Poulin-Charronnat, B., Bigand, E., Lalitte, P., Madurell, F., Vieillard, S., & McAdams, S. (2004). Effects of a Change in Instrumentation on the Recognition of Musical Materials. Music

7/29/2019 Poulin-Charronnat, B., Bigand, E., Lalitte, P., Madurell, F., Vieillard, S., & McAdams, S. (2004). Effects of a Change

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2004 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIAALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

239

Address correspondence to Bndicte Poulin-Charronnat, Max-Planck-Institute forH uman C ognitive and Brain Sciences, Stephanstrae 1A, D-04103 Leipzig, G ermany. (e-mail:[email protected])

ISSN: 0730-7829, electronic ISSN: 1533-8312. Please direct all requests for permissionto photocopy or reproduce article content to University of California Presss Rights andPermissions w ebsite, at w w w.ucpress.edu/journa ls/right s.htm.

M usic PerceptionWinter 2004, Vol. 22, No. 2, 239263

Effects of a Change in Instrumentation on theRecognition of Musical Materials

B N D I C T E P O U L I N - C H A R R O N N A T ,E M M A N U E L B I G A N D , P H I L I P P E L A L I T T E

Universitde Bourgogne (L EAD -CN RS)

F R A N O I S M A D U R E L L

Universitde Par is-Sorbonne (Pari s IV )

S A N D R I N E V I E I L L A R DI nsti tut de Recherche et Coordinati on A cousti que/M usique

(STM S-IRCAM -CNRS)

S T E P H E N M C A D A M S

STM S-IRCAM -CN RS and Ecole N ormale Supri eure

The present study investigates the effect of a change in instrumentation onthe recognition of musical excerpts in Western contemporary and tonalmusic. The critical finding w as a strong effect of timbre on the recognition ofmusical material that is modulated by both the extent of musical expertiseand the musical style. Changing the instrumentat ion of musical excerpts from

a piece by Reynolds considerably hampers recognition among musicians(Expts. 1 and 2), but not among nonmusicians, whose recognition was poorregardless of instrumentation. Both musicians and nonmusicians were affect-ed by instrumentation change in excerpts from a symphonic poem by Liszt(Expt. 3). This finding suggests that timbre may contribute, along with pitchand rhythm, to the identity of musical materials. The difference foundbetween musicians and nonmusicians with the Reynolds piece may be parsi-moniously explained by the fact that the musicians were considerably morefamiliar with contemporary music than were the nonmusicians.

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of achange in instrumentation on the recognition of thematic materialsused in Reynoldss The Angel of D eath. In this piece, five themes are first

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presented with one instrumentation (either piano or orchestra) and then,later in the piece, they occur again with a different instrumentation (seeReynolds, 2004). There is a kind of mirror relation between the perform-ances of the orchestra and the pianist. This mirror relation allows the lis-teners to reverse their musical perspectives and to listen differently to apiece with the same musical structure. As such, recognition of similarmaterials w ith a change in instrumenta tion w ould contribute to the esta b-lishment of formal relations within the piece, if the timbre change did nothinder recognition. The main question was to investigate whether itwould be difficult for participants to recognize these themes in the contextof the piece (see McAdams, Vines, Vieillard, Smith, & Reynolds, 2004)when they reoccurred with a different instrumentation. This issue alsoprovided the opportunity to address whether timbre potentially con-

tributes, along with pitch and rhythm, to defining the identity of musicalmaterials. This means that timbre may be a basic component of materialidentity, similarly to the way facial expressions contribute to the percep-tual identity of a person. In the history of Western music, the quality oftimbre that results from instrumenta tion w as considered as less importantthan ot her form-bearing dimensions such as pitch a nd rhy thm. For exa m-ple, in the baroque period, the instrumentation required to perform agiven piece was generally open, or at least weakly constrained. This sug-gests that the musical quality of the musical material was mostly definedby the combination of pitch, duration, and loudness.

The importance of instrumentation increases considerably in the classi-

cal and roma ntic periods, as a ttested not ab ly, by the publication o f sever-al textbooks on instrumentation (see Berlioz, 1843; Gevaert, 1885;G uiraud & Busser, 1933; Ka stner, 1837; Ko echlin, 1944; Rimski-Korsakov, 1913/1964). Also severa l transcriptions of orchestra l pieces fo rother instruments (e.g., the piano) have been done (see, e.g., Liszts tran-scriptions of Beethovens symphonies and Berliozs SymphonieFantastique). N o o ne w ould contest that these transcriptions are general-ly less referential than the pieces as they were composed with their origi-nal o rchestration (w ith ma ybe one exception fo r M oussorskys Pictur es atan Exhibit ion). From the early 20th century, composersnotably Frenchcomposers such as Debussy, Ravel, Koechlin, Varse, Jolivet, and

Messiaenpaid a great deal of attention to timbre and acoustic phenom-ena. Timbral qualities turned out to be of critical importance in contem-porary music, w here timbre wa s supposed to act a s a potential form-bear-ing dimension that might replace, accompany, or interact with the pitchand duration dimensions (see Barriere, 1991; Erickson, 1976; Lerdahl,1987; McAdams, 1987; Slawson, 1985). Along this line, we might expectthat a change in instrumentation, which affects the quality of timbre,would have considerable effect on listeners ability to recognize the the-

Bndicte Poulin-Charronnat et al.240

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matic material. Our goal was to investigate the strength of this effect inthe context o f contemporary music, w hich puts great emphasis on timbralqualities.

