Ginsborg & sloboda by John Sloboda

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Singers' recall for the words and melody of a new, unaccompanied song Jane Ginsborg and John A. Sloboda Psychology of Music 2007; 35; 421 DOI: 10.1177/0305735607072654 The online version of this article can be found at: http://pom.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/3/421

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A RT I C L E

Singers’ recall for the words and melody of a new, unaccompanied song

Psychology of Music Psychology of Music Copyright © 2007 Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research vol 35(3): 421‒440 [0305-7356 (200707) 35:3; 421‒440] 10.1177⁄0305735607072654 http://pom.sagepub.com

JA N E G I N S B O RG RO YA L N O RT H E R N C O L L E G E O F M U S I C , M A N C H E S T E R , U K

J O H N A . S L O B O DA K E E L E U N I V E R S I T Y, U K

A B S T R A C T The nature of the relationship between words and music in memory has been studied in a variety of ways, from investigations of listeners’ recall for the words of songs stored in long-term memory to recall for novel information set to unfamiliar melodies. We asked singers to perform an unaccompanied song from memory following deliberate learning and memorization of the words and melody separately and together. Participants with high levels of musical expertise gave more accurate and fluent performances than those with lower levels of musical expertise, but only when they had memorized the words and melody together. While some errors were conjoint, such that erroneous recall of one component – words or melody – affected recall for the other, a higher proportion were separate, such that participants were able to preserve one component when they recalled the other erroneously. Words and melody are thus recalled in association with one another, so that retrieving one enables retrieval of the other, but are not integrated to the extent that failure to recall one accurately invariably results in failure to recall the other. Finally, more hesitations were made at the ends of phrases than at the start or mid-phrase, suggesting that the formal structure of a song provides a framework for recall. In conclusion, memorizing words and melody together is an effective strategy, but perhaps only for singers with high levels of musical expertise. KEYWORDS:

expertise, learning, melody, memorization, retrieval, strategy

In this article, we ask two questions. One is theoretical, the other practical. The answers to both are of interest to singers and teachers of singing: 1.

What is the relationship between the words and melodies of songs in memory? Are they stored and retrieved as separate components, in association with one another, or as a single, integrated unit?

sempre :

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What is the best way for a singer to learn and memorize a song, assuming that both the words and melody are novel? Should the words and melody be memorized separately or together and, if separately, should the words or melody be memorized first?

We carried out our investigation of memory for songs using two methods that have not, so far as we know, been used before. First, we asked singers to recall – i.e. to produce – both the words and the melody of the song they had memorized, rather than to produce one or the other, or to make a judgement of familiarity on hearing the song. Second, we made a detailed time-based analysis of the location of errors in production and their nature: involving one component only (words or melody) or conjoint (involving both words and melody). The theoretical question – what is the relationship between the words and melodies of songs in memory? – has been asked by several groups of researchers, using a variety of methods. These differ from ours in several ways. First, we are concerned with expert singers’ memory. Only two studies, by Sloboda and Parker (1985) and Kilgour et al. (2000), have investigated the effect of expertise (defined in terms of levels of musical training) on recall. The remainder involved the participation of non-musically trained adults (Rubin, 1977; Calvert and Tart, 1993; Rainey and Larsen, 2002), musically trained adults included in groups of non-musically trained adults (Wallace, 1994), children (Calvert and Billingsley, 1998), or compared adults’ and children’s recall (Chazin and Neuschatz, 1990). Second, we operationalize memory in terms of production: recall that involves singing both the words and melody of the song. Sloboda and Parker (1985) investigated recall for melody only. The other studies referred to above required participants to write down the words only (Rubin, 1977; Chazin and Neuschatz, 1990; Calvert and Tart, 1993, Experiment 2; Wallace, 1994; McElhinney and Annett, 1996; Kilgour et al., 2000) or to recite them (Calvert and Billingsley, 1998). Only Calvert and Tart (1993, Experiment 1) gave participants the choice of singing or reciting. Rainey and Larsen (2002) presented lists of names either spoken or sung and measured how long participants took to re-learn the lists a week later. Meanwhile, Serafine and her colleagues (1984, 1986; Crowder et al., 1990) investigated recognition memory, rather than recall, for words and melodies of songs. Third, our focus is on recall for the words and melodies of songs that have been learned, rehearsed and memorized by singers using a notated musical score, but which are still ‘fresh’ in memory. Earlier studies used auditory presentation only of unfamiliar words that were or were not paired with unfamiliar melodies, either once or several times (Serafine et al., 1984, 1986; Crowder et al., 1990; Calvert and Tart, 1993, Experiment 2; Wallace, 1994; McElhinney and Annett, 1996; Kilgour et al., 2000). Others presented unfamiliar words or information with melodies stored in long-term memory,

