Music Across the World

1) Vocal Constraints 2) Memory Constraints 3) Bounded tessituras 4) Speech Patterns 5) instrument acoustics

Late-phrase compression Small pitch intervals Declination Low-skip bias

Repetition Contour perception Non-equidistant scales are more memorable Categorical memory representations

Direction of melody reverses after a leap Registrar direction principle

How a culture speaks is manifested in their music E.g. Kentucky fiddle music

Musical systems developing around the instrument in that culture - exploiting natural consonances - e.g., Javanese Gamelan

304 recordings coded from pre-existing worldwide data set Coded into 32 statistical universals (definition=occurs 50% of time) which can be grouped into 6 categories: pitch, rhythm, form, instrumentation, performance style and social context - however, there are 18 which truly passed the criteria for universals

Pitch: • discrete pitches • grouped into nonequidistant scales • scales containing seven or fewer scale degrees per octave • music tends to use descending or arched melodic contours • melodies composed of small intervals (perf 5th or smaller)

Rhythm • use an isochronous beat • organized according to metrical hierarchies • based on multiples of two or three beats • —especially multiples of two beats • construct motivic patterns • based on fewer than five durational values

Form 12. consist of short phrases (less that 9s long)

Instrumentation • Use of voice • And non-vocal instruments

Performance style • tends to use chest voice (modal register) • to sing words

Social context • performed predominantly in groups • often by males

Cross-cultural study with a focus on song Utilised Bayesian Principal Component Analysis Returned that the 3 main behavioural context for songs = 1. Formality 2. Arousal 3. Religiosity Key finding = there is more variation within a given culture than cross-culturally

Dance Healing Religious activity, rituals Mourning, death, funerals Processions, spectacles, nuptials Play, games, childhood activities Love

• Tonality (esp. idea of having a tonal centre) • Melodies vary in melodic/rhythmic complexity (in that varying levels of complexity determine song type, e.g. dance = high rhythmic complexity) • Melodic and rhythmic bigrams distributed in accordance w power laws (intervals = unison, maj 2nd, min 3rd; rhythmic ratios = 1:1, 2:1, 3:1)

• Conception of tonality = Western centric, analysed and interpreted by Western theorists • Weak support from data - 2 levels of complexity only explain a small part of variance • Quantified into Western notation (bias in this adjustment)

The ‘Big Three’ of music listening identified using principal component analysis 1. Arousal and mood regulation (physiological/arousal-related function; emotional function) - music for pleasure 2. Self awareness (cognitive function; emotional function) - satisfying the basic human concerns of anxiety avoidance and quest for meaning 3. Social relatedness (social/cultural function) - music for social 1st and 2nd judged as more important than 3rd

• timbre-based music - ‘personal song’, found esp. in Siberia (linked to Denisovian people) • not all cultures use frequency-based intervals • speculation that frequency-based music developed due to the need for social bonding and larger social gatherings - population growth required cohesion, language formation - group activities

Argue for a consideration of the existence of musical universals, proposing these categories of musical universals: • Pitch • Rhythm • Melodic structure and texture • Form • Vocal style • Expressive devices • Instruments • Contents • Contexts • Behaviours