From a psychological point of view, this issue also allow s for t he studyof how different sound dimensions a re combined. M usic conveys informa-tion over a number of perceptual dimensions simultaneously, such aspitch, loudness, duration, and timbre, which McAdams (1989) hasreferred to as form-bearing dimensions. The question of whether thesedimensions are processed separately or in an integrative way remains anopen q uestion for music psychologists (see Peretz & Kolinsky, 1993, fo r adebate). Several studies have investigated with perceptual tasks how pitchand timbre are combined. For example, Crowder (1989) found an influ-ence of t imbre on pitch judgments. Pa rticipant s had to make same/differ-

ent judgments concerning the pitches of two successive tones. The twotones were played on either the same instrument or on different instru-ments. Pitches were judged faster and more accurately as being the samewhen they were played on the same instrument than when they wereplayed on different instruments. Likewise, by using rapid classificationtasks in the tradition of Garner (1974), Melara and Marks (1990a,1990b, 1990c) also observed an interaction between pitch and timbre inindividual tones. Pitt and Crowder (1992), by varying pitch and timbreorthogonally, provided additional evidence in favor of an interactionbetween both dimensions. The listeners had to judge whether the secondof two sequentially presented tones had the same pitch as the first. The

timbres of the first and second to nes were either the same or dif ferent. Theresults show ed that the listeners had no diff iculty answ ering same w henboth pitch and timbre are the same for the tw o to nes. H ow ever, w hen thetimbre of the second tone was changed, performance decreased signifi-cantly. This result suggests that timbre influences the perception of pitch.In addition, Krumhansl and Iverson (1992, Expt. 1) also used the stan-dard Garner (1974) classification tasks to evaluate how pitch and timbreinteract at the level of individual tones. The results showed that the par-ticipants could not attend to the pitch of a tone without being influencedby its timbre and could not attend to the timbre of a tone without beinginfluenced by its pitch.

It is wo rth no ting tha t the influence of t imbre on pitch perception seemsto depend on the degree of musical expertise. Beal (1985) asked listenersto judge whether tw o chords played w ith different timbres were the sameor different. Nonmusicians found it very difficult to judge two chords asbeing the same when they were played with different instruments,although they performed well when the chords were played on the sameinstrument. Musicians were more accurate overall, even if they found itmore difficult to judge the chords as identical w hen they w ere played w ith

Eff ects of I nstr umentation on Recognition 241

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different timbres. Furthermore, Pitt and C row der (1992) found t hat w hena pitch was played with different timbres, it was very difficult to judge itas being the same pitch, but in addition, the degree of difficulty dependedon musical training. Indeed a supplementary analysis of the same-pitch/different-timbre da ta revealed a b imoda l distribut ion of a ccuracythat correlated with the musical background of the participants. In theirExperiment 3a , Pitt and Crow der (1992) found a similar result, w ith accu-racy in pitch discrimination being 15% higher for the musicians than forthe nonmusicians. It was proposed that for nonmusicians, timbre is likelyto be a more salient dimension than pitch because it is generally moreinformative about environmental events, and the nonmusicians have notbeen trained to analyze pitch closely. Another explanation may be thattimbre, w hich is a salient surface chara cteristic of musical to nes, w ould be

more influential for nonmusicians than for musicians. This assumptionwould be in accordance with the results observed in the research on theeffects of expertise. Experts seem to build a representation of the materi-al based on the deep structure of the stimuli (as well as on surface fea-tures), whereas the perceptual representation of novices would be basedonly on the surface feat ures. The current literature leads one to expect thatnonmusicians would be more influenced by the timbre of a musicalexcerpt than by its harmonic structure.

Other studies have investigated how timbre and pitch combine in mem-ory, a question that is central to the present study. Semal and Demany(1991) reported results supporting the idea that pitch memory is inde-

pendent of the timbre of context tones. They used the pitch-recognitionparadigm of Deutsch (1972). In this paradigm, two tones (standard andcomparison) are judged as same or different. A number of interveningtones were presented between the standard and comparison tones. Semaland Demany (1991) varied the period (close versus remote from the peri-od of the standard tone) and the spectral content (same versus differentharmonic content as the test tones) of the intervening tones. They foundtha t intervening tones close in pitch to the standa rd a nd comparison tonesproduced memory interference. In contrast, they found no effect of simi-larity in t imbre of the intervening tones on memory performance for pitch.The latter result suggests that pitch memory is independent of the timbre

of context tones. Krumhansl and Iverson (1992, Expts. 2 and 3) had asimilar approach to that of Semal and Demany (1991). They also foundindependence between pitch and timbre. Changing the pitches of the tonessurrounding the target tone did not interfere with memory for a targettimbre, and changing the timbres of tones surrounding the ta rget tone didnot interfere w ith memory for a ta rget pitch. They also show ed that mem-ory for the target pitch was not different when the timbre varied thanwhen it was constant. Taken together, these results suggest that pitchmemory is little a ffected by timbra l variat ions.


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In contrast to these simple stimuli, studies using memory for melodysupply different results suggesting that timbre may be encoded in anepisodic tra ce and may influence subsequent recognition. Ra dvansky andPotter (2000), for example, showed that timbre might act in terms ofsource cuing. Source cuing is a source-monitoring process in which theretrieval of a memory trace is aided by the use of a memory probe thatincludes information indicative of the original source (an episodic memo-ry pro cess1). M elodies w ere presented to pa rticipants w ho ha d to identifywhich of two melodies (target or distractor melody) had been heard ear-lier. They manipulat ed tw o variab les: a M atch/M ismatch conditionreferred to whether or not the target melodyhad the same timbre as theorigina l melody, and a Same/D ifferent condition referred to w hether ornot the distr actor melodyhad the same timbre as the original. The partic-

ipants w ere more accurate when the timbre of the target melody matchedthe original than when it mismatched. Their findings also showed thattimbre was more indicative of the source than pitch. In addition, Peretz,Gaudreau, and Bonnel (1998, Expt. 3) corroborated the hypothesis inwhich timbre influences the recognition of melody. They expected thatchanges in surface properties between study and test melodies wouldinfluence performance in an aesthetic preference task (rating the liking ofmelodies) and have little impact on recognition performance, because theaffect is proximal to the perceptual processing system whereas recognitionis considered to ta p into more abstra ct forms of memory. To evalua te thishypothesis, they modified the instrument on which the melodies were

played. However, contrary to their hypotheses, they observed a strongeffect of timbre change on melody recognition. Melodies that remained inthe same timbre from study to test were recognized better than were oldmelodies that w ere different in timbre at study a nd test. In a fourth exper-iment, they also demonstrated that the timbre of the studied melody ispart of the episodic record and is thus available for subsequent recogni-tion. In addition, they suggested that timbre may be computed automati-cally and may be critical to episodic memory for melodies. These last twoexperiments (using more complex stimuli than just pitch) therefore sug-gest that timbre may be stored as contextual information for the present-ed melody, so a s to conf er to the studied event a d istinct episode-like qual-

ity. Timbre and pitch would thus be computed separately and linkedtogether in episodic memory, so as to provide a unified recollection of thestudied event.