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song

e.g. the characteristics of minerals sung to the tune of ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ (Chazin and Neuschatz, 1990); the names of baseball players set to the tune of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ and characters from Tolkien’s The Hobbit set to the tune of ‘Yankee Doodle’ (Rainey and Larsen, 2002). A final group of studies investigated recall from very long-term memory, when both the words and melody presented would have been familiar, e.g. ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ (Rubin, 1977) and the Preamble to the Constitution (set to music) (Calvert and Tart, 1993). Taken together, the findings of the existing research indicate that adult participants have better recall for the words of songs when they are heard with their ‘proper’ melodies than with different melodies or none (Rubin, 1977), suggesting reliance on an existing association. Recall is likely to be better when participants rehearse (Calvert and Tart, 1993; Rainey and Larsen, 2002) and thereby strengthen an existing association between words and a familiar melody. Where a novel melody accompanies the words of a song, recall is likely to be better when the melody is repeated several times (Wallace, 1994; McElhinney and Annett, 1996; Kilgour et al., 2000), enabling a new association between them to be formed. While it may be harder for children to form new associations between words and melodies, particularly when the words are difficult to understand (Chazin and Neuschatz, 1990) and/or they are set to an unfamiliar melody (Calvert and Billingsley, 1998), it seems to be easier for expert musicians: Kilgour et al. (2000) found that musically trained adults had better recall for sung words than did their nonmusically trained counterparts. This may well result from their superior recall for melodies, as shown in Sloboda and Parker’s (1985) study. As predicted by research on expertise generally (e.g. Ericsson, 1996), the more one has experience of performing music, and the more one knows about music, the better one is able to encode and represent music and therefore to recall and perform it accurately from memory. For example, Gruson’s (1988) group study of pianists practising and learning unfamiliar pieces of music showed that experts were quicker than novices to learn new pieces more effectively, not because they used more efficient learning strategies for the particular new pieces they practised, but because they had developed more efficient learning strategies over many years of practising many pieces. These strategies include drawing on an understanding of the formal structure of the music being learned. Ginsborg (1999) showed that four-fifths of segments sung by expert singers while memorizing a song began at the start of a phrase (particularly the beginning of the song, half-way through the first verse, the beginning of the second verse and the difficult final phrase); more than half finished at the end of the same, or a subsequent phrase. Williamon and Valentine (2002) also showed that expert pianists were more likely than novices to start and stop playing from memory at phrase boundaries representing structurally significant locations in the music, suggesting that they had memorized the music in segments made up of phrase units.

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We have argued that the presence of melody enhances recall for words when there is a learned association between them. In a series of influential studies, Serafine and her colleagues investigated the nature of this association. First, they asked non-musically trained listeners to judge the familiarity of songs heard once and then presented a second time, with one, both or neither component changed. Participants were more likely to judge words as familiar if they were paired with their original melody, and vice versa. Serafine et al. (1984) refer to this as the ‘integration effect’, robust even when melodies are paired with nonsense texts (Serafine et al., 1986). Crowder et al. (1990) argue that this is either the result of association ‘by contiguity’ (if one component is altered it no longer provides the same retrieval cues for the other component) or ‘physical interaction’ (when the words of a song are altered, the melody undergoes subtle changes, for example to the rhythm as well). ‘Integration’ has strong connotations that suggest that recall or recognition for two associated elements is all-ornothing: either they are both remembered, or neither is. We believe that there is rather little evidence to support such a strong concept. Rather, there is a probabilistic relationship that increases the likelihood of one element being retrieved if the other one is. So we will use the broader concept of ‘association’ to frame the phenomena we are studying. Research investigating the relationship between the words and melodies of songs in memory, then, using both recall-for-words and recognition paradigms, suggests that they are less likely to be stored and retrieved as separate components than together: if not as an integrated, single unit, then at least in association with one another. The present study aimed to determine whether this is the case for expert singers who are required to perform songs from memory. Little research has been published on singers’ actual memorizing strategies (i.e. as observed in normal rehearsal situations). Ginsborg (2000), in one of a series of studies exploring this issue, interviewed experienced professional singers, asking them to report on their strategies and their reasons for choosing them. The majority of respondents reported studying and memorizing the words and melodies separately in the initial stages of preparation for performance from memory. Their memorizing strategies were particularly for the words, since they were more anxious that they would forget the words than the melody; they also wanted to be confident that they understood the words and would be able to convey their semantic meaning. However, in an observational study comparing the memorization strategies of singers of varying levels of expertise (Ginsborg, 2002), participants’ actual behaviours did not fully reflect the reported strategies of the interviewees. Initial attempts on the melody separately from the words (playing, accompanying, vocalizing and counting beats aloud) gave way over the course of a series of practice sessions to attempts on the words and melody together. Although very few attempts were made on the words separately from the melody, expert singers were more likely than less expert singers to

