prior work indicates that listeners may be more likely to call a note in-tune when it is sung than when it is in another timbre. The current study seeks to confirm whether this vocal generosity effect generalizes to melodies. Musicians and nonmusicians listened to pairs of single tones and scale-based melodies performed with the voice or the violin. The final note was varied in how well it was tuned to the prior context, and for each example, listeners judged whether the final note was intune or not. A strong vocal generosity effect was found for musicians and nonmusicians in both melodic and single tone conditions – a higher degree of mistuning was necessary for listeners to decide that sung tones were out-of-tune compared with violin notes. These results confirm the role of timbre in tuning judgments, and help explain why singers are typically less well-tuned than instrumentalists in performance.
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December 2012
Research Article|
December 01 2012
The Vocal Generosity Effect: How Bad Can Your Singing Be?
Sean Hutchins,
International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound research (BRAMS) & Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
Dr. Sean Hutchins, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Hospital, 3560 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6A 2E1. E-mail: Sean.Hutchins@gmail.com
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Catherine Roquet,
Catherine Roquet
International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound research (BRAMS) & Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
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Isabelle Peretz
Isabelle Peretz
International Laboratory for Brain, Music and Sound research (BRAMS) & Université de Montréal, Montréal, Canada
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Dr. Sean Hutchins, Rotman Research Institute, Baycrest Hospital, 3560 Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6A 2E1. E-mail: Sean.Hutchins@gmail.com
Music Perception (2012) 30 (2): 147–159.
Article history
Received:
September 23 2011
Accepted:
March 09 2012
Citation
Sean Hutchins, Catherine Roquet, Isabelle Peretz; The Vocal Generosity Effect: How Bad Can Your Singing Be?. Music Perception 1 December 2012; 30 (2): 147–159. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2012.30.2.147
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