43-2410 - Module 7: Introduction Page 1 of 14 43-2410 - Aesthetics of the Motion Picture Soundtrack MODULE 07: (Film) Music, Meaning, Emotion, Communication INTRODUCTION t o p i c s Focusing attention - Accents Cognitive aspects of pitch and time in music -Melody - Contours - Tonality Memory limits - Data reduction - Categories Complexity, Prediction, Preference, Interest Maximal variety with minimal elements - Musical scales as psychological constructs Focusing Attention Experiencing time Our experience of time seems to often proceed independently from clock time. Musical organization of sounds may offer us means to explore this difference. The fleeting nature of non-linguistic sound events (in music, film, etc), accentuated by the potential absence of a referent, highlights the larger problem of defining the perceptual 'present.' Present is shaped by our selective attention to events or aspects of events. This selective attention and, therefore, our experience of 'present' events is always mediated by the memory of past events and the expectation of future ones, while at the same time reshaping both our memories and our expectations. The dialectic nature of the way we experience the present, past, and future is defining of the human experience of time and is explored within phenomenological research (e.g. Ricoeur, 1991; "Time and Narrative"). 43-2410 - Module 7: Introduction Page 2 of 14 Two competing theories of time within psychology I_ Storage-size theory (Ornstein, 1969). Memory storage-needs influence our estimates of time: a percept containing a large amount of information will require more storage capacity in short-term memory, generating the impression of greater elapsed time. II_ Attentional capacity theories (Hicks et al., 1976; Block, 1978; etc.). Assuming that perceptual activities compete for attentional center stage, the more we attend to stimulus aspects the less we will attend on time itself, leaving our 'cognitive clock' with the impression of less elapsed time. Most psychological theories of time are too simple to capture the complex interrelations involved in time perception. Although phenomenological theories of time can only be examined reflectively, rather than through the process of empirical investigation, they offer more valid, plausible, and convincing models of our experience of time. We will briefly return to phenomenology at the end of the semester, when discussing music and emotion. Attention theories I_ Due to limited channel capacity, perceptual filters only admit portions of incoming stimuli, blocking the remainder. Blocked stimuli never reach long term memory. Data related to the 'cocktail party effect' seem to support this theory, while evidence of future recall of 'unattended' information does not. Consistent with the 'limited channel capacity' approach, Dowling et al. (1987) argued that melodic expectations operate within a limited-width time-window. II_ Attention is a process that operates on memory rather than on stimulus, with all stimuli being submitted to memory. Observers can attend to more than one stream of information at a cost (time, strain, etc.). According to parallel-access theories, attention controls the flow of information beyond simply blocking it or letting it through. III_ Attention is guided by schemata that allow us to anticipate 'important' features of incoming streams of stimuli. Attention can be seen as a manifestation of the claimed interaction between explicit and implicit perceptual rules, an interaction that helps us parse incoming information in a meaningful, to us, manner. Memory, attention, and perception are intricately linked, with implicit rules assisting attention, which in turn supports transfer of information between short and long term memory. Intra-cultural consistency and inter-cultural differences in the way listeners complete unfinished melodic (Carlsen, 1981) and harmonic (Bharucha and Stoekig, 1986) passages support the view that musical expectations and the associated schemata are culture dependent. Unyk and Carlsen (1987) showed that musical pieces that do not conform to individual listener's expectations are more difficult to process. Listening to music appears to be a perceptual scanning process where attention shifts focus, allowing us to track more than one event through time. Implicit rules fill out the gaps caused by the perceptual 'zig-zag' that allows us to pick out isolated sound events out of a complex sound environment, creating the 'illusion' of simultaneous perception of more that one series of events. This scanning process varies from person to person and within the same person at different times, since implicit rules, explicit rules, and their 43-2410 - Module 7: Introduction Page 3 of 14 interaction vary according to previous experience and context. Devices that improve the efficiency of the scanning process during listening include: • repetition, • gradual introduction of musical layers, • selective variation of one or two layers at a time while the rest remain unchanged, • selective attenuation/removal and amplification/reintroduction of layers in time, • assignment of different contours/timbres/registers per layer, etc.. The complex nature of this process may explain why ,musical pieces that make use of such devices don't seem to loose their 'freshness' even after many hearings. Listen to "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys Accents Focusing attention on accents Attention focuses on accents (points with perceptual salience/importance). Accents are created through contrasts; through changes of some sort (shape, color, direction, speed, volume, size, lighting, pitch, loudness, timbre, rhythm, etc.), which help us identify boundaries and parse incoming stimuli into meaningful units. Several empirical studies suggest that perceptually salient portions of a melody (i.e. accents) are attended to more often and are recalled more easily than other portions. Melodic units / boundaries The units that melodies are made of are not the individual notes. During a piece of music there are too many events taking place and at a very short time for short-term memory to be able to handle them. Rather, perception produces a coded version of a musical piece based on how our implicit and explicit rules interact to identify accents and 'create' local or global features. Melodic 'phrases' are in some respects analogous to language phrases, which are organized in structural units based partly on breathing restrictions (3-5 seconds per phrase). But, more importantly, melodies are perceived in terms of patterning that implies redundancies (repetitions). Redundancy fosters predictability which, in turn, gives rise to expectation. Examining melodies as sets of distinct and isolated notes is inadequate, since it does not allow for the patterning that is at the heart of the experience/prediction/expectation/game-of-expectations cycle. Miller and Selfridge (1950) demonstrated that when we break a whole down to a Markov chain of order 0 (series of unrelated and isolated bounded units) we 43-2410 - Module 7: Introduction Page 4 of 14 destroy the level of meaning that is based on syntax (relationship among units that creates a larger, single, bounded event). [Note: A Markov chain is a sequence of random values whose probabilities at a time interval depends upon the value at the start of the interval. It outlines the probability of a system to move towards a particular new state, given its current state.] In the Miller and Selfridge experiment, participants were asked to contribute 1, 2, 3, etc. words to a text after reading 0, 1, 2, 3, etc. of the already existing words respectively. (A similar experiment was conducted by Davies (1978) using notes instead of words.) The more words the participants were able to read (i.e. the more developed the syntax) the more coherent and meaningful was their contributed text, since they were better able to rely on the context provided by the existing phrase. In other words, the more we are able to reflect on the past, act in the present, and project on / anticipate the future, the more meaningful our actions. This point may illuminate what is meant by the Gestalt psychology statement "the whole is greater/different than the sum of its parts," while highlighting the importance of the experience of time to our understanding of music as well as of the experience of music to our understanding of time. To summarize: in both language and music, meaning is not simply lexical (it does not simply depend on what words / notes are used); it is also syntactical. It depends on the way the words/notes are patterned together; on how they relate to their past (previous words/notes) and what they anticipate as their future (words/notes to come). In addition, such relationships are always mediated by what the listener/reader brings to the experience. Melodies are not random collections of notes (Markov chains of order 0) but larger units tied together by syntactical rules and separated from each other by boundary-providing accents. The bounded musical units outlined by accents incorporate redundancies, and their periodic repetition is key to musical syntax. Sound events in time are therefore organized in terms of contours (pitch, temporal, etc.), tracking accents and outlining flexible musical units. Cognitive aspects of pitch and time in music Melody - Contours Melody can be thought of as the superimposition (layering/stratification) and interaction of pitch (melodic) and temporal (duration) contours. A more complex model would also