1. Episodicmemory is generally opposed to semanticmemory. The distinction betweenthese two memory systems has been described in detail by Tulving (1972). Episodic mem-ory is concerned with storage and retrieval of temporally dated, spatially located, and per-sonally experienced events or episodes, and temporal-spatia l relations a mong such events.Semantic memory is concerned w ith storage and utilization of know ledge about w ords andconcepts, th eir properties, a nd interrelations.

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The influence of timbre on memorization of musical material was alsoshown to depend on the extent of musical expertise. Wolpert (1990)found differences in pitch and timbre processing in nonmusicians andmusicians, suggesting that timbre is more salient than pitch in nonmusi-cians. In her experiment, the participants performed an XAB match-to-sample task. They had to judge whether melody A or B was more likemelody X. One of the two comparison melodies was always melody Xplayed with a different timbre. The other comparison melody was eithera different melody with the same timbre as melody X or was played witha harmonic accompaniment transposed to the dominant key (i.e., therewas a key mismatch between melody and accompaniment). While themusicians unanimously chose the same melody and accompaniment asmelody X (ignoring the timbre difference), only half of the nonmusicians

consistently did so. The remainder matched on the basis of timbre a por-tion of the time. However, these findings have been questioned byRadvansky, Fleming, and Simmons (1995), who attempted to replicateand extend the results observed by Wolpert (1990) by contro lling the clar-ity of the instructions. Listeners were presented with a melody and thenlater asked to identify w hich of tw o a lternat ives (ta rget vs. distractor) cor-responded to the original melody. In the Match condition, the targetmelody w as in the same timbre as the original, w hereas the distractor w asin a different timbre. In the M ismatch condition, the target melody w as ina different timbre whereas the distractor was in the same timbre as theoriginal. In their second experiment, they compared musicians and non-

musicians and found that both groups were similarly affected by timbrechanges: more errors were made in the Mismatch condition than in theMatch condition. As a consequence, the influence of timbre on memoryfor musical stimuli as a function of musical expertise remains a matter ofdebate.

In sum, stud ies using single tones as stimuli provide evidence tha t pitchand timbre are stored independently in memory. By contrast, studies usinglonger melodies provide evidence that both dimensions are integrated inmemory. Finally, some studies suggest tha t this issue may be mod ulated bythe extent of musical expertise. It should be noted that none of the currentpublished studies addresses this issue with realistic musical materials

draw n f rom contemporary music. Some studies, ho w ever, ha ve add ressedthe recognition of contemporary musical excerpts. For instance, inKrumhansl (1991), participants were able to recognize excerpts despitechanges in contour, pitch height, duration, dynamics, and interval size.However, no change in timbre was performed in this study, because allstimuli w ere played on the piano. The question therefore remains concern-ing whether change in timbre will produce detrimental effects on recogni-tion of musical ma terials.


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According to the results of previous studies, we assumed that timbrewould influence the subsequent recognition of musical excerpts and thatthis effect would be modulated by the extent of musical expertise, even ifthis issue remains a ma tter of deba te. To the best of o ur know ledge, thepresent study is the first to address this question with realistic musicalmaterial drawn from contemporary music. A crucial point is that thechange of instrumentation was performed by the composer (and not bythe experimenter). With complex musica l excerpts, it is not conceivable tochange the timbre of the excerpts in an automatic way by artificiallyassigning a given tone to a given timbre. Orchestration requires consider-ab le savoir-fa ire, w ithout w hich the result w ould be musically incoher-ent. The risk would then be that participants fail to recognize excerpts notbecause of the change in timbre, but simply because the performed change

in instrumentation would result in a weakening of the musical coherenceof the excerpt. As described by Reynolds (2004; see also McAdams,2004), a change in instrumentation raised a number of d ifficulties tha t thecomposer had to solve. As such, the musical themes were of differentinstrumentation while containing the same type of musical qualities.Another advantage results from the fact that the experimental stimuliwere also performed and recorded under the control of the composer.That is to say, both the pianist and the orchestral conductor performedexpressive deviations in their playing that were commented on by thecomposer so that both versions of the theme remained fairly comparablefor musical expressiveness, irrespective of change in instrumentation.

Because of these controls, it was of interest to address whether musicallytrained and untrained listeners would be able to recognize the Reynoldsthemes under change in instrumentation.

Experiment 1: Contemporary Musical Materials

METHOD

Participants

Seventy-three volunteer students participated in this experiment: 29 students from anintroducto ry psychology course at t he Universit de Bourgogne, w ith no forma l training inmusic (referred to hereaft er as nonmusicians), and 44 candidates for the final diploma ofseveral French conservatories (referred to hereafter as musicians). The musicians at thislevel of expertise were quite familiar with contemporary music, and they actively partici-pated in playing con temporary pieces. All participants either received course credit o r w erepaid 7 for their participation.

Stimuli

Thirty-six musical excerpts were drawn from the original thematic materials of TheAngel of D eath(cf Reynolds, 2004): 18 were played on the piano and 18 others were the


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same excerpts played by a chamber orchestra. A list of the excerpts (theme, subsection(s),dura tions of the piano and orchestra versions) is given in Tab le 1.2 The sound stimuli were

originally recorded in IRCAMs Espace de Projection concert hall for the piano versionsand in the University of C aliforn ia a t San D iegos Studio A for the orchestra l versions. Thedigital recordings were edited w ith SoundEditPro softw are at CD quality (16 bits and 44.1kHz).

Apparatus

The experiment was run with PsyScope software (Cohen, MacWhinney, Flatt, &Provost, 1993) on a Macintosh Powerbook G3 computer. The musical excerpts wereamplified by a Luxma n A357 pow er amplifier and then presented over Sennheiser HD 200headphones.

