Non-musicians' and musicians' perception of bitonality

Bitonal music is characterized by a certain, dissonant effect that had been believed to be clearly audible by everyone. However, Wolpert found that non-musicians were unable to identify bitonal versions of originally monotonal musical passages as such in a free response task. The present study replicated Wolpert's findings, but also had participants rate song clips for likeableness, correctness and pleasantness. Bitonal music was rated lower on all dimensions independent of the individual's level of musical training, with no difference in ratings by non-musicians and musicians. In addition, following a brief training session, non-musicians (less than one year of musical training) identified whether clips were monotonal or bitonal at equivalently high rates as the intermediate (mean 2.4 years) and expert (mean 9.2 years) musician groups.