Vocal Pitch Matching Research Articles

Is Hey Jude in the right key? Cognitive components of absolute pitch memory.

Most individuals, regardless of formal musical training, have long-term absolute pitch memory (APM) for familiar musical recordings, though with varying levels of accuracy. The present study followed up on recent evidence suggesting an association between singing accuracy and APM (Halpern & Pfordresher, 2022, Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 84(1), 260-269), as well as tonal short-term memory (STM) and APM (Van Hedger et al., 2018,Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 71(4), 879-891). Participants from three research sites (n = 108) completed a battery of tasks including APM, tonal STM, singing accuracy, and self-reported auditory imagery. Both tonal STM and singing accuracy predicted APM, replicating prior results. Tonal STM also predicted singing accuracy, music training, and auditory imagery. Further tests suggested that the association between APM and singing accuracy was fully mediated by tonal STM. This pattern comports well with models of vocal pitch matching that include STM for pitch as a mechanism for sensorimotor translation.

Vocal pitch matching in early childhood as a relative cognitive strength among low academic performers

In this study, using some novel measures, we examined vocal pitch matching in 4- and 5-year-old children in transitional kindergarten classrooms and, at two time points, tested relationships between children’s singing pitch accuracy and their classroom grades as well as performance on standardized measures of developing cognitive and academic skills. Consistent with previous studies, children’s grades were strongly correlated with their performance on standardized measures and differed significantly by gender, maternal education, household income and household language. In contrast, vocal pitch matching and tonal pitch processing showed no consistent relationship to grades, standardized tests or sociodemographic variables, and children with lower academic performance showed statistically equivalent pitch singing on average compared to their peers with higher grades. These findings suggest pitch processing and production abilities may be a relative cognitive strength among children doing less well in school, which may be explored for developing programmes to lift their academic performance.

Young children and music: Views from varied perspectives

This issue is comprised of three original research reports as well as one theoretical article. Article topics include the relationship between vocal pitch matching and academic performance, empathic creativity during child–adult play episodes, encouraging vocal play among generalist teachers’ engagement with children, and redefining a teacher education approach to emphasize musical process over product and increased teacher reflection. The editorial highlights the value of inter- and transdisciplinary work pertaining to young children and music, and encourages authors from a broad array of professions to submit their work to the journal.

Low-Frequency Pitch Perception in Cochlear Implant Recipients With Normal Hearing in the Contralateral Ear

Purpose Three experiments were carried out to evaluate the low-frequency pitch perception of adults with unilateral hearing loss who received a cochlear implant (CI). Method Participants were recruited from a cohort of CI users with unilateral hearing loss and normal hearing in the contralateral ear. First, low-frequency pitch perception was assessed for the 5 most apical electrodes at 1, 3, 6, and 12 months after CI activation using an adaptive pitch-matching task. Participants listened with a coding strategy that presents low-frequency temporal fine structure (TFS) and compared the pitch to that of an acoustic target presented to the normal hearing ear. Next, participants listened with an envelope-only, continuous interleaved sampling strategy. Pitch perception was compared between coding strategies to assess the influence of TFS cues on low-frequency pitch perception. Finally, participants completed a vocal pitch-matching task to corroborate the results obtained with the adaptive pitch-matching task. Results Pitch matches roughly corresponded to electrode center frequencies (CFs) in the CI map. Adaptive pitch matches exceeded the CF for the most apical electrode, an effect that was larger for continuous interleaved sampling than TFS. Vocal pitch matches were variable but correlated with the CF of the 3 most apical electrodes. There was no evidence that pitch matches changed between the 1- and 12-month intervals. Conclusions Relatively accurate and asymptotic pitch perception was observed at the 1-month interval, indicating either very rapid acclimatization or the provision of familiar place and rate cues. Early availability of appropriate pitch cues could have played a role in the early improvements in localization and masked speech recognition previously observed in this cohort. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.8862389.

児童の「歌唱の音高の正確さ」に関する横断的研究 : 音高再生能力,音高弁別能力,及び「話し声」と「歌声」の使い分けの技能に着目して

児童の「歌唱の音高の正確さ」に関する横断的研究 : 音高再生能力,音高弁別能力,及び「話し声」と「歌声」の使い分けの技能に着目して

Vocal Ecosystems Beyond Pedagogy: Working With Challenges

Knowledge of vocal improvised music, whether demonstrated by high or low obscure pitch sounds, the beating of the chest while making music sounds, vocal pitch matching or vocal animation with or without the use of technology, has paved the way for a steady stream of vocal artists through the years, each dedicated to vocal exploration. While jazz vocal improvisation appears on the surface to involve few or no rules, it is a form of communication between artist and listener, where the artist adheres to a set of rules or principles. Here the jazz improviser is treated as part of an ecosystem, a concept in the biological sciences that comprises a set of interacting organisms and environments in a particular place. Within the jazz vocal improvisational ecosystem there are various roles, approaches and activities. What follows is a description showing how the analogy with biological ecosystems can be applied to a ‘vocal ecology’, how this viewpoint may also aid the improvising jazz vocalist in artistic expression and considerations for the vocalist with vocal difficulties in communication.

