Perception 3
Grouping
Perception of scales, melody, rhythm
And larger musical structures
Regular grouping
• A difference introduced into an isochronous sequence
• Grouping of elements between two differences
Regular grouping
• A difference introduced into an isochronous sequence
• Grouping of elements between two differences
• The difference: lenghtening of a sound
increase of its intensity
a change of pitch or in timbre
Regular grouping
• A difference introduced into an isochronous sequence
• Grouping of elements between two differences
• The difference: lenghtening of a sound
increase of its intensity
a change of pitch or in timbre
• ? Possible durations of rhythmic groups
• Spontaneous taps:
420 msec between the taps groupped in three
370 msec when grouped in four
• Rhythmic arts:
slowest adagio note: no longer than 5 sec
longest lines in poetry: 13 to 17 syllables
needing 4 to 5 sec to recite
average duration of a bar in religious hymns: 3.4 sec
average duration of a line in poetry: 2.7 sec
• These correspond to psychological present
Grouping – summary
• Lengthening of sound or of an interval between sounds
= pause between groups
• Sound qualitatively different from others:
accent that begins the group
• More intense sounds are perceived as relatively
lenghtened, and longer sounds as relatively more intense!
Edwin Gordon
• Macrobeat: pulse the whole body and its whole mass
• Microbeat: divisions a part of the body (hands?) and its
mass
• Rhythm: complexity weightless = no mass
performed like speech or humming
Grouping in pitch
• Feeling of tonality and scale
Perception of musical structures
• Melody:
uniformity / differenciation
implicatibility
predictability vs. Chance
• Musical experience – very important
Perception of musical structures
• Harmony:
statistics: probe tone experiments /
music by Schubert
Perception of musical structures
• Scale:
feeling of finality depends on a scale
Categorical perception
Categorical perception
• Everything which forms physical continua
is perceiven as categorised
Perception of large structures
• Segmentation < grouping
Perception of large structures
• Segmentation < grouping
• Perception of a piece of music:
1. Field definition
2. Grouping/segmentation: operations in time domain
3. Time-independent operations:
comparisons, integration over time
expectations
Factors: form of a piece
perceiver: experience, perceptual capacity
ability, attitude, attention...