ISBN 88-7395-155-4 © 2006 ICMPC 1107 Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna, August 22-26 2006 Similarity perception of melodies and the role of accent patterns Daniel Müllensiefen, Klaus Frieler Hamburg University, Germany There is a considerable amount of literature that claims that accented notes play an important role for the perception of melodies (e.g. Yeston, 1976; Thomassen, 1982; Lerdahl & Jackendoff, 1983; Monahan et al., 1987; Boltz, 1999). Patterns of accented notes are assumed to be abstracted from the sounding melody during listening and are believed to be represented in memory. Their importance for similarity perception and memory performance has been shown in several earlier works (e.g. Boltz & Jones, 1986; Boltz, 1991; Jones & Ralston, 1991). Unfortunately, most accent theories in the literature do not meet the requirements of precision and explicitness to be implemented in a computer model right away. This study describes the construction of an accent pattern software module that comprises most of the rules for accent generation that can be found in the literature. In a very flexible way, reduction analysis from single line melodies to hierarchical accent patterns can be carried out similar to the analysis mechanisms proposed by Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) or Petersen (1999). As an application, we show how accents patterns from this software module in combination with different similarity algorithms can be used to model similarity judgements of experts for pairs of melodies from a previous study (Müllensiefen & Frieler, 2004). The results show that similarity algorithms based on accent patterns perform almost quite as well as algorithms comparing complete melodies. An optimised way to combine accent rules and similarity algorithms is discussed. References Boltz, M. (1999). The processing of melodic and temporal information: independet or unified dimensions? Journal of New Music Research, 28 (1), p. 67-79. Boltz, M. & Jones, M.R. (1986). Does rule Recursion Make Melodies Easier to reproduce? If Not, What Does?.Cognitive Psychology, 18, p. 389-431. Jones, M.R. & Ralston J.T. (1991). Some influences of accent structure on melody recognition. Memory & Cognition, 19, p. 8-20. Lerdahl, F. & Jackendoff, R. (1983). A generative theory of tonal music. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press. Monahan, C.B., Kendall, R.A. & Carterete, E.C. (1987). The effect of melodic and temporal contour on recognition memory for pitch change. Perception & Psychophysics, 41 (6), S. 576-600. Müllensiefen, Daniel. & Frieler, Klaus (2004). Cognitive Adequacy in the Measurement of Melodic Similarity: Algorithmic vs. Human Judgments Computing in Musicology, Vol. 13, p. 147-176. Petersen, Peter (1999). Die Rhythmuspartitur. Über eine neue Methode zur rhythmischmetrischen Analyse pulsgebundener Musik. Hamburger Jahrbuch der Musikwissenschaft, 16. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, p. 83-110. Thomassen, J.M. (1982). Melodic accent: Experiments and a tentative model. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 71, p. 1596-1605. Yeston, M. (1976). The stratification of musical rhythm. New Haven (CT): Yale University In: M. Baroni, A. R. Addessi, R. Caterina, M. Costa (2006) Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition (ICMPC9), Bologna/Italy, August 22-26 2006.©2006 The Society for Music Perception & Cognition (SMPC) and European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM). Copyright of the content of an individual paper is held by the primary (first-named) author of that paper. All rights reserved. No paper from this proceedings may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the paper's primary author. No other part of this proceedings may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information retrieval system, without permission in writing from SMPC and ESCOM.