PitchDraw: A Dual Axis Pitch Association Training App

For Novice Musical Instrument Learners

John R. Taylor1; Anthony Chmiel1; Roger T. Dean1; Catherine J. Stevens1; Jennifer MacRitchie1,2
1
The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Australia
2
Department of Music, The University of Sheffield, United Kingdom

Background
Music beginners may have difficulty in discriminating pitch differences (McDermott & Oxenham, 2008), such as recognizing
whether a pair of tones increases or decreases in pitch. This can prove problematic, particularly in aural-based education programs.
Our current longitudinal music education program—the Active Minds Music Ensemble—presented an ideal opportunity to
examine discrimination of pitch direction, and to produce tools aimed at aiding beginners develop these perceptual skills.
Aims
This paper examines pitch direction discrimination abilities of older adult novices. Following an analysis of pitch
discrimination, we present PitchDraw, a prototype tablet app that aims to train pitch associations in music novices. While
PitchDraw is a tool for improving pitch direction discrimination, it can also be used to develop the horizontal pitch associations
that are required on conventional keyboard instruments. Both trained and novice musicians associate higher pitches with higher
(vertical) elevation in space (Spence, 2011), although research has demonstrated that novices tend to possess weaker horizontal
pitch associations, as measured with reaction time and accuracy (Lidji et al., 2007; Rusconi et al., 2006). Thus, enhancing these
associations can be useful. While PitchDraw is still in development, future implementations are planned that enable data
collection for comparing horizontal and vertical pitch associations from a variety of users.
Method
Our pitch direction study contained a preliminary sub-sample of older adult novices (n=52; aged 65-80) taken from a larger
music education program. Participants had signed up to receive 12-months of online music lessons on a digital keyboard and also
the iPad app Thumbjam, and were given a pitch direction test prior to the commencement of lessons. In the test participants were
presented a series of ten successive piano-voiced tone pairs ranging from a minor second to a major third, and asked to indicate
whether the second tone was higher or lower. Following the results of this task, and reports that participants experienced issues
translating pitch direction onto a horizontal surface during lessons, we created PitchDraw in Unity3D. PitchDraw requires
participants to match tone pairs at randomized pitch intervals using either a horizontal or vertical slider. The application captures
participant musical sophistication via the Gold-MSI survey questions (Müllensiefen et al., 2014), together with a number of
performance measurements including time taken for matching of tone pairs, pitch direction (lower/higher), and the musical
interval. Data are stored securely for analysis, allowing the app to be distributed online as part of a music education program.
Results
Results for the pitch direction test indicated that 31 participants (59.6%) made at least one error, with 15 participants (28.8%)
producing only 1 incorrect response. Six participants (11.5%) produced either 5 or 6 incorrect responses, indicating performance
at a level no better than chance. Collapsing errors from all participants, minor second intervals accounted for 44 (58.7%) of 75
incorrect responses, whereas major second intervals accounted for 14 (18.7%) Minor third intervals accounted for 9 (12%) errors
whereas major third intervals accounted for 8 (10.7%) errors. These results indicated that smaller intervals were increasingly
harder to match, and suggest that a substantial percentage of music novices would benefit from training in pitch recognition.
Conclusions
Our pitch direction tests indicate that there is substantial utility for applications such as PitchDraw to enhance pitch
recognition in music novices. With this in mind, we outline the design process, developmental challenges, and future directions of
PitchDraw. We also discuss plans for empirical study via the app, aiming to to assess how horizontal pitch association can best be
improved in novices.

References
Spence, C. (2011). Crossmodal correspondences: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 73, 971-995.
Lidji, P., Kolinsky, R., Lochy, A., & Morais, J. (2007). Spatial associations for musical stimuli: a piano in the head? Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33, 1189-1207.
McDermitt, J. H. & Oxenham, A. J. (2008). Music perception, pitch, and the auditory system. Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 18(4), 452-463.
Müllensiefen, D., Gingras, B., Musil, J., & Stewart, L. (2014). The musicality of non-musicians: An index for assessing musical sophistication in
the general population. PloS One, 9, e89642.
Rusconi, E., Kwan, B., Giordano, B. L., Umilta, C., & Butterworth, B. (2006). Spatial representation of pitch height: The SMARC effect.
Cognition, 99(2), 113-129.
Keywords: pitch discrimination, pitch direction, horizontal and vertical association, harmony, music education, ageing, novices