Continuations as completions: Studying melodic expectation in the creative microdomain seek well

Abstract

Listening to music is a creative process in which we shape the sounds we hear into expressive meanings tempered by our nature and experience. And when experienced listeners of tonal music are engaged in that process, they are constantly making predictions about what will happen next. Because of this central connection between meaning and expectation, exploring melodic expectation allows us to listen to how the musical mind works. The purpose of this paper is to describe a context for studying some aspects of melodic expectation: a creative microdomain called Seek Well. In this domain, one is given a monophonic melodic beginning (in notes of equal durations) and asked to finish it by adding any number of notes (of equal duration). Reference to familiar melodies is discouraged so that responses may represent shared intuitions about tonal music. This chapter describes two experiments that gathered data via Seek Well. The results challenge central assumptions of previous studies of melodic expectation, illustrate the value of Seek Well as a method of gathering data, and raise additional interesting questions.