Procedure

The experimenta l procedure wa s split into tw o pha ses. In the first (learning) phase, theparticipants w ere asked to carefully listen to nine excerpts played either by the piano or bythe orchestra. The participants were informed that following the learning phase, therewould be a recognition test. In the second (recognition) phase, participants had to recog-nize these nine excerpts played with nine other excerpts from the same piece. These 18excerpts (old and new) were played either by the piano or by the orchestra. In two condi-tions, the timbre of t he excerpts presented in the second pha se wa s the same a s that in thefirst phase. In the tw o ot her conditions, the timbre w as different. A different group of par-ticipants (7 N 11) performed each of the four conditions for each group of Musical


2. The stimuli fo r t his stud y may be found on ftp: //ftp. ircam.f r/priva te/pcm/an gel/instrumentation_format.zip where format should be replaced w ith w av or aiffaccording to the preferred sound-file format.

TABLE 1Description of the Stimuli Used in Experiment 1

Duration (s)Excerpt Piano Orchestra

T 1.1-2-3 21.4 21.3T 1.1-5 17.8 17.0T 1.6-7 16.8 12.9T 1.9 15.4 14.3T 2.1-2 17.5 14.5T 2.4 11.0 10.3T 2.5-6-7 17.0 17.5T 3.2-1 14.4 17.3T 3.3-4 11.0 14.1T 4.1-2-3-4 15.4 13.8T 4.5-6 11.0 10.1T 4.7 11.8 9.9T 5.1 29.1 30.4

T.5.2 12.3 12.3T 5.3 16.6 15.6T 5.4 29.3 30.5T 5.5 22.7 20.4T 5.6-7 21.3 25.1

NO TEExcerpt labels are of the form (e.g., T1.6-7 includessubsections 6 and 7 of Theme 1).

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Expertise. In the two conditions using a different timbre in the second phase, participantsw ere informed by the experimenter just before the recognition phase that a cha nge in tim-

bre (instrumentation) occurred and tha t now all the excerpts (those presented in t he learn-ing phase and the new ones) would be played either by the piano or the orchestra accord-ing to the condition. The participants had to indicate for each musical excerpt whetherthey had heard it during the learning phase, irrespective of the change in instrumentation.The participants were encouraged to respond as soon as they were sure of their responseby pushing one of the keys yes or no on the keyboa rd. These requests w ere printedon the screen for each excerpt.

Design

There were three between-subjects independent variables: Musical Expertise (musiciansvs. nonmusicians), Timbre Change (same-timbre vs. different-timbre), and Instrumenta-tion (piano vs. orchestra in the learning phase). Percent correct recognition was thedependent va riable.

RESULTS

Figure 1 displays mean percent correct recognition scores as a functionof musical expertise for the four experimental conditions. The data wereanalyzed with a Musical Expertise (2) Timbre Change (2) Instrumentation (2) between-subjects analysis of variance (ANOVA).There was a significant main effect of Timbre Change with greatest per-formance in the same-timbre compared to the different-timbre conditions,F(1,65) = 14.56, p= .0003, MSE= 138.93. This effect w as mod ulated bythe extent of Musical Expertise, as shown by the significant two-way

interaction, F(1,65) = 15.55, p= .0002, MSE= 138.93. None of the othereffects were significant. Tukey-Kramer post-hoc comparisons (p< .05)confirmed that the same-timbre conditions for musicians were significant-ly higher tha n a ll of the other conditions, w hich w ere not significantly dif-ferent from one another. However, exact binomial tests showed that themean performance of nonmusicians was significantly higher than chancewhether the timbre changed or not. Only the mean performance of themusicians in the different-timbre condition did not significantly differfrom chance.

A signal-detection analysis of the data exactly mirrored the results ofthe preceding analyses. Responses were considered as hits when the par-ticipant s responded yes to a n excerpt presented in the first phase and a sfa lse alarms w hen they responded yes to a n excerpt not presented in thefirst phase. From these rates, the d measure of sensitivity was computedfor ea ch part icipant using a yes/no mo del (M acmillan & Creelman, 1991).There was a main effect of Timbre Change with greatest sensitivity to dif-ferences between old and new excerpts in the same-timbre compared withthe different-timbre conditions, F(1,65) = 16.63, p< .0002, M SE= 0.49.This effect w as mod ulated by the extent of musical expertise, as show n bythe significant two-way interaction, F(1,65) = 15.60, p< .0002, MSE=


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0.49. An analysis of the response bias index revealed only a two-wayinteraction between Musical Expertise and Timbre Change, F(1,65) =5.23, p< .05, MSE= 0.64. The musicians responded no significant lymore often in the same-timbre condition compared to the different-timbrecondition and to both conditions for the nonmusicians.

DISCUSSION

The critical point of the experiment was to assess whether timbral qual-ities linked to the difference in instrumentation would be incorporatedinto the memory trace of contemporary musical excerpts. The detrimen-ta l effect of timbre change on recognition fo r musicians demonstra tes thattimbre qualities are indeed integrated into this trace, because performancedeteriorates drastically when the instrumentation changes between thememorized excerpt and the to-be-recognized excerpt, even though listen-ers were instructed to ignore such changes. It is remarkable, in fact, thatmusicians performed at random in the timbre change condition, suggest-


Fig. 1. Experiment 1. Percent correct recognition o bta ined with contemporary excerpts as

a f unction of instrumentat ion in the learning phase, musical expertise, and t imbre change.

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ing that for this group, timbral features are of great importance in con-temporary music.

Before elabo rat ing more on this finding, it w as necessary to check thatthe performance levels of musicians in Experiment 1 did not reflect a con-scious strategy on their part to memorize the most salient features presentin this style of music. In Experiment 2, to prevent the use of such memo-rization strategies, and contrary to Experiment 1, musician listeners werenot informed that there would be a recognition test after the learningphase. Only the conditions orchestra-orchestra versus orchestra-pianowere tested in this experiment because the effects of instrument changewere parallel for both instrumentations in Experiment 1.

