Transcript Timbre and Memory

Timbre and Memory
An experiment for the musical mind
Emily Yang Yu
Music 151, 2008
Introduction
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Effect of timbre on music memory!
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1. Would a musician who plays a specific instrument be able to
memorize a short musical excerpt better if the excerpt is played in
his/her instrument?
2. A similar, but slightly different question: when the music sample is
played by a certain instrument, does the instrumentalist (a musician
who plays the instrument) memorize the short musical excerpt better
than non-instrumentalist (a musician who was trained in a different
instrument)[1].
3. When the excerpt is played by the instrument of the musician’s
expertise, how do musicians (who are entrained to the instrument’s
sound) compare to of non-musicians in musical memory.
[1] Question 1 takes a musician, and asks whether that musician, on an individual level, performs better when the excerpt is played by his or her instrument. Question 2,
takes a music sample, and asks whether the instrumentalist would perform better than the non-instrumentalists. The two questions are essentially the same, but just
two different ways of looking at it.
Background
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While fundamental frequency and repetition frequency had negligible effects on
timbre memory, interference with timbre memory increased with the spectral
similarity of the interpolated tones to the standard tone.
Pitch is processed independently of timbre in auditory short term memory.
The tendency to perceive pitch in relation to other context pitches was strong and
unaffected by whether timbre was constant or varying. In contrast, the relative
perception of timbre was weak and was found only when pitch was constant.
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Timbre is perceived more in absolute than in relative terms.
Found that timbre changes differentially affected neither musicans’ nor
nonmusicians’ memory for melodies.
in no case were the interactions of age and experience on the memory or perceptual
speed variables significant
both the left and right hemispheres are involved in timbre processing, although the
processing is assymetrical
Musical training, in addition to enhancing the acquisition of specific knowledge
about diatonic scalevstructure, may also more generally facilitate the encoding of
and memory for musical material
Hypothesis
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That timbre will not have a significant effect
on timbre
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Pitch and timbre are processed independently
Musician should perform better than nonmusicians.
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Musical training, in addition to enhancing the acquisition of specific knowledge about
diatonic scale structure, may also more generally facilitate the encoding of and memory
for musical material
Experimental Design
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Divided into 9 segments.
Each segment includes:
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A music sample: played automatically and only
once
The distracter:
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Pink noise background
1-2 text questions about the participant’s music
background. Some are multiple choice/yes and no.
Some are free response.
Answer to the music sample
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3 choices are given. The participant is the person who
selects to play each answer choices.
Experimental Design
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Of the 9 samples played:
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There are 3 different difficulty levels:
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There are 3 different timbres
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Viola, piano and clarinet
Music samples/answers are generated randomly.
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4, 6, and 8 notes in length
Thus avoiding typical musical gestures.
Melodies are kept in the same range. (c4-c5)
The survey takes about 10-15 minutes to complete.
Improvements to the design
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I originally wanted to add two more timbres:
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Samples can be made of a mix of the 3 timbres.
Answer choices would have the same sequence of
timbre.
Completely synthesized timbre: not an
instrumental sound. This would have been a great
tool for comparison between nonmusicians and
musicians.
Results
Do musicians memorize excerpts better if played in
their instrument?
94
92
percentage correct
90
88
86
84
82
80
78
76
Pianist
their own instrument
other instrument
Wind
type of instrumentalist
String
Results
Percent Correct in Each Sample: Instrumentalist vs. NonInstrumentalist
100
90
80
Percentage
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
non instrumental
Sample
Piano D2
Clarinet D2
Viola D1
Viola D3
Clarinet D1
Piano D1
Clarinet D 3
instrumental
Viola D2
Piano D3
0
Results
Mistakes: percentage of them made by noninstrumentalist
120
100
percentage
80
60
40
20
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
sample number
7
8
9
Results
Performance Acuracy: instrumentalist vs. nonmusicians
100
90
Percentage Correct
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Non-musician
Pianist
Wind
String
What I could have done better...
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Too Easy: this could account of the very small amount of performance variation
between all groups
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The distracter:
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There were a lot of things that could have limited people from cheating, but the
technology didn’t really allow them.
The player:
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Some people said that it took longer to answer the free response questions, thus, the
distraction time amongst the segments was not uniform.
The website:
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Make the wrong answer choices more similar to the correct one!
Unfortunately, I was unable to take out the time component on the player for Linux
computer users. People could have cheated that way.
The music samples:
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The website I used to obtained the music samples didn’t have very good players. Some
of them were very out of tune.
Processing them in Audacity made some of the sounds become unnatural/sounds
synthesized.
The time between each notes were very exact. So there’s a small rhythmic component to
the test.