WHICH CHORD PROGRESSIONS SATISFY US THE MOST? THE EFFECT OF EXPECTANCY, MUSIC EDUCATION, AND PITCH HEIGHT

Abstract

Music is an integral part of our everyday lives. Through continuous exposure to a particular music style, an individual implicitly learns the laws of music, including the typical progression of chords that accompany the leading melody. Previous research has shown that the typical chord order in compositions is perceived as expected and satisfying, whereas the violations of the typical chord progressions are perceived as unexpected and unsatisfying. In this paper, we investigated how implicit musical knowledge influences satisfaction during listening to expected and unexpected chord progressions by taking into account the participant's music education and the overall pitch height of the chordal sequences. Ninety-seven participants (43 musicians and 54 non-musicians) took part in the experiment. They were asked to rate the degree of their satisfaction during listening to expected and unexpected chord progressions, either during the high-pitch or low-pitch height conditions. The results showed that the participants were more satisfied with expected than unexpected chord progressions, confirming previous findings on the role of implicit learning of rules of harmony. Although results did not reveal an effect of music education during listening to expected chord progressions, musicians evaluated unexpected progressions as less satisfying than non-musicians, suggesting that musicians' are more susceptible to violations of typical chord order. Finally, the results have shown that the difference in satisfaction between expected and unexpected progressions was larger in high-pitch vs. low-pitch condition, suggesting that under low-pitch condition, chord progressions were more difficult to discriminate, confirming the theory of low-interval limit.

Keywords

• harmonic progression
• implicit learning
• low interval limit
• music education
• satisfaction