Psychology of Music Learning MUM112 Rene Mayr (K1142016) Assignment: Position Paper

Challenges of Pattern Recognition and Tonal Predictability on Sight-Reading Ability

{Rene Mayr}

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Introduction: This paper was intended to examine the common discussion among musicians and music researchers to identify what sight-reading is and what makes a good sight-reader. As the research in this area is increasing, so is the number of conducted experiments. While this contributes largely to gain a better understanding of the theoretical process of sight-reading and an insight of various sub skills e.g. perceptual skills, memory or kinesthetic skills, it often limits practical experiments to certain genres. Todays music spreads out widely and many new genres have been created e.g. Jazz, Rock, Latin, and many fusions of traditional styles of music with western popular music. Research of peculiarities in sightreading for such genres is mostly untouched. It seemed impossible to find valid academic articles to substantiate the writers position and opinions. Many countries in the world included their native musical styles into guided teaching and hence, notation was made available. Different musical genres have their emphasis on different areas of music. The rhythmical complexity of African music for instance is not at all comparable to western classical music. Classical music focuses on complex melody lines but rhythms are usually fairly simple. African musics melodies are generally fairly simple on top of highly advanced rhythm patterns (Polyrhythm). Those two styles in music are tonally, melodically and rhythmically quite an opposition. A similar gap can be seen if one would compare Rock music, where mostly so called Power chords (omitted third) are used, to Jazz music where the richness of harmony is the basis of the melodic structure. This paper will investigate that different genres demand expertise and emphasis in different areas of sight-reading skills and that therefore genre-based research gives only partially the idea of sight-reading skills demanded in todays greatly versatile world of music.

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What is sight-reading? Not unlike speech, music communicates a message expressively and receptively through a combination of tonal pitches, rhythmic patterns and possibly lyrics (Sergent, Zuck, Terriah, MacDonald; 1992). As language has been analyzed, structured and logically organized (grammar), a similar approach has been taken with music. The most common system used is the system introduced by Johan Sebastian Bach in the late eighteenth century, the WellTempered Keyboard (Taruskin; 2010) where an octave is divided into twelve equal semitones and rhythmic divisions. One will have to study rhythm e.g. meter, duration, patterns, melody e.g. pitch, direction, movement, harmony e.g. chord structure and progressions and musical context e.g. articulation, expressive markings, structure and form (Wristen B., Evans S., Stergiou N.; 2006, pp.10). Sight-reading is the task of performing a piece of music without prior preparation, thus performing on first sight. The complexity of reading music demands therefore the necessity of developing additional skills. Such skills are pattern recognition, perceptual, cognitive, predictive and motoric processes. Also auditory representation, which overlaps with the predictive skill, is inevitable (Waters A., Townsend E.; 1998). Sloboda looked at it from a psychological perspective and characterized it as a transcription task (Sloboda, 1982). Pattern recognition can be easily understood by comparing it to reading literature. Children learning to read would approach a text by identifying letter for letter and then acknowledging a word and putting together sentences. This applies equally to music. The music student would recognize the pitch and rhythm individually whereas the more experienced reading musician would recognize a scale or phrase and would subsequently need less brainpower to process the information on the page which increases fluency to a great degree (Waters A., Townsend E.; 1998). This is basically building a musical repertoire starting from musical phrases, rhythmic patterns as well as chord progressions. Simultaneously to building a visual repertoire one would achieve an audible understanding of the written music. The audible stimulation would trigger the inner hearing to predict and expect the following musical patterns e.g. a tonic generally follows a dominant seventh chord (Lehmann A., McArthur V.). Assuming an equally high level of motoric abilities, this is what divides a highly skilled reader to a reader with basic skills.