Experiment 2: Contemporary Materials with an UnexpectedRecognition Phase

METHOD

Participants

Seventeen candida tes for the fina l diploma of several French conservator ies (referred tobelow a s musicians) participated in the experiment a nd w ere paid 7. The musicians at thislevel of expertise were quite familiar with contemporary music, and they actively partici-pated in pla ying contempora ry pieces.

Apparatus, Stimuli, and Procedure

Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1 except that the participants were notinformed that there was a recognition phase that would follow the learning phase, andlearning was limited to the orchestral versions of the materials. Listeners were instructedthat they would perform a task judging the pleasantness of contemporary musicalexcerpts. They listened to the nine test excerpts and had to indicate on a seven-point scalehow pleasant each one was. Only when they had finished were they informed that therewould be a subsequent recognition phase. There were two conditions using differentinstrumentations. The participants in the timbre-change condition were instructed that achange in instrumentation would occur and that now all the excerpts (those previouslypresented in the learning phase and the new ones) would be played by the piano. Theyw ere instructed to ignore the instrumenta tion cha nge in making their judgments.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results are quite similar to those obtained in Experiment 1, name-ly 80% of correct recognition in the orchestra-orchestra condition (N= 8)and 55% in the orchestra-piano condition (N= 9). Performance decreaseddrastically in the o rchestra-piano condition compared w ith the orchestra-orchestra condition, F(1,15) = 18.07, p= .0007, MSE= 145.60. d valuesw ere computed f rom hit and fa lse ala rm ra tes, a nd t he results completelymirrored t he effects revealed w ith percent-correct scores. The sensitivity to


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differences between old and new excerpts decreased in the orchestra-piano cond ition compared w ith the orchestra-orchestra cond ition, F(1,15)= 17.90, p< .0008, MSE= 0.59. No significant effect was observed forthe response bias index, suggesting that the criterion used by the partici-pants was the same for both conditions. The findings of Experiment 1w ould thus not seem to result from a conscious stra tegy ad opted by musi-cians when memorizing contemporary music. It seems that when listeningto this kind of complex music, musicians naturally pay attention to andperceive the timbre as a structure of interest, and this leads to an integrat-ed encoding of the timbral features or dimensions. As a consequence, inthis second experiment, the musicians were still perturbed when the tim-bre changed in the recognition pha se, leading to w orse performa nce.

Taken together, Experiments 1 and 2 point to an important effect of

timbre on the recognition of musical ma terial t hat is strongly mediated bythe extent of musical expertise. One parsimonious way to interpret thiseffect is that contemporary musical pieces were processed differently as afunction of the level of musical expertise. Musically trained listeners weremore familiar with this type of music, and it is likely that they possessedabstract schemata to encode contemporary music. As a consequence,musicians probably retained some of the characteristics of the musicalexcerpts, even though they did not know tha t a recognition test w ould beperformed later (Experiment 2). Nonmusicians were not influenced in thesame way by timbral characteristics in Experiment 1, primarily becausetheir performance levels were only just above chance in the no-timbre-

change condition. Musically untrained participants were definitely notfamiliar with contemporary music. The abstract schemata underlyingWestern tonal music differ from those of contemporary music, whichrelate more to surface discontinuities created by changes in melodic con-tour, loudness, and irregular rhythm. These surface discontinuities werelikely to be more astonishing for musically untrained listeners, who werelikely to be fa scinated by t he novelty creat ed by rhythm, loudness, timbre,and pitch structures. They did no t possess the abstract schemata necessaryto encode these characteristics. So even if they performed above chance,their performance levels were quite low even for the no-timbre-changecondition, not leaving much room for an effect of timbre change to man-

ifest itself. However, it is worth noting that if timbre were an importantcue for their memory of contemporary music, one might expect their per-formance to decrease to chance levels in the timbre-change condition,w hereas their mean w as still significantly higher than chance according toan exact binomial test.

Therefore, the difference observed between musicians and nonmusi-cians could be due to a more or less greater familiarity with the contem-porary musical style. This post hoc interpretation was investigated further


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in the next experiment, by using Western tonal-metric music, which ismore familiar to both groups of listeners. We assumed that recognitionperformance with tonal excerpts would be globally better than that of thecontemporary excerpts because the listeners are more familiar with theformer, particularly as concerns the underlying scales, harmonies, andmetric organization. We also expected that nonmusicians should now bemore influenced by the change in timbre resulting from the change ininstrumentation.

Experiment 3: Western Tonal Materials

Finding a t ona l/metric piece tha t lends itself to studies ana logous to

those performed w ith The Angel of D eathwas not an easy choice. Strongconstraints led to the choice of Franz Liszts Symphonic Poem #3, L esPrludes (18511854/1977) (G ut , 1989; Wa lker, 1993). B ecauseReynoldss work is written for piano and orchestra, it was tempting toconsider keyboard concertos. But a piano concerto already poses theproblem of the distribution and tra nsformat ion of ma terial betw een pianoand orchestra within the piece itself, beforeany comparison is introduced.The composer has already made the choices. We preferred therefore toselect a piece that was entirely written for orchestra, but for which thereexisted an a dapta tion for keyboa rd.

The duration of the Liszt piece, about 17 minutes, corresponds to that

of each part (Sectional or Domain) of the Reynolds piece (see Reynolds,2004). But duration is not a sufficient criterion. The piece must be writ-ten as a single block, a ll the w hile conta ining w ell-delimited sections. Thisis the case with the Liszt piece (see the formal schema in Fig. 2), whichalso respects a criterion of formal complexity: L es Prludesdoes not limititself to a sonata form, which would be too obvious and inadequate forour needs. It has a well-designed plan that preserves the formal functionsof exposition, d evelopment, and recapitulation w ithout the correspondingsections being simply contiguous. A transition with three subsections isinserted between the exposition and the development. Between the devel-opment and the recapitulation, Liszt has placed an allegretto pasto rale

with a very different character in which a third theme appears. If weassimilate the piece to a large-scale unitary form that groups the differentmovements of a whole sonata into a single block, this allegrettoassumesthe place of the traditional scherzo (as indicated in Fig. 2). The presenceof this section taxes a listeners memory: it introduces a contrast in thecontinuity of the work, before the return of the two love themes thattake on a surprising martial demeanor in the recapitulation, because Lisztmodified the rhythm, the tempo, a nd the timbres.


