Melodické očakávania v kontexte hudobného štýlu
Melodic Expectation in the Context of Musical Style

Summary/Abstract: Melodic expectation is generated under the influence of anumber of factors, including musical style, which plays an important part. Our aim is to research the differences in expectations in two distinct music styles. We wish to establish to what extent they will be governed by stylespecific rules or alternatively by universal rules of melodic expectation, such as, for example, the expectation of melodically close or tonally stable notes. To identify the most important differences between a corpus of hymns and a corpus of rock songs, a statistical analysis was carried out (calculating zero- and first-order transitional probabilities among adjacent tones). Subsequently, 26 research subjects were asked in a “probe-tone” experiment to rate on a 1 to 7 scale to what extent the last note of the given melody represented its stylistically appropriate continuation. The responses for the hymn samples corresponded better to the style-specific characteristics of the corpus. In contrast, the answers for the rock samples were better correlated with a general model of tonal hierarchy.

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