to early training based on ``®xed do techniques compared with Caucasians (29% vs. 6.0%, Px880.001). We also performed a logistic regression using different types of early childhood music training among *Correspondence to: Peter K. Gregersen, M.D., Division of Biology and Human Genetics, North Shore University Hospital, 350 Community Drive, Manhasset, NY 11030. E-mail: peterg@nshs.edu

Relating Musical Contours: Extensions of a Theory for Contour

Cognitive psychologists and music theorists have, for many years, understood that human perception of pitch cannot simply be modelled along a single continuum from low to high. Thus representational models for pitch perception have been developed by psychologists to reflect a number of related dimensions,2 among them the tendency of listeners familiar with Western tonal music to group octave-related pitches into equivalence classes. Nevertheless, in spite of this tendency, listeners are for the most part unable to recognize familiar melodies which have been distorted by octave displacement unless the melodic contour remains invariant. So important is the role of contour in the retention and recognition of well known melodies that even the size of the interval between successive pitches may be altered, and subjects will usually recognize the tune if the contour remains unaltered? Further, experimentation has shown that listeners frequently confuse a fugue subject with its tonal answer-that is, they identify the two as identical on the basis of their equivalent contours and diatonic scale types, despite the fact that their pitch contents differ. By extention to a non-tonal context, we may predict that listeners will be more likely to assume that non-equivalent sets belong to the same set class if their contours are the same. In fact, W. J. Dowling and D. S. Fugitani have offered experimental justification for the premise that listeners

The Effect of Modulation and Formal Manipulation on Perception of Tonic Closure by Expert Listeners

This study arises in response to previous research that calls into question the ability of musically trained listeners to perceive tonal closure in the original tonic key. In our Experiment 1, 36 experienced musicians heard 12 randomly ordered excerpts from piano and orchestral works in three categories: nonmodulating, modulating to the dominant, modulating to a key other than the dominant. After hearing each excerpt, participants answered six questions, one of which asked whether the concluding key was the same as the initial one. Participants correctly answered this question at above-chance levels, with music academics (theorists and musicologists) more accurate than other musicians. In Experiment 2, 33 experienced musicians heard MIDI performances of six Handel keyboard compositions. On each trial, participants heard either the original composition or one of two variants with phrase units rearranged. Trials were quasi-randomly ordered so that an original and variant were not heard in succession. Three types of tonal motion resulted from our formal manipulation: the stimulus began and ended in the tonic key, began and ended in the dominant key, or began and ended in different keys. After hearing each work, participants answered seven questions, of which data were analyzed for three: whether the beginning and ending key were the same, whether the harmonic structure conformed to stylistic expectations, and whether the final key was the tonic. Participants9 accuracy on the beginning/ending key question was no better than chance would predict; however, listeners were able to discriminate between works that ended in the tonic key and those that did not. Unlike Experiment 1, we found no significant differences in accuracy between music academics and other musicians. Listeners generally found both the original and the manipulated compositions to conform to stylistic expectations, possibly because they attended to local harmonic relationships rather than global ones.

The Effect of Key Color and Timbre on Absolute Pitch Recognition in Musical Contexts

Previous research has shown that listeners with absolute pitch identify white-key pitches (as on the piano) more quickly and accurately than they identify black-key pitches. Related research has shown that the timbre of tones also affects pitch identification. Our experiments extend the investigation of color and timbre effects on pitch recognition from isolated pitches to more complex musical textures, using both musicians with absolute pitch and musicians without absolute pitch as participants. In Experiment 1, listeners named isolated pitches in synthesized violin or piano timbres; in Experiment 2, they named the tonal center of classical string quartets or piano solos; in Experiment 3, they identified the tonal center of the same musical excerpts by humming. We replicated the color effect for both groups of participants in the response times for all three experiments, but found a color effect on accuracy rates only in Experiment 2. Timbre effects were found only in Experiment 1, where response times were quicker for piano tones than string tones. Participants9 instrumental training affected response times: string players identified isolated tones most quickly; keyboard players identified the keys of compositions most quickly.

The Perception of Rhythm in Non-Tonal Music: Rhythmic Contours in the Music of Edgard Varèse

This paper develops a theory that models nonbeat-based rhythms as rhythmic contours of relative longs and shorts, drawing upon discussions of temporal spaces appearing in recent work of Robert Morris and David Lewin and upon various music-psychological investigations of rhythmic perception. A new type of temporal space is proposed: a duration space (d-space) analogous to Morriss contour space, in which elements are ordered sequentially from short to long. After developing equivalence relations for d-space segments, illustrated by excerpts from Edgard Vareses Octandre, the paper concludes with an analysis of Density 21.5 that focuses upon relationships among rhythmic contours. rther, the melody that concludes the entire composition, elody (e) of Example 11, is the longest continuously rising

Concert music, rock, and jazz since 1945 : essays and analytical studies

Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz since 1945: Essays and Analytical Studies. Edited by Elizabeth West Marvin and Richard Hermann. (Eastman Studies in Music.) Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1995. [x, 449 p. ISBN 1-878822-42-X.

Sex differences in memory for timbre: an event-related potential study.