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song

recite the words of the song aloud. Yet memorization of the words and melody separately was found to be associated with slower memorization of the song and less accurate performance of the song from memory. This would be consistent with the hypothesis that recall for songs is more reliable when words and melody are encoded, from the start of deliberate memorization, in association with each other rather than as two independent components. The present experiment, then, was designed to compare more and less musically expert singers’ recall for a newly memorized song. Participants were asked to learn, memorize and perform the whole song, not just to recognize it or recall its words. They either learned the words and melody together, or – for a large proportion of the memorizing phase – separately. The principal measures used were accuracy and fluency. We used fluency – performing without hesitations – as a measure because accuracy, on its own, is a rather crude measure for highly skilled time-sensitive performance. Fluency is a more fine-grained (and task-relevant) means of probing memory processes, since even fully accurate performances can reveal uncertainties in memory. As Sloboda and Lehmann (2001) demonstrated in their study of expert pianists’ performances of a Chopin prelude, listeners’ perception of performance is affected by the smallest differences in timing: the maintenance of ‘flow’ in music is crucial. The following hypotheses were made: (1) recall for the song would be more accurate when (a) singers were more musically expert, and (b) when they had memorized the words and melody together; (2) recall for the song would be more fluent when (a) singers were more musically expert, and (b) when they had memorized the words and melody together. In the light of evidence that words and melodies of songs are stored and retrieved in association with each other, (3) more ‘conjoint’ errors and omissions would be made, involving both the words and the melody, than ‘separate’ errors and omissions, involving one component only. Finally, in the light of evidence that expert musicians memorize and recall in segments made up of one or more phrases, it was hypothesized (4) that more hesitations would be made at the ends of phrases than at the starts or mid-phrase.

Method PARTICIPANTS

Sixty singers, 35 female and 25 male, took part in the study. Their ages ranged from 18 to 61, with the majority below the age of 25. Most were university-based music students or sang in university choirs; six were experienced professional or semi-professional singers. Other than two singing teachers who were paid their usual fee for an hour’s consultation, all participants were unpaid. Musical expertise was defined by the extent of musical training undergone by participants and determined in a brief interview in the course of the

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experimental procedure. Thirty-five participants had passed Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) Grade 8 (or equivalent) in singing or on an instrument, a higher qualification such as a diploma, or had graduated from university with a degree in music and were therefore deemed to have a high level of musical expertise. Twenty-five had not taken any examinations in singing, music theory or on a musical instrument, or had only taken them up to and including Grade 7 (usually taken around two years before Grade 8); they were deemed to have – by comparison with the ‘high-expertise’ group – ‘low’ musical expertise. All took part in a short screening task (singing along with a recording of the song, with the score in front of them) prior to taking part in the experiment proper. The 60 participants from whom data were gathered were all able to sing the melody accurately at the second attempt. MATERIALS

A novel, unaccompanied song was constructed by setting the second verse of the poem ‘The Moon and a Cloud’, by W.H. Davies (Davies, 1929), to the melody of an English folk song, ‘The Lowlands of Holland’ (Karpeles, 1974). This melody was chosen because it is typical of folk song melodies, not too difficult for the singers with low levels of musical expertise, but not too easy or repetitive for the highly musically expert singers, for whom the song had to present a meaningful challenge. Slight alterations were made to the text and melody to remove repetitions of words and music. The verse, headed ‘Cloud’, was printed as a poem on a single sheet of paper. The melody alone, with commas to indicate phrase endings, was printed in large type, two phrases per line, in two keys to suit the different voice types of the participants: F major, in the treble clef (for sopranos and tenors), and D major, in the treble (for altos) and bass clefs (for basses). The whole song, conventionally notated with the words of the poem below the note-heads of the melody, was printed using the same format as the melody alone, in both keys and clefs (see Appendix). Cassette recordings of the melody and the whole song were provided for the participants (stimulus tapes). The melody was played on a Yamaha Clavinova using the sonority of a conventional piano in the keys of F major and D major; the whole song, words and melody, was sung by the researcher, a classically trained soprano, in both keys. APPARATUS

A clock was provided for the duration of each experimental session, clearly visible to participants. One Sony TCM-919 cassette-recorder was used to play the stimulus tapes and record the participants’ performances on test tapes; another was used to record the whole experimental procedure for each participant on back-up tapes. A Sanyo TRC-8080 transcriber was used to transcribe the test tapes and the interview sections of three back-up tapes.

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song DESIGN

The study was of mixed design. There were two independent, between-subject, variables: expertise, with two levels, high and low – see the ‘Participants’ section earlier – and condition, with three levels, to which participants were randomly assigned. Condition 1 (WM) involved memorizing the words of the song first, then the melody and finally the words and melody together. Condition 2 (MW) involved memorizing the melody of the song first, then the words and finally the words and melody together. Condition 3 (B) involved memorizing the words and melody together throughout the whole memorizing phase. Table 1 shows how the participants were distributed between the two levels of expertise and three experimental conditions. The dependent, within-group variables were measures of accuracy and fluency, and errors (see the ‘Analysis’ section later). TA B L E

1 Distribution of participants Condition

Expertise High Low Total

1 (WM) 13 (8f *, 5m*) 7 (4f, 3m) 20

2 (MW) 13 (8f, 5m) 7 (4f, 3m)

3 (B) 9 (4f, 5m) 11 (7f, 4m)

