Music Intervals Topic 2

This is the last topic of the third and last lesson of this course.

Upon marking this topic complete, you will be taken to the final quiz.

Music and the Brain

Studies suggest that individuals are capable of automatically detecting a difference or anomaly in a melody such as an out of tune pitch which does not fit with their previous music experience. This automatic processing occurs in the secondary auditory cortex.

Brattico, Tervaniemi, Naatanen, and Peretz (2006) performed one such study to determine if the detection of tones that do not fit an individual’s expectations can occur automatically. They recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in nonmusicians as they were presented unfamiliar melodies with either an out of tune pitch or an out of key pitch while participants were either distracted from the sounds or attending to the melody. Both conditions revealed an early frontal negativity independent of where attention was directed… [source: Wikipedia]