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Fig.

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It is precisely the subtlety of the motivic and thematic tra nsformationsand the richness of the w eb of relations tha t constitute the last criterion o fchoice. The two love themes have motivic links, and Liszt does not hesi-ta te to perform melodic and rhythmic transforma tions w ith a high degreeof perceptual interest. In spite of the gap in esthetic intent and the obvi-ous differences in materials and compositional method, Liszts L esPrludesand Reynoldss The Angel of D eathhave a sufficient number ofcommon qualities to justify studying them in parallel in an experimentalframework.

METHOD

Participants

Seventy-six volunteer students participated in this experiment: 39 students from anintroducto ry psychology course at t he Universit de Bourgogne, w ith no forma l training inmusic (referred to b elow as nonmusicians), and 37 candidates for the final diploma of sev-eral French conservatories (referred to below as musicians). All par ticipants either receivedcourse credit or were paid 7 for their participation.

Stimuli

Thirty-six musical excerpts were drawn from Symphon ic Poem #3, L es Prludes, byLiszt: 18 were played by the piano , and the other 18 were the same excerpts played by t heorchestra. Table 2 lists the score references and durations of the excerpts.3 The excerptsw ere extracted digitally from commercial CD recordings: Prague Piano D uo, Z denka andMa rtin H rsel, pianos, PRD 250 105 H armoni M undi for the piano version, and BerlinerPhilharmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, Deutsche Grammophon 447 415-2for t he orchestra version.

Procedure, Apparatus, and Design

The procedure, a ppara tus, a nd experimental design w ere identical to those described inExperiment 1.

RESULTS

Figure 3 displays percent correct recognition as a function of musicalexpertise for the four experimental conditions. These percentages wereanalyzed with a Musical Expertise (2) Timbre Change (2)

Instrumentation (2) between-subjects ANOVA. There was a significant


3. To be sure that the length difference betw een the piano and orchestra versions of thesame excerpts cannot account for the performances of the listeners, analyses were per-formed to correlate the absolute value of the difference in length of each pair of excerptswith the mean performance of the participants for each excerpt. We averaged the meansof both musicians and nonmusicians because their patterns of results were highly similarin this experiment. The correlations w ere not significant, r(18) = .21 and r(18) = .20, forthe orchestra-piano and piano-orchestra conditions, respectively.

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main effect of Timbre Change, with poorest performance in the different-timbre conditions, F(1,68) = 61.94, p< .0001, M SE= 109.34. In add ition,across groups of participants, when a timbre change occurred in therecognition phase, scores were lower for a change from piano to orches-tra than f or a change from orchestra to piano, as show n by a significantTimbre Change Instrumentation interaction, F(1,68) = 7.90, p< .007,MSE= 109.34. Finally, a nd cont rary to Experiment 1, significant ly high-er recognition scores were observed across conditions for musicians com-pared with nonmusicians, F(1,68) = 21.75, p< .0001, MSE= 109.34.Tukey-Kramer post-hoc comparisons (p< .05) on the Timbre Change Musical Expertise interaction were performed to parallel those with thenontonal materials in Experiment 1. Different-timbre conditions resultedin low er scores tha n same-timbre conditions for bo th musicians a nd no n-musicians. Although both groups had equivalent scores when the timbre

changed, musicians had higher scores when there was no timbre change.So the effect of timbre change is still stronger for musicians than for non-musicians with tonal materials.

Similar analyses performed on d values show a significant main effectof Timbre Change with poorer sensitivity for the different-timbre than forthe same-timbre condition, F(1,68) = 66.91, p< .0001, M SE= 0.48. TheTimbre Change Instrumentation interaction was significant, F(1,68) =7.85, p< .007, MSE = 0.48, showing that sensitivity to differences


TABLE 2Description of the Stimuli Used in Experiment 3, Drawn from

LisztsSymphon ic Poem #3, L es PrludesExcerpt Duration (s)

Measures Score Pages Piano Orchestra

7-10 2 17.0 19.912-18 2 25.5 30.025-24 5-7 27.1 45.135-44 8-12 30.8 42.347-50 14 16.9 16.263-66 16 21.0 16.969-73 17-18 19.8 16.8118-131 26-28 27.1 23.5131-136 28-29 10.5 8.9144-149 32-34 9.4 8.3155-160 36 9.8 9.7

173-180 41-42 19.5 14.8201-213 45 17.1 21.4237-242 47 7.2 8.8336-344 63-65 12.9 11.1346-356 65-67 21.2 15.9355-363 66-67 15.4 11.6370-377 69-71 15.2 12.5

N OTEMeasure and page numbers refer to the Eulenburg edition of the orchestralscore.

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between old and new excerpts was lower in the piano-orchestra than inthe orchestra-piano condition. This analysis also reveals the significantmain effect of Musical Expertise, with greater sensitivity in musicians thanin nonmusicians, F(1,68) = 25.88, p< .001, MSE= 0.48. Finally, the onlydifference with our previous percent-correct a na lyses is a significant inter-action between Musical Expertise and Timbre Change, F(1,68) = 5.56, p< .05, MSE= 0.48, showing that musicians had higher sensitivity whenthere w as no timbre change a s revealed by a post-hoc comparison. No sig-

nificant effect is observed for the response bias index, suggesting that theresponse criterion used by the participants was the same for both condi-tions.

DISCUSSION

The results of this last experiment show an effect of timbre that inter-acts with musical expertise only when d is used as the dependent va riab le.Post-hoc analyses on both dependent variables show, however, that the


Fig. 3. Experiment 3. Percent correct recognition obtained with tonal excerpts as a func-

tion o f instrumentation in the learning phase, musical expertise, a nd timbr e change.

