Speaker
Description
Auditory attention in multi-voiced music typically gravitates towards the highest voice (high-voice superiority; Trainor et al., 2014). Conversely, bass lines often lack this kind of salience (bass inferiority; Bürgel et al., 2021). However, our recent study using pseudo-randomized pure-tone melodies revealed a contrasting "edge effect," where melodies in both the highest and lowest frequency bands exhibited perceptual salience (Bürgel et al., 2024). We hypothesize that the lack of musical realism caused this contrary finding. Therefore, the present study decomposes the impact of musical structure in multi-voice music perception and investigates whether the edge effect persists in more realistic musical mixtures. Stimuli consist of 2-second mixtures selected from four loudness-matched frequency bands with equidistant ERB-spacing (65–1230 Hz). Listeners perform a target-detection task with the cue presented either before the mixture or after. To test the role of musical realism, a regular rhythmic beat grid and a probabilistic Markov model generating tonal melodies in major and minor scales are implemented and will be tested against non-structured (and less musically realistic) rhythmic and tonal choices. Furthermore, tones are presented as either pure tones or naturalistic virtual instrument timbres.We hypothesize that musically structured pure-tone stimuli facilitate detection. In contrast, the complex spectro-temporal features of natural timbres are expected to introduce spectral interference, counteracting the edge effect and shifting attention back toward high-voice superiority and bass inferiority. While data collection is ongoing, we look forward to presenting our findings and discussing their implications at the conference.