The role of tone height, melodic contour, and tone chroma in melody recognition.

The present experiments assessed the contribution of tone height, melodic contour, and tone chroma to melody recognition. Rather than using highly familiar folk songs as in earlier studies, subjects were taught new melodies. Novel melodies were used to (a) more precisely control potential cues (e.g., rhythm) that are not of present interest, (b) eliminate unison intervals that cannot be transformed appropriately, (c) provide a direct analysis of the nature of confusion errors, (d) test whether recently learned melodies are recognized differently than highly overlearned melodies, and (e) evaluate the extent to which practice in the experimental task alters the process of recognition. The results replicate previous studies using familiar folk songs. Transformations of the original melodies were accurately recognized when tone height was violated, but both melodic contour and tone chroma were maintained. Violating both tone height and contour while maintaining chroma produced extremely poor recognition. Performance was intermediate when just melodic contour was preserved. There is now good evidence to support the idea that melodic contour and tone chroma, in addition to tone height, contribute to recognition of both highly familiar and recently learned melodies. This article addresses the question of the degree to which three auditory characteristics are functional in melody recognition. The characteristics are tone height, tone chroma, and melodic contour. Tone height corresponds to a tones frequency; for example, the note A4 has a frequency of 440 Hz. Tone chroma corresponds to the position of a note within the musical octave. Notes of the same name could differ in terms of tone height (e.g., 440 and 880 Hz) but would be considered equivalent with regard to chroma (represented by the note name A). Finally, contour refers to the up-and-down pattern of the successive notes of a melody and,