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interaction is due to higher recognition rates in musicians than in nonmu-sicians in the same-timbre conditions, a nd t o similar rat es for bo th gro upsin the different-timbre conditions. This finding strongly suggests that tim-bre qualities are part of the memory trace of musical materials even in amusical style in which pitch and duration structures predominate andeven when the instructions are to ignore changes in such qualities. Thecritical point of Experiment 3 was to suggest that the weak sensitivity totimbre found in nonmusicians in Experiment 1 was stylistically specificdue to their unfamiliarity with the contemporary music. The musiciansfamiliar w ith the contemporary musical style would possess the schematanecessary to encode some of the characteristics present in Reynoldsexcerpts and recognize them in a subsequent test. Timbre was also inte-grated into the memory trace and led to lower performance levels when

instrumentation was changed in the recognition test. The nonmusicians,unfamiliar with contemporary music, would not possess the necessaryschemata to encode the characteristics present in the Reynolds excerpts,and they obt ained globa lly low performa nce levels (even if above chance)that did not leave much margin to reveal the influence of timbre.

Finally, it was rather astonishing to find that musically trained partici-pants continued to be as sensitive to the timbre change in Experiment 3w ith tona l materials as they were in Experiments 1 and 2 w ith contempo-rary materials. Timbre is not generally considered as a major form-bear-ing dimension in Western tonal music, for which harmonic, rhythmic, andthematic characteristics traditionally define the major structures of inter-

est. This finding suggests that the psychological importance of timbre inWestern tonal-metric music may have been underestimated and should beconsidered carefully.

It should be noted, however, that the surprising performance of musi-cians may also be caused, at least in part, by the fact that the change intimbre was instantiated by two different, unrelated performances ofLiszts Symphon ic Poem. It was only possible to use performances avail-ab le on commercial C D s for this experiment. Na turally, t he performers,pianist, and conductor did not record the pieces in collaboration in asupervised manner in order to make both performances consistent alongseveral parameters (including tempo, musical character, phrasing, and

so on). These differences in performance were inevitably confoundedw ith the instrumenta tion change. Although this may explain w hy pa rtic-ipants were so sensitive to a change in instrumentation (partially con-founded with a change in interpretation), the present finding neverthe-less considerably raises question about the perceptual invariance ofmusical pieces under timbre change. In addition, Experiment 3 alsoreveals a new asymmetry: for both groups of participants, changing the


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timbre from piano to orchestra was more detrimental than the reverseorder compared with the same-timbre conditions. In the present case, itis difficult to determine the relative contributions of change in instru-mentation, in interpretation or in other characteristics associated withthe different performances.

Although the change in instrumentation was not instantiated in exact-ly the same way in Experiments 1 and 3, it was of interest to run a meta-ana lysis of both studies to highlight the stab le outcome emerging fro m thew hole set of da ta . A further M usical Expertise (2) Timbre Change (2) Instrumentation (2) Style (2) betw een-subjects ANO VA w as conductedto investigate the additional factor of style (Reynolds versus Liszt). Therew as a main effect of M usical Expertise w ith higher recognition scores formusicians than for nonmusicians, F(1,133) = 17.58, p< .0001, M SE=

123.80. There was a significant main effect of Style with higher recogni-tion scores for Liszt than fo r Reynolds, F(1,133) = 38.03, p< .0001, M SE= 123.80. There was a main effect of Timbre Change with higher recog-nition scores for same-timbre than for different-timbre conditions,F(1,133) = 64.64, p< .0001, MSE= 123.80. This timbre effect w as mod-ulated by the musical style, F(1,133) = 4.90, p= .028, MSE= 123.80:there wa s a greater ad vant age of same-timbre over different-timbre condi-tions for Liszt tha n fo r Reynolds. Interestingly, this interaction w as mo st-ly generated by the fact t hat the recognition o f Liszt benefited more fromthe absence of timbre change than did that for Reynolds, and this is truefor both musicians a nd no nmusicians. There w as a lso a significant three-

way Musical Expertise Timbre Change Style interaction, F(1,133) =3.98, p= .048, MSE= 123.80 (Fig. 4). This interact ion is merely due tothe absence of difference between same- and different-timbre conditionsfor the nonmusicians in the contemporary music excerpts. Finally, a sig-nificant three-w ay Timbre Cha nge Instrumentation Style interaction,F(1,133) = 8.00, p= .005, MSE= 123.80 (Fig. 5), underlines the fact thatgoing from piano to orchestra was more detrimental than going fromorchestra to piano for the Liszt, whereas the reverse (although nonsignif-icant) tendency was found for the Reynolds materials. Once again, thisinteraction ma y be due to a combination of change in instrumenta tion andperforma nce factors.

To summa rize, timbre is encoded in the memory tra ce for complexmusical ma terials a nd a ffects the subsequent recognition o f b oth contem-porary and tonal music in musicians and nonmusicians, except that thenonmusicians unfamiliar w ith the contemporary style do not seem to pos-sess the schemata necessary to deeply encode the contemporary music(even without timbre change), which probably masks a possible influenceof timbre.


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General Discussion

The present study investigated the recognition of musical pieces underinstrumentation change. Although this issue has already been addressedw ith simplified musical stimuli, no studies have considered this issue withreal performances of contemporary music composed by world-class com-posers. The first main outcome was to demonstrate that timbre influencesthe memorization and the subsequent recognition of real excerpts of con-

temporary a nd tona l music. This finding indicat es that timbre qua lities arepart of the memory trace associated with musical materials. It also sug-gests tha t the processing of timbre, pitch, a nd rhy thm in memory cod ingare not independent for real musical excerpts. This finding fits with pre-vious results in the literature (Crowder, 1989; Melara & Marks, 1990a,1990b, 1990c; Peretz et al., 1998; Pitt & Crowder, 1992; Radvansky &Potter, 2000). In particular, Radvansky et al. (1995) and Radvansky andPotter (2000) showed with real, moderately complex music that timbre is


Fig. 4. Comparison of Experiments 1 and 3. Percent correct recognition as a function of

musical expertise, musical style, a nd timbre change.

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actually encoded in listeners musical representations and influences therecognition of musical excerpts.

