ArticleScientific reports2022
Improvisation is a novel tool to study musicality.
Article in Scientific reports, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Humans, but not zebra finches, produce spontaneously isochronous song through the lifespan.iScience · 2026Article
- Core systems of music perception.Trends in cognitive sciences · 2025Review
- Interaction of motor practice and memory training in expressive piano performance: expanding the possibilities of improvisation.Psychological research · 2024Article
- Unravelling individual rhythmic abilities using machine learning.Scientific reports · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Humans spontaneously invent songs from an early age. Here, we exploit this natural inclination to probe implicit musical knowledge in 33 untrained and poor singers (amusia). Each sang 28 long improvisations as a response to a verbal prompt or a continuation of a melodic stem. To assess the extent to which each improvisation reflects tonality, which has been proposed to be a core organizational principle of musicality and which is present within most music traditions, we developed a new algorithm that compares a sung excerpt to a probability density function representing the tonal hierarchy of Western music. The results show signatures of tonality in both nonmusicians and individuals with congenital amusia, who have notorious difficulty performing musical tasks that require explicit responses and memory. The findings are a proof of concept that improvisation can serve as a novel, even enjoyable method for systematically measuring hidden aspects of musicality across the spectrum of musical ability.
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