Can practice improve rhythm?

Musicality

2024

This data expedition examined the musical concepts of pitch and rhythm. Pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as “higher” and “lower” in the sense associated with musical melodies. Rhythm is the placement of sounds in time and in regular repeated patterns. For slow things, our consciousness distinguishes individual events and interprets them as what we call “rhythm.” For very fast things, our consciousness isn’t fast enough to distinguish the individual events, and our pitch hearing kicks in.

Graduate Students: Danae Diaz and Richard Wong
Sponsoring Faculty: Sonke Johnsen
Undergraduate Course: Sensory Biology (Bio 427S)

Guiding Questions

  • Can practice improve rhythm?
  • Does experience improve pitch/rhythm?
  • What is the relationship between pitch and rhythm?

Exercises

Pitch Test

Distorted Tunes Test

  • http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/
  • You will hear a series of tunes and be asked whether the tune was played correctly yes or no.
  • You will receive a score at the end.

Got rhythm?

  • https://www.concerthotels.com/got-rhythm
  • You will be asked to tap your space key to the beat of the rhythm and given a score.
  • Take the test three times and write each score under trial 1, trial 2, and trial 3.

Record Data

  • Please record scores onto the Google Sheet.
  • In the Experience column, have you had previous musical experience (1) or no (0).

In Class

  • What are our hypotheses?
  • Analyze data using R
  • Create three graphs
    • Can practice improve rhythm?
    • Does experience improve pitch/rhythm?
    • Relationship between rhythm and pitch?

Downloads

Musicality Presentation Fall 2024

Musicality_Fall_2024.csv

MusicallityDataExpedition2024.pdf