Total 35 (20f, 15m) 25 (15f, 10m) 60

* f = female, m = male

PROCEDURE

The memorizing task took 20 minutes in all, for each participant. In Conditions 1 (WM) and 2 (MW) it was subdivided into three parts: memorizing the words (five minutes), memorizing the melody (seven minutes) and memorizing the words and melody together (eight minutes). Each performance from memory took one to two minutes. The two performances were separated by a 10-minute period, during which a brief interview was carried out. This was used to establish participants’ levels of musical expertise, prevent the possibility of rehearsal and ensure that the second performance tested long-term memory. The 10-minute period was also long enough to provide an experimental analogue for the real-life situation in which singers often refresh their memory for songs shortly (but rarely immediately) before performing them on the concert platform. Conditions 1 (WM) and 2 (MW) In Condition 1, the participant was given the poem ‘Cloud’ and asked to memorize it over the course of the next five minutes. The participant was then left alone. After five minutes, the researcher returned, and the screening procedure took place. In three cases, volunteers recruited to take part in the study were unable to sing the melody accurately at this stage, with the

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stimulus tape playing and the score in front of them. In these cases the tasks, tests and interviews proceeded as usual, so that the volunteers did not perceive themselves as having ‘failed’. However, the tests were neither transcribed nor scored. The participant was then told that s/he had seven minutes to memorize the melody and invited to use the stimulus tape, piano or keyboard, as required. Again, the participant was then left alone. The procedure up to this point was the same in Condition 2 (MW), except that screening took place at the start of the session, since the melody was presented first and the words second. On her return, the researcher removed the musical score of the melody (or, in Condition 2, the text of the poem) and replaced it with the musical score of the complete song, saying: ‘Here, at last, is the whole thing.’ She also replaced the recording of the melody with a recording of the complete song, in case the participant wished to listen to it and explained that s/he would be asked to sing the whole song from memory after eight minutes. The participant was once again left alone. Condition 3 (B) Participants were told that the purpose of the study was to investigate whether performance from memory was more likely to be accurate if the words and melody of the song had been memorized together, or separately. They would be required to memorize the words and melody together, and although it might be more usual for individual participants to memorize words and melody separately, perhaps writing out the words as a poem or singing the melody to vowel sounds or nonsense syllables, they were asked not to do so on this occasion. Indeed they were to sing the words of the song at all times, or to speak the words if they played the melody or any part of the melody on the piano or keyboard at any time. Before they started the memorizing task, however, they carried out the screening task as in the other conditions, listening to the stimulus tape of the whole song before singing along with it twice. From this point on, the preparation for memorizing the song was the same as for the preparation for memorizing the melody. The participant was told s/he had 20 minutes to memorize the song, and would be expected to sing it from memory on the researcher’s return. The participant was then left alone. First performance from memory From the point at which the researcher returned, the procedure was the same in all three conditions. The musical score was removed from the participant. The researcher asked the participant to sing the song from memory. She explained that the participant should sing the whole song without stopping, if possible, but if s/he was unable to do so, then it was acceptable to ‘do anything to get started again – including going back to the beginning of the

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song

song and starting again, though only once’. The researcher then gave the same cue to each participant (the first two notes and words of the song in the appropriate key) and the participant attempted to sing the whole song from memory. When s/he had finished, the researcher invited the participant to continue with the next stage of the procedure: the interview. Interview: second performance from memory The interview lasted 10 minutes, and had two purposes: to determine the participant’s level of musical education and early memories of listening to music, and to provide a short delay in which the participant could not mentally rehearse the song. At the end of the interview, the participant was asked to sing the song again from memory. After the second performance, participants were thanked, assured that they would not be required to sing the song again and debriefed. Transcription When all the experimental sessions were completed, the cassette tapes on which the performances from memory had been recorded were re-numbered by a colleague so that they could be transcribed ‘blind’ by the researcher. A key was made so that the transcripts of the tapes could be matched up again with the corresponding back-up tapes and interview notes once the transcriptions were complete. The researcher listened to the recordings of the two performances from memory given by each participant, and annotated a photocopy of the musical score of the song so as to make a visual record of what was actually sung by the participant. The musical score was amended to show the locations of hesitations and where the words and/or melody were repeated, omitted, substituted or performed in error. If there were very many corrections, repetitions or performances of words and/or music apparently unrelated to the score as printed, they were notated by hand on separate sheets of manuscript paper. Scoring The numbers of word substitutions and omissions, melody substitutions and omissions, and hesitations made by each participant were then counted and entered on a scoring sheet. Reliability Six of the 60 test tapes, selected at random, were transcribed and scored by an independent scorer following the researcher’s instructions. Each tape held two performances from memory given by the same participant, immediately after memorizing, and following the 10-minute delay. Both performances were transcribed. Each transcription yielded five scores: word errors, word omissions, melody errors, melody omissions and hesitations at each time of testing, making a total of 10 scores in all for each participant. Each scorer

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therefore produced 60 scores. There was virtually no disagreement between the researcher and independent scorer: the Pearson correlation obtained between the 60 scores calculated by each of the scorers was statistically significant (r [59] = 0.99, p < 0.0001). For the purposes of this paper, only second performances were analysed. This is because we wished to avoid ceiling effects: first-time recalls could have been ‘contaminated’ by just-memorized information still retained in shortterm memory.