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Genre/Instrument Specifics: A large number of studies that investigate this topic were conducted using piano players. This might be due to the nature of the work environment pianists face on a daily basis by accompanying singers or any kind of solo performances by instrumentalists. It is worth mentioning that pianists are likely to be the most versatile readers due to the sheer nature of the instrument. Piano music is generally written in two staves, one in treble clef and the one in bass clef. The ability to produce ten notes at a time, in addition to the possibility of covering a wide tonal spectrum simultaneously creates a vast amount of reading material. Previous studies argue that for instance contrapuntal music would be scanned horizontally with the melody line whereas other music would be read vertically (Weaver E.C; 1943). A Cellist for example will come across the challenge of different clefs such as bass clef, treble clef and tenor clef due to the extensive tonal range from C2 up to C6. A guitarist might be lost when presented with a sheet of music in bass clef. Classical guitarists will be fluent in reading dots whereas contemporary or jazz guitarist would have difficulties reading melody lines but are fluent in applying the most advanced chord sheets and able to re-voice and orchestrate them on the fingerboard at will on sight. This is an observation made by the author who is himself has been an active cross genre bass player for twenty years. A Double Bass will mainly encounter bass clef and occasionally tenor clef (Gardner R.; 1953). Thus, no matter how fluent and virtuous a bass player reads in bass clef, once the performer is confronted with a less familiar clef he or she will start to struggle, as phrases and patterns will be to be put together on a note-for-note basis. A Jazz bass player will play on a majority of working environments by chord sheet music apart from big bands where melody lines occur occasionally on unison sections. The challenge here is to acknowledge the chord symbol, read ahead to the next, analyze them and create a melodically appealing melody line that logically connects and outlines the chords. It also hints the chord progression to help the band and especially the soloist to stay in the songs form and predict the chords as they progress, which increases the soloists fluency. Thinking about classical music and the rhythmic structure, one would find that there is always an emphasis on beat one and three in the measure, not unlike western popular music and beat two and four in jazz. So, even if the rhythmic patterns within the bar are advanced and complicated, one would always find rescue at least every other bar and feel

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beat one. Some styles of music do not provide this particular pulse. Many western musicians find it difficult to perform Latin (Salsa) music for instance. Even though the theory is easy to understand, one would get lost easily within the rhythm. A salsa pattern looks as shown in Example 1. Example 1:

One can see that the emphasis is on the off beat of beat two and beat four. Beat one is tied to beat four. An additional challenge occurs since Latin music is not based on metric beats one, two, three and four but on the clave (Lincoln G., Ameen R.; 1990) (see Example 2).

Example 2:

To most contemporary and classical musicians, this is a very unfamiliar musical environment and therefore audible representation and prediction becomes almost nonexistent. As a result the reader is reduced to pattern recognition, which might then also be not too familiar and one would have to mentally practice the music beforehand.

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Experiments: 1. Philip Fine and his team conducted an experiment about sight-reading abilities among singers. This research project, containing twenty-two experienced choral singers, twelve female and ten male, and a majority were members of a chamber choir, aimed to investigate sight-singing behaviors at familiar and unfamiliar musical situations. The musical materials used as a base were Bach chorale, which were then altered melodically and harmonically. The research team argues that good sight-reading abilities are mainly achieved through experience, which reflects in pattern recognition, intuitively predicting the melody by reacting to auditory representation which the outcome of the experiment reflects (Fine, P., Berry, A., Rosner, B.; 2006).

2. Truitt from the Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts and his team of researchers investigated the effective visual field, or perceptual span, in sight reading music. The experiment was conducted using eye-contingent moving window paradigm. The chosen music was simple melodies extracted from Bartoks Mikrokosmos Vol.1 (1940), which were also altered. Participants were divided into skill groups to achieve a better understanding of the results. It appears that the less experienced readers tend to fixate on a note at a time. More experienced readers seem to be able to read approximately three to six beats ahead, which includes guessed notes (Truitt, F. E., Clifton, C., Pollatsek, A., Rayner, K.; 1997).

