Psychology 2115A/B Lecture Notes - Musical Tone, Absolute Pitch, Music Perception

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 2115A/B
• Professor: Christine Tsang

Document Summary

By the end of this section, you should know: Music cognition and perception: the scientific study of mental and neural operations underlying music listening, music making, moving to music (dance) and musical composition. Music processing as a human behaviour/ability is very complex. Higher cognitive ability that engages multiple areas of the brain. Musical tone: tones that have perceived pitch to the listener. In music, we combine these musical tones (pitches) together in a sequence. Musical interval: when more than one pitch is present, the sequence in pitches defines the musical interval. Music contour: the direction of movement in a sequence of pitches (up, down, same) without regard to the actual size of the intervals present, musical contour created by melodies. Melody: pattern or relation of successive pitches over time, when we have more than one pitch, we call this a melody. Because pitches are folded over time, we can change when they are occurring over time.