Musicians' and nonmusicians' sensitivity to differences in music performance

A set of ordered, context‐dependent rules for the automatic transformation of a music score to the corresponding musical performance has been developed, using an analysis‐by‐synthesis method [J. Sundberg in Generative Processes in Music, edited by J. Sloboda (Clarendon, Oxford, 1987), pp. 52–69]. The rules are implemented in the LeLisp language on a Macintosh microcomputer that controls a synthesizer via a MIDI interface. The rules manipulate sound level, fundamental frequency, vibrato extent, and duration of the tones, though only by a barely audible quantity, so as to avoid exaggerated effects. However, for any rule, the quantity can be varied. The present experiment was carried out in order to find out if the sensitivity to these effects differed between musicians and nonmusicians. Pairs of performances of the same examples were presented in different series, one for each rule. Between the pairs in a series, the performance differences were varied within wide limits and, in the first pair in each series, the difference was great, so as to catch the subject's attention. Subjects were asked to decide whether the two performances were identical. The results showed that musicians had a clearly greater sensitivity. The pedagogical implications of this finding will be discussed.