Results HYPOTHESIS 1

It was hypothesized that singers with high levels of musical expertise would have more accurate recall for the song (a) than those who were less musically expert, and (b) when the song had been memorized in Condition 3 (B) rather than in Conditions 1 (WM) and 2 (MW). In order to assess recall for both the words and the melody, the unit of the song chosen was the half-bar, i.e. two crotchet beats. The more accurate the performance was, the more half-bars were sung accurately out of a possible total of 32. Both hypotheses were upheld: participants with high musical expertise gave significantly more accurate performances from memory than those with low musical expertise (F [1,54] = 10.64, p = 0.002), as did participants in Condition 3 (B) (F [2,54] = 4.58, p = 0.015). There was also a significant interaction between expertise and condition (F [2,54] = 3.95, p = 0.025), illustrated in Figure 1 (see Table 2 for means and SDs). The differences between the mean numbers of half-bars sung accurately by highly musically expert participants in Condition 3 (B) were significantly different from those sung by high- and low-expertise participants in Condition 1 (WM) (t [20] = 2.76, p = 0.012 and t [14] = 4.79, p < 0.0001), high- and low-expertise Mean number of half-bars sung accurately (possible total = 32)

430

30 25 20 High expertise Low expertise

15 10

FIGURE

5 0 Condition 1 (WM)

Condition 2 (MW)

Condition 3 (B)

1 Accuracy by expertise and condition.

2 Accuracy and fluency

13 7 13 7 9 11 35 25 20 20 20 60

High expertise Condition 2 (MW) Low expertise Condition 2 (MW)

High expertise Condition 3 (B) Low expertise Condition 3 (B)

All High All Low

All Condition 1 All Condition 2 All Condition 3

All participants

Number of participants

High expertise Condition 1 (WM) Low expertise Condition 1 (WM)

Expertise and condition

TA B L E

13.53 (8.81)

12.8 (8.9) 10.85 (6.78) 16.9 (9.8)

15.89 (10.01) 10.24 (5.46)

24.89 (7.22) 10.36 (8.81)

11.77 (7.44) 9.13 (5.45)

13.77 (10.47) 11.14 (5.18)

Mean number of half-bars sung accurately (possible total = 32)

32.79 (19.42)

34.03 (17.5) 31.81 (18.99) 32.79 (22.4)

25.75 (17.56) 42.64 (17.81)

14.59 (12.5) 47.21 (17.36)

28.47 (18.04) 38.01 (20.53)

30.76 (17.74) 40.1 (16.54)

Separate errors per half-bar (%)

17.31 (19.14)

18.6 (21.16) 22.71 (19.38) 10.62 (15.31)

19.74 (22.07) 13.91 (13.79)

7.64 (16.17) 13.05 (14.9)

29.23 (18.84) 10.6 (14.7)

18.62 (25.33) 18.55 (11.62)

Conjoint errors per half-bar (%)

5.4

(5.1)

6.63 (5.71) 5.97 (5.71) 3.6 (3.84)

3.9 (3.93) 7.49 (5.85)

1.58 (2.59) 5.25 (3.98)

4.46 (4.78) 8.7 (6.67)

4.92 (3.31) 9.79 (6.98)

Hesitations per beats sung (%)

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; recall of a new, unaccompanied song

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participants in Condition 2 (MW) (t [20] = 4.12, p = 0.001 and t [14] = 4.25, p < 0.0001) and low-expertise participants in Condition 3 (B) (t [18] = 4.92, p < 0.0001). All other differences were non-significant. That is to say, participants’ performance was equivalent irrespective of condition unless they were high-expertise participants who memorized words and melody together: these singers had significantly more accurate recall. HYPOTHESIS 2

It was hypothesized that singers with high levels of musical expertise would have more fluent recall for the song (a) than those who were less musically expert, and (b) when the song had been memorized in Condition 3 (B). Fluency was measured by counting hesitations between beats, out of a total of 64. Two types of hesitation were noted. The first type was when singers paused and started again, often having made comments such as ‘I’ve forgotten’, or ‘Hang on a moment’. The second type was when singers stopped to correct themselves. Significantly more hesitations of the first type (M = 3.57, SD = 3.14) were made than the second (M = 2.11, SD = 2.1, t [59] = 3.44, p = 0.001). Hesitations of the second type were not analysed further. Preliminary investigations revealed that 24 participants stopped singing altogether before the end of the song, so hesitations were calculated as a percentage of beats sung. Both hypotheses were upheld: participants with high musical expertise gave significantly more fluent performances from memory than those with low musical expertise (F [1,54] = 11.63, p = 0.001), as did participants in Condition 3 (B) (F [2,54] = 3.83, p = 0.028). There was no significant interaction between expertise and condition (F [2, 54] = 0.076, NS). Means and standard deviations are shown in Table 2.

