Randomly transposing a standard phrase makes oddball melodic phrases nearly undetectable even for musicians

Evidence

Some years ago, in a pilot experiment we noticed that an oddball interval (e.g. a tone pair separated by 7 semitones) did not pop out as expected within a randomly transposed series of standard intervals (e.g. 3 semitones). We subsequently ran a series of experiments in which we maintained a standard pitch contour, but varied the number of repetitions of the standard phrase (2 or 3), the number of tones in a phrase (2–6), the size of the deviance (1–3 semitones), and the tonality of the short melodies (Coath 2008 ). Most listeners, including those with musical education, found it very difficult to detect an oddball melodic phrase in a sequence of randomly transposed standard phrases, performing close to chance. — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5268

Categorization

• QUESTION: That musicians perform near chance on transposed oddball intervals undermines the robustness assumption — worth chasing the mechanism behind this surprising failure.