3. The author conducted a small-scale experiment to get a better understanding on differences in sight-reading abilities of bass players from different genres. Two bass players were given the task to read passages of Johann Sebastian Bachs Cello Suite No. 1 in the cello version, which is in the key of G and contains bass clef only, and the bass version, which is the key of C but is largely written in tenor clef. The second piece was a transcription of a Salsa bass line by Oscar Stagnaro and a third piece, a transcription of a Michael Jackson song. Both the Latin and pop song were accompanied by a backing track. All music had to be played on both electric and double bass. The outcome was that the

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contemporary popular music bass player appeared to be fluent on the pop and Latin material, struggled with the Bach piece in bass clef and was unable read it in tenor clef all together. Not surprisingly the classical trained bass player was utterly fluent with the classical pieces, although slightly struggling with the tenor clef, was fluent with pop music but seemed rhythmically unable to play the Latin transcription. It did not seem to have an impact whether the players used the electric or double bass.

Conclusion: All literature here investigated agrees that a good sight-reader is one who can recognize pattern quickly. Pattern recognition translates directly into repertoire. A bulk of notes can only be recognized as a pattern once the brain has accumulated the data and thus, identifies it as familiar information, thus repertoire. Needless to say that, the more data is collected, the easier it becomes to read music. In order to be able to play this equally fluent, one would have to practice those patterns to create a certain degree of muscle memory so the recognized bulk of notes will also be identified similarly by the muscles to physically create the music. As audible reception is also a significant part of a performance, the sonic environment plays into it as well because different acoustic ambience alters the audible sensation. Thus, a good sight-reader will have studied lots of music in order to recognize patterns, achieved a certain degree of technical expertise, and ideally a considerable amount of performance experience. Leaving aside taste and personal preference, musicians generally specialize in a particular genre. Hence, the musical vocabulary musicians gain is mostly genre based. So, no matter how fluent musicians sight-reading abilities might be in one genre, it does not guarantee a similar competence in unfamiliar genres. musician has to face.

Therefore, once basic musical skills are acquired,

fluency in sight-reading depends on the experience in the genre and musical situation the

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References:

1) Sergent, J., Zuck, E., Terria, S., MacDonald B., (1992) Distributed Neural Network Underlying Musical Sight-Reading and Keyboard Performance Pro Quest Science Journals, 257 (7) pp.106 2) Taruskin, R. (2009) History of Western Music Oxford Press, 5 Book Set (3) 3) Wristen, B., Evans, S., Stergiou, N.; (2006) Sight-Reading Versus Repertoire Performance on the Piano Medical Problems of Performing Arts, (4) pp.10 4) Waters, A., Townsend, E., (1998) Expertise in musical sight-reading: A study of pianists British Journal of Psychology, 89 pp. 123 5) Sloboda, J. A. (1982) Music performance The Psychology of Music, New York Academic Press 6) Waters, A., Townsend, E., (1998) Expertise in musical sight-reading: A study of pianists British Journal of Psychology, 89 pp. 126 7) Lehmann, A., McArthur V. (2002) Sub skills of Music Performance The Science and Psychology of Music Performance, Chapter 9 8) Weaver, H.E. (1943) A survey of visual processes in reading differently constructed musical selections Psychological Monographs, 55, pp.130 9) Gardner, R. (1953) Thesaurus of Orchestral Devises Pitman Publishing Corporation, New York 10) Fine, P., Berry, A. and Rosner, B. (2006) The effect of pattern recognition and tonal predictability on sight-singing ability Psychology of Music, 34(4) pp.434-437 11) Lincoln G., Ameen R.; (1990) Funkify the Clave: Afro-Cuban Grooves for Bass and Drums Manhattan Music, Inc. 12) Truitt, F. E., Clifton, C., Pollatsek, A., Rayner, K., (1997) The Perceptual Span and the Eye-Hand Span in Sight Reading Music Visual Cognition, 4:2, 143-161