A Study of Exploratory Analysis in Melodic Sonification with Structural and Durational Time Scales

Melodic sonification is one of the most common methods of sonification: data modulates the pitch of an audio synthesizer over time. This simple sonification, however, still raises questions about how we listen to a melody and perceive the motions and patterns characterized by the underlying data. We argue that analytical listening to such melodies may focus on different ranges of the melody at different times and discover the pitch (and data) relationships gradually over time and after repeated listening. To examine such behaviors in real-time listening to a melodic sonification, we conducted a user study employing interactive time and pitch resolution controls for the user. The study also examines the relationships of these changing time and pitch resolutions to perceived musicality. The results indicate a stronger general relationship between the time progression and the use of time-resolution control to analyze data characteristics, while the pitch resolution controls tend to have more correlation with subjective perceptions of musicality.