Music psychology has a long history, but the question of whether brief music excerpts are representative of whole songs has been largely unaddressed. Here, we explore whether preference and familiarity ratings in response to excerpts are predictive of these ratings in response to whole songs. We asked 643 participants to judge 3,120 excerpts of varying durations taken from different sections of 260 songs from a broad range of genres and time periods in terms of preference and familiarity. We found that within the range of durations commonly used in music research, responses to excerpts are strongly predictive of whole song affect and cognition, with only minor effects of duration and location within the song. We concluded that preference and familiarity ratings in response to brief music excerpts are representative of the responses to whole songs. Even the shortest excerpt duration that is commonly used in research yields preference and familiarity ratings that are close to those for whole songs, suggesting that listeners are able to rapidly and reliably ascertain recognition as well as preference and familiarity ratings of whole songs.

We studied memory for harmony using a melody-and-accompaniment texture and 10 commercially successful songs of Western popular music. The harmony was presented as a timbrally matching block-chord accompaniment to digitally isolated vocals. We used three test chord variants: the target was harmonically identical to the original chord, the lure was schematically plausible but different from the original, and the clash conflicted with both the tonal center and the local pitches of the melody. We used two conditions: in the one-chord condition we presented only the test chord, while in the all-chords condition the test chord was presented with all the chords of the original excerpt. One hundred and twenty participants with varying levels of music training rated on a seven-point scale if the test chord was the original. We analyzed the results on two dimensions of memory: veridical–schematic and specialized–general. The target chords were rated higher on average than the lures and considerably higher than the clash chords. Schematic memory (knowledge of Western tonal harmony) seemed to be important for rating the test chords in the all-chords condition, while veridical memory (familiarity with the songs) was especially important for rating the lure chords in the one-chord condition.

Jazz musicians usually learn to play with “swing” phrasing by playing by ear. Classical musicians—who play more from musical scores than by ear—are reported to struggle with producing swing. We explored whether classical musicians play with more swing when performing from more detailed swing notation. Thereby we investigated whether a culturally specific improvisational social procedure can be scripted in detailed music notation for musicians from a different performance background. Twenty classical musicians sight-read jazz tunes from three styles of notation, each with a different level of notational complexity. Experienced jazz listeners evaluated the performances. Results showed that more score-independent classical musicians with strong aural abilities played with equally strong swing regardless of notation; more score-dependent musicians swung most with the medium-complexity classical notation. The data suggest that some higher-level swing features, such as appropriate articulation, event durations, and deviations from a beat sequence can be communicated to a limited extent using written instructions. However, their successful implementation in performance depends on matching instructional complexity to a musician’s skill at decoding and interpreting unfamiliar information. This link between decoding skills and cross-cultural performance makes our findings relevant to ethnological and musicological studies of musical communication processes and perception-action coupling.

In tone languages, alteration of lexical tone changes the intended meaning. This implies that composers should equally match lexical tone in their music for intelligible communication of the intended textual messages, a compositional approach termed Lexical Tone Determinants (LTD) in this study. Yet, in the Ìgbò language setting, some composers creatively disregard/mismatch lexical tone, which is branded as Musical/Creative Determinants (M/CD). It is believed that mismatched lexical tone in Ìgbò music alters listeners’ comprehension of the intended messages; on the other hand, it is argued that thorough match of lexical tone constrains musical creativity. Listeners’ perception of textual messages in LTD and M/CD music has not been empirically tested (side-by-side) to verify whether comprehension is lost or not, at least, in the Ìgbò language context. This empirical void gap is verified in this particular study to substantiate the propositions/findings using comparative measures to collect data through listeners’ perception in live-performance of newly composed LTD and M/CD pieces. Specifically, it examines whether mismatched lexical tone in Ìgbò music alters message comprehension or not. The data were collated, presented, and analyzed statistically with chi-square deployed to evaluate their difference in message comprehension.

Involuntary musical imagery repetition (IMIR), colloquially known as “earworms,” is a form of musical imagery that arises involuntarily and repeatedly in the mind. A growing number of studies, based on retrospective reports, suggest that IMIR experiences are associated with certain musical features, such as fast tempo and the presence of lyrics, and with individual differences in music training and engagement. However, research to date has not directly assessed the effect of such musical features on IMIR and findings about individual differences in music training and engagement are mixed. Using a cross-sectional design (Study 1, n = 263), we examined IMIR content in terms of tempo (fast, slow) and presence of lyrics (instrumental, vocal), and IMIR characteristics (frequency, duration of episode and section) in relation to 1) the musical content (tempo and lyrics) individuals most commonly expose themselves to (music-listening habits), and 2) music training and engagement. We also used an experimental design (Study 2, n = 80) to test the effects of tempo (fast or slow) and the presence of lyrics (instrumental or vocal) on IMIR retrieval and duration. Results from Study 1 showed that the content of music that individuals are typically exposed to with regard to tempo and lyrics predicted and resembled their IMIR content, and that music engagement, but not music training, predicted IMIR frequency. Music training was, however, shown to predict the duration of IMIR episodes. In the experiment (Study 2), tempo did not predict IMIR retrieval, but the presence of lyrics influenced IMIR duration. Taken together, our findings suggest that IMIR is an idiosyncratic experience primed by the music-listening habits and music engagement of the individual.