The second importa nt result is tha t a change in timbre may be a s detri-mental fo r memory performa nce in musicians a s it is in no nmusicians (a tleast for Western tonal pieces). This finding contradicts several empiricalreports showing that nonmusicians were more sensitive to the influenceof timbre change than were musicians (Beal, 1985; Pitt & Crowder,1992; Wolpert, 1990). The present finding goes one step further by

show ing tha t the effect of musical expertise even tended to w ork contra ryto what was reported in the literature with contemporary music. Withthis musical style, musicians w ere more influenced by the timbre changetha n w ere the nonmusicians; how ever, this could be due to the w eak abil-ity of the nonmusicians to encode and recognize contemporary musiceven without timbre change. Nevertheless, this finding may be counter-intuitive at first glance, but it is easily understandable if we consider thattimbre has a greater role as a form-bearing dimension in Reynoldss


Fig. 5. Comparison of Experiments 1 and 3. Percent correct recognition as a function of

instrumentation in t he learning pha se, musical style, and t imbre change.

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music. In the present study, musicians w ere highly fa miliar w ith contem-porary music and probably possessed some abstract schemata of thismusical style. When listening to excerpts from The Angel of D eath, theyw ould probab ly accurately notice that t imbre is an important f orm-bear-ing dimension for the composer. As a consequence, musicians accuratelydevoted attentional resources to this dimension. Experiment 2 adds evi-dence that this allocation of resources was not task-dependent and actu-ally corresponded to a natural way to pay attention to the Reynoldsexcerpts. As a consequence, when a change in instrumentation occurredin the second pha se of the experiment, recognition w as highly d ifficult, ifnot impossible. It should be noted that this pattern of data was evenobserved in the musician group with a professor of ear training who hadconsiderab le expertise in contempora ry m usic, suggesting t ha t musicians

performance levels can hardly be considered as a failure in musicalexpertise in o ur pa rticipan ts.

By contra st, the perception of Reynoldss thematic materials by nonmu-sicians seems to d iffer considerably from tha t of musicians. This differencecould be related to the fact t hat musically untrained participant s w ere notat all familiar with this music. For almost all of them, this was even thefirst time they had listened to this style. That is to say, they were almostentirely attuned to Western tonal music heard in everyday life and mainlypossessed the abstract schemata necessary to encode tonal, but not con-temporary, music. For these participants, the great novelty evoked byReynoldss materials, in contrast to tonal music, is based on the consider-

able discontinuity of rhythm, melodic contour, and loudness, as well astimbre. The effect of musical expertise found in Experiment 1 thus prob-ab ly reflects the fact tha t the tw o groups, ow ing to their different musicalbackgrounds, were not sensitive to the same characteristics, because theirabstract schemata differed or were nonexistent for the contemporarymusic among nonmusicians. Experiment 3 provided further evidence forthis interpretation. When the piece is in a style more familiar to bothgroups of participants, they performed similarly, both being influenced bya change in timbre.

Finally, the last issue addressed by this study concerned the partici-pants abilities to memorize the Reynolds excerpts. Not surprisingly, the

study confirmed that contemporary music is more difficult to memorizethan to nal music. H ow ever, it should be emphasized tha t the participantsperformed rather well with the contemporary music. At first glance, themoderate performance of t he participants ma y be considered as ra ther dis-appointing, especially for the nonmusicians. However, it is worth notingtha t mo st of the nonmusicians had never listened to contempora ry musicbefore and globally reported disliking this style of music. In this context,the fact that they succeeded in memorizing contemporary excerpts that


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they w ere listening to for the first t ime and in recognizing them at averagelevels above chance is somewhat remarkable. This suggests that the mem-ory system manages to abstract relevant structures of this style of music,even for listeners w ho a re definitely unfamiliar w ith it. By contrast, musi-cally trained participants familiar with contemporary music managed toencode more salient features, and their performance increased comparedto that of nonmusicians, even when they had listened to the musicalexcerpts only once. This suggests that there are features in contemporarymusic that are immediately perceptible and memorizable by both groupsof listeners when instrumentation does not change.

In addition, altho ugh performa nce w as moderat ely a bove chance (aver-aging 60% and 76% in Experiment 1 for nonmusicians and musicians,respectively, in the same-timbre condition), this performance level should

be evaluated in light of t he difficulty of t he task: nine excerpts of 20 s onaverage w ere to be memorized a nd then recognized w hen interleaved w ithnine other excerpts of the same duration. Since the foil excerpts weretaken from the same piece, t hey shared a lot of similarities with t he targetexcerpts, w hich rendered the ta sk quite difficult. The fa ct tha t pa rticipantsperformed a bove chance in this experimental setting demonstrat ed tha t a tleast some of the sophisticated features of contemporary music couldactually be perceived and stored in memory from a first hearing. This cog-nitive ability is obviously not dependent on musical training or familiari-ty with the style, because even nonmusicians performed above chance inExperiment 1 in the same-timbre condition. Of course, their performance

was only moderately above chance. However, this performance levelshould be compared with the levels usually found in the field of implicitlearning studies (Bigand, Perruchet, & Boyer, 1998; Dienes & Longuet-H iggins, 2004; Stad ler & French, 1998; Tillmann & M cAda ms, 2004). Inthis domain of research, performance scores of 60% are considered todemonstrate the ab ility of the cognitive system to extract significant pa rtsof a highly complex organization underlying artificial sequences of stim-uli. When placed in this context, the present findings are encouraging forcontemporary music: contrary to the most widespread opinion, theydemonstrate that listeners capture several sophisticated features of thismusical style from the first hearing, even when they are entirely unfamil-

iar with the style.4


4. This work was funded by the Cognitique program of the French Ministry ofResearch, and benefited from support from IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and the Universityof C alifornia at Sa n Diego. For the Reynolds materials, the piano excerpts w ere performedby Jean-Marie Cottet and recorded by Franck Rossi in the Espace de Projection atIRC AM. The orchestral excerpts w ere performed by the SON O R Ensemble, conducted byHarvey Sollberger, and recorded and edited in Studio A at the University of California atSan D iego by Josef Kucera and Benjamin C arson.

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Poulin-Charronnat, B., Bigand, E., Lalitte, P., Madurell, F., Vieillard, S., & McAdams, S. (2004). Effects of a Change in Instrumentation on the Recognition of Musical Materials. Music

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