Statistical features and perceived similarity of folk melodies

Listeners are sensitive to pitch distributional information in music (N. Oram & L. L. Cuddy, 1995; C. L. Krumhansl, J. Louhivuori, P.Toiviainen, T. Järvinen, & T. Eerola, 1999). However, it is uncertain whether frequency-based musical features are sufficient to explain the similarity judgments that underlie listeners' classification processes. A similarity rating experiment was designed to determine the effectiveness of these features in predicting listeners' similarity ratings. The material consisted of 15 melodies representing five folk music styles. A multiple regression analysis showed that the similarity of frequency-based musical properties could account for a moderate amount …