Tamotsu Shirado Masuzo Yanagida
Kansai Advanced Res. Ctr., Commun. Res. Lab., 588-2, Iwaoka, Nisi-ku, Kobe, 651-24 Japan
Novice musicians have difficulty in judging the interval between a melody and its transpose quantitatively. It is expected that the more one accumulates musical experiences, the more he or she can improve their ability of quantitative judgment for the interval between a melody and its transpose. It is supposed that this ability depends on abilities of absolute pitch. Psychological experiments were conducted to investigate relations among these abilities. Single tones, pairs of single tones, and pairs of melodies and their transposes generated by a synthesizer were used for the experiments. Subjects (students majoring in music) were asked to give pitch names of single tones presented in isolation, to judge intervals between two single tones presented sequentially, and to estimate the interval between a melody and its transpose presented on a continuous rhythm pattern. From the experiments, it can be seen that there are various types of difficulties in judging musical intervals between two single tones and those between melodies and their transposes. Further, weak correlation has been found between the ability to judge intervals between two single tones, and the ability to judge intervals between a melody and its transpose.