Redwood Neuroscience
Title: Adventures in Pitch and
Melody Perception
Daniel J. Levitin
Abstract:
I will review recent work from my laboratory on the
nature of the perception of auditory sequences, in most cases, musical
melodies. Study 1 investigates the role of spectral-temporal properties of melody
and reveals that people can be trained to have absolute memory for timbre. Study 2 investigates the role of rhythmic
cues, and melody identification when pitch is absent. Study 3 extends our earlier work on memory
for pitch by regarding the pitch cues in a melody by replacing them with
band-passed white noise. Band-passed white
noise yields an indefinite pitch when played in isolation, yet two or more
different noise bursts of this type reveal a strong sense of pitch. We argue this is because relative cues kick
in to create a retrospective sense of pitch in a stimulus that is at first
heard as ambiguous. As a demonstration
of the effect, individual noise bursts are heard simply as noise, but sequences
of them can be strung together to reveal familiar songs, played with
"noise." The work has implications
for theories of absolute versus relative memory and tonal recognition.
Daniel Levitin (PhD 1996
University of Oregon) holds the Bell Chair in Psychology and the FCAR Strategic
Chair in Psychology at