Singing ability is rooted in vocal-motor control of pitch.

The inability to vocally match a pitch can be caused by poor pitch perception or by poor vocal-motor control. Although previous studies have tried to examine the relationship between pitch perception and vocal production, they have failed to control for the timbre of the target to be matched. In the present study, we compare pitch-matching accuracy with an unfamiliar instrument (the slider) and with the voice, designed such that the slider plays back recordings of the participant's own voice. We also measured pitch accuracy in singing a familiar melody ("Happy Birthday") to assess the relationship between single-pitch-matching tasks and melodic singing. Our results showed that participants (all nonmusicians) were significantly better at matching recordings of their own voices with the slider than with their voice, indicating that vocal-motor control is an important limiting factor on singing ability. We also found significant correlations between the ability to sing a melody in tune and vocal pitch matching, but not pitch matching on the slider. Better melodic singers also tended to have higher quality voices (as measured by acoustic variables). These results provide important evidence about the role of vocal-motor control in poor singing ability and demonstrate that single-pitch-matching tasks can be useful in measuring general singing abilities.

歌唱音声の評価と訓練のための支援システムの開発 －音階ピッチ・マッチングの検討－

歌唱音声の評価と訓練のための支援システムの開発 －音階ピッチ・マッチングの検討－

Vocal pitch shift in congenital amusia (pitch deafness)

We tested whether congenital amusics, who exhibit pitch perception deficits, nevertheless adjust the pitch of their voice in response to a sudden pitch shift applied to vocal feedback. Nine amusics and matched controls imitated their own previously-recorded speech or singing, while the online feedback they received was shifted mid-utterance by 25 or 200cents. While a few amusics failed to show pitch-shift effects, a majority showed a pitch-shift response and nearly half showed a normal response to both large and small shifts, with similar magnitudes and response times as controls. The size and presence of the shift response to small shifts were significantly predicted by participants’ vocal pitch matching accuracy, rather than their ability to perceive small pitch changes. The observed dissociation between the ability to consciously perceive small pitch changes and to produce and monitor vocal pitch provides evidence for a dual-route model of pitch processing in the brain.

A frog in your throat or in your ear? Searching for the causes of poor singing.

Singing is a cultural universal and an important part of modern society, yet many people fail to sing in tune. Many possible causes have been posited to explain poor singing abilities; foremost among these are poor perceptual ability, poor motor control, and sensorimotor mapping errors. To help discriminate between these causes of poor singing, we conducted 5 experiments testing musicians and nonmusicians in pitch matching and judgment tasks. Experiment 1 introduces a new instrument called a slider, on which participants can match pitches without using their voice. Pitch matching on the slider can be directly compared with vocal pitch matching, and results showed that both musicians and nonmusicians were more accurate using the slider than their voices to match target pitches, arguing against a perceptual explanation of singing deficits. Experiment 2 added a self-matching condition and showed that nonmusicians were better at matching their own voice than a synthesized voice timbre, but were still not as accurate as on the slider. This suggests a timbral translation type of mapping error. Experiments 3 and 4 demonstrated that singers do not improve over multiple sung responses, or with the aid of a visual representation of pitch. Experiment 5 showed that listeners were more accurate at perceiving the pitch of the synthesized tones than actual voice tones. The pattern of results across experiments demonstrates multiple possible causes of poor singing, and attributes most of the problem to poor motor control and timbral-translation errors, rather than a purely perceptual deficit, as other studies have suggested.

An acoustical study of vocal pitch matching in congenital amusia

Vocal pitch matching is a foundational skill for singing and is an interesting place to study the relationship between pitch perception and production. To better understand this relationship, we assessed pitch-matching abilities in congenital amusics, who have documented disabilities in pitch perception, and in matched controls under normal, masked, and guided feedback conditions. Their vocal productions were analyzed for fundamental frequency and showed that amusics were significantly less accurate at pitch matching than the controls. However, five of the six amusics showed a significant correlation between their produced pitches and the target pitch. Feedback condition had no effect on pitch-matching accuracy. These results show impaired vocal pitch-matching abilities in amusics but also show a relationship between perceived and produced pitches.