Hesitations per beats sung

432

10 8

High expertise Low expertise

6 4 2 0 Condition 1 (WM)

FIGURE

Condition 2 (MW)

Condition 3 (B)

2 Fluency by expertise and condition.

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song HYPOTHESIS 3

In the course of determining the number of half-bars sung accurately in order to test Hypothesis 1, the errors initially noted on the transcriptions were recoded as follows: (1) separate errors: substitutions or omissions of the words while preserving the melody; substitutions or omissions of the melody while preserving the words; (2) conjoint errors: substitutions of both components, substitutions of one and omissions of the other, and omissions of both, prior to resumption of the performance. These were calculated as a percentage of half-bars sung. Although it had been hypothesized that more conjoint than separate errors would be made, reflecting conjoint processing of the words and melody, this was not the case when errors were calculated as a proportion of half-bars actually sung. A 2 × 2 × 3 mixed ANOVA with error type (separate vs. conjoint) as the within-subjects factor and expertise and condition as between-subjects factors revealed a main effect of error type (F [2,54] = 22.13, p < 0.0001). Nearly twice as many separate errors were made (M = 32.70, SD = 19.4) as conjoint errors (M = 17.31, SD = 19.14), indicating that participants were able to preserve one element when they made errors in the other component. Yet there was a significant interaction between error type and expertise (F [2, 54] = 9.03, p = 0.004) illustrated in Figure 2 (see Table 2 for means and SDs). The difference between the proportions of separate and conjoint errors made by highly musically expert participants was much less pronounced than that between the proportions of separate and conjoint errors made by less musically expert participants.

Errors per half-bar sung (%)

45 40 35 30 25

High expertise Low expertise

20 15 10 5 0 Separate errors

FIGURE

Conjoint errors

3 Error type by expertise.

HYPOTHESIS

Because singers are more likely to recall songs in phrase units, it was hypothesized that more pauses would be made at the ends of phrases than at the starts or mid-phrase (irrespective of expertise or condition). This was the

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case. Hesitations after beats 1 or 2 (‘I see’), 9 or 10 (‘the moon’), 17 or 18 (‘she turns’), 25 or 26 (‘a love-’), 31 or 32 (‘it shines’), 39 or 40 (‘that I’) or 47 and 48 (‘she’s turned’) were deemed hesitations at starts of phrases. Hesitations after beats 7 or 8 (‘-by cloud’), 15 or 16 (‘its back’), 23 or 24 (‘it bright’), 31 or 32 (‘-ly black’), 39 or 40 (‘-dark cloud’), 47 or 48 (‘-rious light’), 55 or 56 (‘my heart’) and 31 or 32 (‘of white’) were deemed hesitations at ends of phrases. Hesitations after any other beat were deemed mid-phrase hesitations. Again, the numbers of hesitations made in each of the three categories were calculated as percentages of the beats actually sung. Because there were twice as many opportunities for mid-phrase hesitations as start- and end-phrase hesitations, the number of mid-phrase hesitations made by each participant was halved prior to analysis. As shown in Figure 4, there were significantly more end-phrase (M = 2.55, SD = 2.65) than start-phrase (M = 0.82, SD = 1.69; t = 4.87, d.f. = 59, p < 0.0001) or mid-phrase hesitations (M = 0.99, SD= 1.2; t = 4.92, d.f. = 59, p < 0.0001). The difference between the number of pauses made at starts and mid-phrase was not significant. 3

Hesitations per beats sung

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2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0 Start-phrase hesitations

FIGURE

Mid-phrase hesitations (/2)

End-phrase hesitations

4 Hesitations by type.

Discussion HYPOTHESES 1 AND 2 : ACCURACY AND FLUENCY OF RECALL

As predicted, singers with high levels of musical expertise who memorized the words and melody of the song together for the whole of their practice time had more accurate, and more fluent recall for the song than those who spent the bulk of their practice time memorizing the words and melody separately, and those who were less musically expert. Kilgour et al. (2000) found that listeners with musical training had better recall for words set to music, probably because – as Wallace (1994) suggested in her study of recall for the words of ballads – the melody provides a

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; recall of a new, unaccompanied song

framework for retrieving the words that is more meaningful and therefore more memorable for those with musical expertise. In the present study, we found that singers with high levels of musical expertise, given the opportunity to sing rather than to recite, as in Kilgour et al.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (2000) study, had superior recall not only for the words, but also for the melody of the song. This demonstrates superior strategies for memorizing and recall, not just reading music, since all the participants had passed the initial screening test: singing the song (or at least the melody) accurately at sight. The strategy of memorizing words and melody together was predicted to be more effective than memorizing them separately, regardless of level of expertise. First, it reflects the desired outcome: the ability to recall and sing both components of the song. Second, it utilizes the association between the components shown not only to enhance recognition when they are paired (Serafine et al., 1984, 1986; Crowder et al., 1990), but also to enhance recall for words set to music (Rubin, 1977; Chazin and Neuschatz, 1990), particularly when participants have the opportunity to hear the same melody several times (Wallace, 1994; McElhinney and Annett, 1996) or, better still, rehearse them (Calvert and Tart, 1993; Kilgour et al., 2000; Rainey and Larsen, 2002). Rehearsal involves motor or kinaesthetic memory: it could be argued that preparation to sing involves an even more advanced form of motor memory than preparation for recitation of the words only. What was the nature of the advantage to singers with high levels of musical expertise of using the strategy of memorizing words and melody together? It may simply be that they had learned, or had been taught to memorize the words and melodies of songs as composites, in such a way that memory for one component enhances memory for the other, so that when they used this strategy under experimental conditions they performed better from memory than when deprived of the opportunity to use a well-learned strategy. Nevertheless, some experienced professional singers do memorize words and melodies separately, according to those who were interviewed by Ginsborg (2000) and some of those who took part in her observational study (Ginsborg, 2002). This enables them to focus on the semantic meaning of the words, which may reinforce recall for, or help to resolve confusions in, the words once they have been memorized with the melody. However, separate memorization took longer and was associated with less accurate performance from memory, thus supporting the findings of the present study. HYPOTHESIS 3 : THE EXTENT TO WHICH WORDS AND MELODY ARE RECALLED IN ASSOCIATION WITH EACH OTHER OR SEPARATELY

