The Perception of Key: The Role of Music Training

Abstract

IN TWO STUDIES, THE ROLE OF MUSIC TRAINING in a tonic identification task was investigated. First,listeners had to indicate the tonic of twenty excerpts from music recordings. Very low associations between proportion correct and music training were found. Based on this proportion correct, listeners were classified into four groups that did not differ in music training. Second,listeners had to produce the tonic for different variants ofthe major, minor, diminished triads, and the dominant 7th chord. The choice of a tonic—and the proportion correct—was dependent on the chord type and the order of the pitches. Especially for listeners that had low scores on the excerpts, the effect of order was larger for chords containing a tritone. In addition, the results indicated that the level of music training was not a suitable predictor of the aptitude of tonic identification.