Scale Degree Qualia in Context with Prof. Claire Arthur and Dr. David Baker

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In western classical music, theorists have long argued (and mostly agreed) that individual notes of the major and minor scale have sensations associated, feelings often described in terms of tension, motion, sadness, and stability. Dr Baker recommends Prof. Clair Arthur’s paper “A perceptual study of scale-degree qualia in context” from Music Perception (2018) which describes testing these associations through the subjective reports of musicians and non-musicians when presented scale degrees in different harmonic contexts. Together we discuss the challenges of the probe tone paradigm, interactions of musicianship training and perception of tonality, and ambiguity in note qualia perception.

Time Stamps

• [0:00:10] Introductions
• [0:02:40] Summary of Paper
• [0:09:50] Origins and Experiment 1 – free association
• [0:16:57] Experiment 2 – probe tone ratings
• [0:23:25] Results and surprises
• [0:28:59] Inconsistency in qualia reports
• [0:34:20] Stimulus examples and experiment limitations
• [0:41:21] Implications of findings
• [0:50:43] Using Musically trained participants
• [0:53:51] Closing summary

Show notes

• Recommended article:
  • Arthur, C. (2018). A perceptual study of scale-degree qualia in context. Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 35(3), 295-314
• Interviewee: Prof. Claire Arthur of Georgia Tech University 
• Co-host: Dr. David Baker, Lead Instructor of Data Science at the Flatiron School 
• David Huron’s Sweet Anticipation, 2006 from MIT Press

Credits

The So Strangely Podcast is produced by Finn Upham, 2020. The closing music includes a sample of Diana Deutsch’s Speech-Song Illusion sound demo 1.