Given the evidence outlined above that the presence of melody enhances recall for the words of songs, and indeed the evidence of the present study indicating superior recall for both components when rehearsed together (at least for highly trained musicians), we predicted that words and melody would be recalled together and that this would be reflected by a greater

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proportion of conjoint than separate errors. Because so many participants – two-fifths – failed to sing the whole song from memory, errors were calculated as a proportion of half-bars actually sung, and our prediction was not upheld. Taken together, more than twice as many separate errors were made as conjoint errors. Yet high-expertise participants were only marginally more likely to make separate errors than conjoint errors. Low-expertise participants made nearly twice as many separate errors as the high-expertise participants, and fewer conjoint errors. For example, errors made by highly musically expert participants were most likely to involve the substitution of musically acceptable pitches and rhythms. In the second half-bar of Phrase 8, for example, a rising sequence of pitches including a minor third interval was often sung incorrectly as the start of a major scale. Meanwhile, less musically expert participants found the rhythms in Phrases 4 and 6 problematic; the frequent occurrence of errors at the beginning of Phrase 5 seem to be attributable to the setting of the word ‘lovely’ for a second time, but to a different melody. Two locations where there were high proportions of errors were in Phrase 3 and the beginning of Phrase 4. Here separate errors involved word substitutions, perhaps because participants had failed to consider the semantic meaning of the words while they were memorizing the song. For example, the words ‘make’ and ‘turns’ were often substituted in Phrases 3 and 4 (‘I look to see her make it bright / She turns it to a lovely black’) and the word ‘light’, at the end of Phrase 7, was often substituted or omitted following ‘glorious’ despite the participant’s having just sung the verb ‘shines’. To reiterate: when singers make separate errors they preserve one component while forgetting or recalling the other erroneously; when they make conjoint errors we must assume that erroneous recall for one component has affected recall for the other. If Crowder et al.’s (1990) ‘physical interaction’ hypothesis were to be supported by our findings, all errors would have had to be conjoint. This was not so: words and melody are not integrated to such an extent that if one is forgotten the other is too. The occurrence of some conjoint errors, however, supports their weaker ‘association-by-contiguity’ theory. This theory is extended by Stevens et al. (1998), who propose that words and melody may be represented independently and simultaneously associated by contiguity (‘composite’ representation). Thus it is not just the words and melody of the song that are memorized, but also the associations between them, in such a way that singers are more likely to be able to retrieve one component accurately when recall for the other fails, as was the more frequent case in the present study. As Rubin (1977) and Wallace (1994) suggest, music can structure recall for words so that when words are forgotten memory for the music provides cues enabling the words to be ‘picked up’ again. Another possibility is that memory for the words structures recall for the melody, as shown by Gilboa (2002). However, as Calvert and Billingsley (1998) showed, the melody has

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song

to be sufficiently simple for it to be useful as a framework for recalling words, and/or – as we have seen – the memorizer must be sufficiently musically expert to learn and recall it adequately, if not perfectly. HYPOTHESIS 4 : HESITATIONS AT PHRASE BOUNDARIES

Participants were more likely to hesitate at the ends of phrases than at the start or mid-phrase. This supports the existing evidence that musicians’ recall is in the form of segments beginning and ending at phrase boundaries (Ginsborg, 1999; Williamon and Valentine, 2002). CONCLUSION

The relationship between the words and melodies of songs in memory, for singers who have deliberately memorized songs, is such that they are neither recalled entirely separately nor integrated to such an extent that if one component is recalled erroneously, recall for the other is inevitably affected. Rather, they are stored and retrieved in association with one another. Thus, the best way for an expert singer to learn and memorize a song, assuming that both the words and melody are novel, is to memorize the words and melody together. AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

This study was carried out in partial fulfilment of the PhD degree awarded to the first author, and funded by a Research Studentship, R00429534122, from the Economic and Social Research Council. We are grateful to Andreas Lehmann and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments on an earlier draft. REFERENCES

