The influences of familiarity and key on pitch accuracy in singing

Abstract

Singing is a typical human behavior but individuals vary in pitch accuracy. Poor singing performance can be explained by deficits in translating sensory information to a vocal motor plan or problems encoding or recalling pitch from long-term memory. We compared the sensorimotor translation and long-term memory hypotheses by assessing the influence of familiarity and musical key on singing performance. Thirty participants imitated excerpts of 20 familiar and unfamiliar pop songs presented in their original key or a transposed key. We analyzed pitch accuracy by measuring the difference in pitch between the first two notes of participants’ productions and the target stimuli. Participants sang familiar songs more accurately than unfamiliar songs and songs in their original keys less accurately than songs in transposed keys. The results, based on Bayesian hypothesis testing, provide some support for both memory hypotheses and partially confirm the findings of previous research on singing performance. Importantly, our work suggests that if individuals maintain pitch information in long-term memory, they do not draw on it when imitating songs.