Melodic Pattern Repetition and Efficient Encoding: A Corpus Study

Abstract

Melodies are full of repeated patterns of pitch, interval, and rhythm. It has been suggested that these repeated patterns aid the listener in creating an efficient encoding; this raises the possibility that compositional practice might have evolved to facilitate this process. I propose three specific hypotheses about compositional practice: 1) Repeated intervallic patterns tend to be metrically parallel, with each instance of the pattern falling at the same position in relation to the metrical structure; 2) Purely intervallic repetitions tend to be confined to short distances (longer-distance repetitions tend to involve repetition of scale-degrees as well); 3) Repeated intervallic patterns tend to involve multiple intervals rather than single ones. In each case, I explain how such a compositional strategy might facilitate efficient encoding. Corpus analyses of classical themes and European folk songs find support for all three hypotheses.