Calvert, S.L. and Billingsley, R.L. (1998) ‘Young Children’s Recitation and Comprehension of Information Presented by Songs’, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 19: 97–108. Calvert, S.L. and Tart, M. (1993) ‘Sung versus Verbal Forms for Very-long-term, Longterm, and Short-term Verbatim Recall’, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 14: 245–60. Chazin, S. and Neuschatz, J.S. (1990) ‘Using a Mnemonic to Aid in the Recall of Unfamiliar Information’, Perceptual and Motor Skills 71: 1067–71. Davies, W.H. (1929) ‘The Moon and a Cloud’, in The Complete Poems of W.H. Davies, p. 248. New York: J. Cape & H. Smith. Crowder, R.G., Serafine, M.L. and Repp, B.H. (1990) ‘Physical Interaction and Association by Contiguity in Memory for the Words and Melodies of Songs’, Memory and Cognition 18(5): 469–76. Ericsson, K.A. (1996) The Road to Excellence. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Gilboa, A. (2002) ‘Do Words Affect Memory for Melodies?’, unpublished PhD thesis, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel. Ginsborg, J. (1999) ‘Expert Singers’ Memorization and Recall of Songs: The Interaction of Words and Music in Memory’, unpublished PhD thesis, Keele University, UK.

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Psychology of Music 35(3) Ginsborg, J. (2000) ‘Off by Heart: Expert Singers’ Memorization Strategies and Recall for the Words and Music of Songs’, paper presented at the Sixth International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition and Fourth Triennial Conference of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, August, Keele University, UK. Ginsborg, J. (2002) ‘Classical Singers Memorizing a New Song: An Observational Study’, Psychology of Music 30(1): 56–99. Gruson, L.M. (1988) ‘Rehearsal Skill and Musical Competence: Does Practice Make Perfect?’, in J.A. Sloboda (ed.) Generative Processes in Music: The Psychology of Performance, Improvisation and Composition, pp. 91–112. London: Oxford University Press. Karpeles, M. (ed.) (1974) ‘The Lowlands of Holland’, in Cecil Sharp’s Collection of English Folk Songs, Vol. 1, pp. 22–3. London: Oxford University Press. Kilgour, A.R., Jakobson, L.S., and Cuddy, L.L. (2000) ‘Music Training and Rate of Presentation as Mediators of Text and Song Recall’, Memory & Cognition 28(5): 700–10. McElhinney, M. and Annett, J.M. (1996) ‘Pattern of Efficacy of a Musical Mnemonic on Recall of Familiar Words over Several Presentations’, Perceptual and Motor Skills 82: 395–400. Rainey, D.W. and Larsen, J. (2002) ‘The Effect of Familiar Melodies on Initial Learning and Long-term Memory for Unconnected Text’, Music Perception 20(2): 173–86. Rubin, D.C. (1977) ‘Very Long-term Memory for Prose and Verse’, Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 16: 611–21. Serafine, M.L., Crowder, R.G. and Repp, B.H. (1984) ‘Integration of Melody and Text in Memory for Songs’, Cognition 16: 285–303. Serafine, M.L., Davidson J., Crowder, R.G. and Repp, B.H. (1986) ‘On the Nature of Melody–Text Integration in Memory for Songs’, Journal of Memory and Language 25: 123–35. Sloboda, J.A. and Lehmann, A.C. (2001) ‘Tracking Performance Correlates of Changes in Perceived Intensity of Emotion during Different Interpretations of a Chopin Piano Prelude’, Music Perception 19: 87–120. Sloboda, J.A. and Parker, D.H.H. (1985) ‘Immediate Recall of Melodies’, in P. Howell, I. Cross and R. West (eds) Musical Structure and Cognition, pp. 143–67. London: Academic Press. Stevens, K.J., McAuley, J.D. and Humphreys, M.S. (1998) ‘Relational Information in Memory for Music: The Interaction of Melody, Rhythm, Text and Instrument’, Noetica: Open Forum 3(8), URL (accessed April 2006): http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/CogPsych/Noetica/OpenForum.html Wallace, W.T. (1994) ‘Memory for Music: Effect of Melody on Recall of Text’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition 20 (6): 1471–85. Williamon, A. and Valentine, E. (2002) ‘The Role of Retrieval Structures in Memorizing Music’, Cognitive Psychology 44: 1–32.

Ginsborg and Sloboda: Singers’ recall of a new, unaccompanied song

Appendix: Music and words of ‘Cloud’

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Psychology of Music 35(3) JA N E G I N S B O RG did her PhD, on memory for words and music, with John Sloboda at Keele University. She has been a lecturer in psychology at the University of Manchester, a research associate at the Unversity of Sheffield, senior lecturer in psychology at Leeds Metropolitan University and is now a Research Fellow in the Research Centre for the Vocational Training of Musicians, part of the Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, UK. Address: Royal Northern College of Music, 124 Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9RD, UK. [email: jane.ginsborg@rncm.ac.uk] A . S L O B O DA has been a member of the School of Psychology at Keele University since 1974 and Director of the Unit for the Study of Musical Skill and Development since 1991. He is a Fellow of the British Psychological Society, and has been President of both the Psychology and General Sections of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, as well as President of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, where he serves on the editorial board of its journal Musicae Scientiae. He was recipient of the 1998 British Psychological Society’s Presidents’ Award for Distinguished Contributions to Psychological Knowledge, and in 2004 was elected to Fellowship of the British Academy. Address: School of Psychology, Dorothy Hodgkin Building, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, ST5 2BG, UK. [email: j.a.sloboda@psy.keele.ac.uk]

JOHN