Improvisation is a novel tool to study musicality

Autor: Michael W. Weiss, Isabelle Peretz
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Scientific Reports, Vol 12, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2022)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2045-2322
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-15312-5
Popis: Abstract Humans spontaneously invent songs from an early age. Here, we exploit this natural inclination to probe implicit musical knowledge in 33 untrained and poor singers (amusia). Each sang 28 long improvisations as a response to a verbal prompt or a continuation of a melodic stem. To assess the extent to which each improvisation reflects tonality, which has been proposed to be a core organizational principle of musicality and which is present within most music traditions, we developed a new algorithm that compares a sung excerpt to a probability density function representing the tonal hierarchy of Western music. The results show signatures of tonality in both nonmusicians and individuals with congenital amusia, who have notorious difficulty performing musical tasks that require explicit responses and memory. The findings are a proof of concept that improvisation can serve as a novel, even enjoyable method for systematically measuring hidden aspects of musicality across the spectrum of musical ability.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals
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