95.00.] And so, with that discussion of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, we conclude our course in the analysis of music of the twentieth century. Presumably, this statement is now heard less often, but it is not difficult to understand why it has persisted. There have been a number of obstacles to the fruitful discussion of music since 1945. Foremost is the appearance of music for which the traditional values of coherence, motivic consistency, and organic process are either peripheral or irrelevant. Since these properties are the tenets upon which most traditional analysis and criticism are based, the usual means of discussing the music intelligently have suddenly become frustrating, misleading, or inappropriate. Moreover, even when the music is meant to cohere, in this Beethovenian sense, it may be based on highly complex systems, which take time to learn and often do not seem terribly relevant to the perception of the music. Finally, the less the coherence of a piece is dependent on pitch structure, the less applicable so much of our analytical arsenal seems to be. Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz since 1945 is a collection of essays dedicated to the sensible analytical discussion of some of the music that is, in general, resistant to traditional analysis. In a sense, it is a snapshot of how we have dealt with the problem of talking about recent music. It assures us it is neither a history nor an exhaustive survey; rather, the editors have chosen essays that break new ground with respect to the compositions that they address, the perspectives from which they are written, or the analytical methodologies that they introduce or extend (p. 3). Although one might not call each essay groundbreaking, they comprise a diverse sampling of what appears to be promising analysis these days, and they do present a survey of the issues that seem to be pressing. The book is divided into three sections, but they are not those suggested by the title. The first, Compositional Poetics, is described by the editors as exploring current cultural contexts for compositional thought (p. 5). Part 2 is entitled Some Structuralist Approaches. These essays are concerned with demonstrating how the music exhibits a comprehensible, organic structure in the traditional sense, and we shall begin here. In some cases, the music in question is dominated by a familiar means of coherence, such as tonality or pitch structure. In others, the musical language is particularly nontraditional, and the essay must develop and present highly idiosyncratic analytical strategies in order to provide a basis for a fruitful discussion of the music. Fortunately, each author is remarkably lucid, and it is easy to imagine any of these essays as an introduction to new analytical methods for otherwise musically experienced readers. In his essay concerning the music of Elliott Carter, Andrew Mead shows how Carters registral manipulation of pitch classes can be seen as an alternative to the temporal manipulations characterized by serialism, demonstrating a commonality with Schoenbergs practice (p. 99). In doing so, however, Mead takes the opportunity to review the relation between the total chromatic and the diatonic set; by consistently using relatively recent terminology such as row class, he spares the novice reader the confusion usually brought about by older terminology (such as the term row signifying the [at most] forty-eight set forms). Therefore, this essay not only takes the reader through certain complex means of pitch organization, but presents a worthwhile and clear account of the twelve-tone tradition as well. The subject of Walter Everetts essay, side two of the Beatless Abbey Road album, also lends itself to a somewhat traditional approach: here voice-leading graphs demonstrate the large-scale coherence of the song cycle. …

Direct Electrical Stimulation in the Human Brain Disrupts Melody Processing

Although female/male cognitive differences have been studied for some time, little is known about such differences relative to music. Highly-trained musicians (15 females and 15 males) performed a memory task for musical timbre modeled after the missing-displaced visual object test known to favor female performance. Subjects were tested on memory for a timbre missing from a previously presented set of synthesized instrumental timbres, and a control series of white noise bursts at two different intensity levels. Subjects were given the missing-displaced visual object test and ERPs were recorded from three midline sites and two lateral sites. Waveforms were subjected to a principal component analysis and analysis of variance. Females and males performed equally well on both of the auditory series and the visual object test. Both auditory series elicited several ERP components: a strong early peak to the white noise, and both early (P3a) and late (P3b) peaks to the timbre series. PCA factor, maximum at 675 ms (P3b), showed a main effect for sex across both series with males > females. PCA factor, maximum at 336 ms (P3a), showed larger Fz to Pz differential for females than males for both auditory series. Females show a greater differentiation between targets and nontargets in the white noise series, suggesting greater sensitivity to changes in intensity. Interactions involving absolute pitch also appeared in the sensory processing time frames. Although the behavioral measures did not show significant sex differences, the ERP measures did show reliable task-related sex differences.

Tone language and absolute pitch: Prevalence among American and Chinese conservatory students

Prior research using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) [1-4] and behavioral studies of patients with acquired or congenital amusia [5-8] suggest that the right posterior superior temporal gyrus (STG) in the human brain is specialized for aspects of music processing (for review, see [9-12]). Intracranial electrical brain stimulation in awake neurosurgery patients is a powerful means to determine the computations supported by specific brain regions and networks [13-21] because it provides reversible causal evidence with high spatial resolution (for review, see [22, 23]). Prior intracranial stimulation or cortical cooling studies have investigated musical abilities related to reading music scores [13, 14] and singing familiar songs [24, 25]. However, individuals with amusia (congenitally, or from a brain injury) have difficulty humming melodies but can be spared for singing familiar songs with familiar lyrics [26]. Here we report a detailed study of a musician with a low-grade tumor in the right temporal lobe. Functional MRI was used pre-operatively to localize music processing to the right STG, and the patient subsequently underwent awake intraoperative mapping using direct electrical stimulation during a melody repetition task. Stimulation of the right STG induced music arrest and errors in pitch but did not affect language processing. These findings provide causal evidence for the functional segregation of music and language processing in the human brain and confirm a specific role of the right STG in melody processing. VIDEO ABSTRACT.