The Role of Pitch Memory in Pitch Discrimination and Pitch Matching

Accurate control of vocal pitch (fundamental frequency) requires coordination of sensory and motor systems. Previous research has supported the relationship between perceptual accuracy and vocal pitch matching accuracy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of memory for pitch in pitch matching and pitch discrimination ability. Three experimental tasks were used. First, a pitch matching task was completed, in which the participants listened to target tones and vocally matched the pitch of the tones. The second task was a pitch discrimination task that required the participants to judge the pitch (same or different) of complex tone pairs. The third task was pitch discrimination with memory interference task that was similar to the pitch discrimination task except interference tones were added. Results of the pitch matching and pitch discrimination tasks yielded a significant correlation between these values. When there was memory interference, pitch discrimination ability was poorer, and there was no significant correlation between pitch discrimination and pitch matching. These results support earlier findings of a relationship between pitch discrimination and pitch matching abilities. The results also suggest a possible role of pitch memory in both tasks. These findings may have implications for abilities related to accurate pitch control.

The Role of Linguistic Dominance in the Acquisition of Song

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that there is a developmental sequence in children's singing, with certain singing behaviours having developmental primacy over others. The research literature indicates that, when learning songs, children first focus on the linguistic features, then rhythm, and finally the pitch and melodic attributes. This theorised hierarchy was examined as part of a larger study of singing development in early childhood in which a longitudinal sample (n=184) were assessed on a variety of vocal pitch matching tasks during each year of their first three years at school, i.e. at age five, six and seven years. In each year of testing, the assessment protocol embraced a specially-designed test battery and two sample songs. The protocol was constructed so that the test battery items (pitch glides, pitch patterns and single pitches) were deconstructed features of the two test songs, thus enabling an analysis to be made of the effects of the task on vocal pitch matching performance. The results suggest that children enter school with a clear disposition towards learning the words of the songs. In general, this ability is not matched by an ability to learn and reproduce the melodic components of the test songs. It is only in the third year of schooling that vocal pitch matching in song singing improves, but this particular ability is still significantly less well developed than that for learning and reproducing the words. 'For singers are given honour and respect by all people on the earth, since the Muse has taught them their songs, and she loves the race of singers' (Homer Odyssey) 1

Visual displays for the assessment of vocal pitch matching development

The instrumental assessment of singing development requires (1) musically relevant stimuli with known and readily controlled variations, (2) an interface device which gives a reliable estimate of the fundamental frequency of sung responses and (3) a clear and quantifiable display of vocal task stimuli and responses from which useful measurements can be readily taken. The first can be achieved with a music synthesizer controlled via the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), the second with so-called pitch extraction systems available primarily for speech applications and the third by means of a mouse-driven graphical display. This paper describes the design and implementation of a vocal pitch matching development assessment system, and illustrates its operation with results gained from an experienced singer. The system described is a development from an earlier system, which, although much more limited in its scope, has nevertheless been shown to be useful in primary school music teaching. It is suggested that this new implementation will find greater application in many areas of singing teaching.

Some Aspects of Fundamental Frequency Control by Esophageal Speakers

The broad objective of the present project was to assess the degree to which esophageal speakers are able to control voice fundamental frequency. Three male esophageal speakers and four age-matched normal speakers were used in a vocal pitch matching task to elicit fo levels. Average differences in fundamental frequency between the individual targets and productions were comparable for esophageal and normal talkers. The frequency variation associated with pitch matching by esophageal speakers was 1.5 to 8 times greater than that by normal talkers. The results were interpreted to support (I) the hypothesis that esophageal speakers were less proficient in controlling the steady-state attributes of their voicing source and vocal output, and (2) the view that esophageal speakers exhibit reduced intentional control over voice fundamental frequency.

Some aspects of fundamental frequency control by esophageal speakers.

The broad objective of the present project was to assess the degree to which esophageal speakers are able to control voice fundamental frequency. Three male esophageal speakers and four age-matched normal speakers were used in a vocal pitch matching task to elicit fo levels. Average differences in fundamental frequency between the individual targets and productions were comparable for esophageal and normal talkers. The frequency variation associated with pitch matching by esophageal speakers was 1.5 to 8 times greater than that by normal talkers. The results were interpreted to support (I) the hypothesis that esophageal speakers were less proficient in controlling the steady-state attributes of their voicing source and vocal output, and (2) the view that esophageal speakers exhibit reduced intentional control over voice fundamental frequency.

Preliminary Studies of Voice Tracking Behavior

Each of a sample of 21 normally hearing adults attempted to match his vocal fundamental frequency to the frequency of tonal signals presented either before or during vocalization under a variety of conditions. He was never informed of his accuracy. The vocalizations were sustained for about 2 sec and were processed through a specially designed “pitch meter”and strip recorder with continuous output and fast rise time. In general, during the first 12-sec of vocalization, the fundamental frequency shifted either up or down toward the target frequency. Subjects were within about 1% of the target frequency on approximately half the trials, although they showed a tendency to be “on target” for as many as 80% of the trials if they had been “on target” in the preceding trial. None of several measures of vocal pitch matching was related to the more classical auditory pitch matching.] This research was supported in full by a U. S. Public Health Service, Department of Health, Education, and Welfare research grant from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness.]