The ability to perceive and produce a beat is believed to be universal in humans, but individual ability varies. The current study examined four factors that may influence beat perception and production capacity: 1) expertise: music or dance, 2) training style: percussive or nonpercussive, 3) stimulus modality: auditory or visual, and 4) movement type: finger-tap or whole-body bounce. Experiment 1 examined how expertise and training style influenced beat perception and production performance using an auditory beat perception task and a finger-tapping beat production task. Experiment 2 used a similar sample with an audiovisual variant of the beat perception task, and a standing knee-bend (bounce) beat production task to assess whole-body movement. The data showed that: 1) musicians were more accurate in a finger-tapping beat synchronization task compared to dancers and controls, 2) training style did not significantly influence beat perception and production, 3) visual beat information did not benefit any group, and 4) beat synchronization in a full-body movement task was comparable for musicians and dancers; both groups outperformed controls. The current study suggests that the type of task and measured response interacts with expertise, and that expertise effects may be masked by selection of nonoptimal response types.

Production of relatively few rhythms with non-isochronous beats has been studied. So we assess reproduction of most well-formed looped rhythms comprising K=2-11 cues (a uniform piano tone, indicating where participants should tap) and N=3-13 isochronous pulses (a uniform cymbal). Each rhythm had two different cue interonset intervals. We expected that many of the rhythms would be difficult to tap, because of ambiguous non-isochronous beats and syncopations, and that complexity and asymmetry would predict performance. 111 participants tapped 91 rhythms each heard over 129 pulses, starting as soon as they could. Whereas tap-cue concordance in prior studies was generally >> 90%, here only 52.2% of cues received a temporally congruent tap, and only 63% of taps coincided with a cue. Only −2 ms mean tap asynchrony was observed (whereas for non-musicians this value is usually c. −50 ms). Performances improved as rhythms progressed and were repeated, but precision varied substantially between participants and rhythms. Performances were autoregressive and mixed effects cross-sectional time series analyses retaining the integrity of all the individual time series revealed that performance worsened as complexity features K, N, and cue inter-onset interval entropy increased. Performance worsened with increasing R, the Long: short (L: s) cue interval ratio of each rhythm (indexing both complexity and asymmetry). Rhythm evenness and balance, and whether N was divisible by 2 or 3, were not useful predictors. Tap velocities positively predicted cue fulfilment. Our data indicate that study of a greater diversity of rhythms can broaden our impression of rhythm cognition.

Music that gets “stuck” in the head is commonly conceptualized as an intrusive “thought”; however, we argue that this experience is better characterized as automatic mental singing without an accompanying sense of agency. In two experiments, a dual-task paradigm was employed, in which participants undertook a phonological task once while hearing music, and then again in silence following its presentation. We predicted that the music would be maintained in working memory, interfering with the task. Experiment 1 (N = 30) used songs predicted to be more or less catchy; half of the sample heard truncated versions. Performance was indeed poorer following catchier songs, particularly if the songs were unfinished. Moreover, the effect was stronger for songs rated higher in terms of the desire to sing along. Experiment 2 (N = 50) replicated the effect using songs with which the participants felt compelled to sing along. Additionally, results from a lexical decision task indicated that many participants’ keystrokes synchronized with the tempo of the song just heard. Together, these findings suggest that an earworm results from an unconscious desire to sing along to a familiar song.

Perceived valence, tension, and movement of harmonic musical intervals (from the unison to the octave presented in a low- and high-register) and standard noises (brown, pink, white, blue, purple) were assessed in two studies that differed in the crossmodal procedure by which tension and movement were rated: proprioceptive device or visual analog scale. Valence was evaluated in both studies with the visual analog scale. In a preliminary study, the proprioceptive device was calibrated with a psychophysical procedure. Roughness of the stimuli was included as covariate. Tension was perceived higher in dissonant intervals and in intervals presented in the high register. The higher the high-pitch energy content in the standard noise, the higher the perceived tension. The visual analog scale resulted in higher tension ratings than the proprioceptive device. Perception of movement was higher in dissonant intervals, in intervals in the high register, and in standard noises than in musical intervals. High-pitch spectrum noises were associated with more sense of movement than low-pitch spectrum noises. Consonant intervals and low-register intervals were evaluated as more pleasant than dissonant and high-register intervals. High-pitch spectrum purple and blue noises were evaluated as more unpleasant than low-pitch spectrum noises.