Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: a Registered Report

Ozaki, Y. and Tierney, Adam and Pfordresher, P. and McBride, J. and Benetos, E. and Proutskova, P. and Chiba, G. and Liu, F. and Jacoby, N. and Purdy, S. and Opondo, P. and Fitch, T. and Hegde, S. and Rocamora, M. and Thorne, R. and Nweke, F. and Sadaphal, D. and Sadaphal, P. and Hadavi, S. and Fujii, S. and Choo, S. and Naruse, M. and Ehara, U. and Sy, L. and Parselelo, M. and Angala-Tort, M. and Hansen, N. and Haiduk, F. and Faerovik, U. and Magalhaes, V. and Krzyzanowski, W. and Shcherbakova, O. and Hereld, D. and Barbosa, B. and Varella, M. and Tongeren, M. and Dessiatnitchenko, P. and Zar, S. and Kahla, I. and Muslu, O. and Troy, J. and Lomsadze, T. and Kurdova, D. and Tsope, C. and Fredriksson, D. and Arabadjiev, A. and Sarbah, J. and Arhine, A. and Meachair, T. and Silva-Zurita, J. and Soto-Silva, I. and Millalonco, N. and Ambrazevicius, R. and Loui, P. and Ravignani, A. and Jadoul, Y. and Larrouy-Maestri, P. and Bruder, C. and Teyxokawa, T. and Kuikuro, U. and Natsitsabui, R. and Sagarzazu, N. and Raviv, L. and Zeng, M. and Varnosfaderani, D. and Gomez-Canon, J. and Kolff, K. and Vanden Bosch der Nederlanden, C. and Chhatwal, M. and David, R. and Setiawan, I P. and Lekakul, G. and Borsan, V. and Nguqu, N. and Savage, P. (2024) Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: a Registered Report. Science Advances 10 (20), ISSN 2375-2548.

Abstract

Both music and language are found in all known human societies, yet no studies have compared similarities and differences between song, speech, and instrumental music on a global scale. In this Registered Report, we analyzed two global datasets: (i) 300 annotated audio recordings representing matched sets of traditional songs, recited lyrics, conversational speech, and instrumental melodies from our 75 coauthors speaking 55 languages; and (ii) 418 previously published adult-directed song and speech recordings from 209 individuals speaking 16 languages. Of our six preregistered predictions, five were strongly supported: Relative to speech, songs use (i) higher pitch, (ii) slower temporal rate, and (iii) more stable pitches, while both songs and speech used similar (iv) pitch interval size and (v) timbral brightness. Exploratory analyses suggest that features vary along a “musi-linguistic” continuum when including instrumental melodies and recited lyrics. Our study provides strong empirical evidence of cross-cultural regularities in music and speech.

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