The Role of Formal Structure in Liking for Popular Music

Author(s): Jonathan J. Rolison and Judy Edworthy

Source: Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 29, No. 3 (Feb. 1, 2012), pp.
269-284
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/mp.2012.29.3.269
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T he R ole of F ormal S tructure
J onathan J. R olison & J udy E dworthy
University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom
the effect of restructuring the form of three
unfamiliar pop/rock songs was investigated in two
experiments. In the first experiment, listeners’ judge-
ments of the likely location of sections of novel popular
songs were explored by requiring participants to place
the eight sections (Intro – Verse 1 – Chorus 1 – Verse 2
– Chorus 2 – Bridge (solo) – Chorus 3 – Extro) of the
songs into the locations they thought them most likely to
occur within the song. Results revealed that participants
were able to place the sections in approximately the right
location with some accuracy, though they were unable to
differentiate between choruses. In Experiment 2, three
versions of each of the songs were presented in three
different structures: intact (original form), medium
restructured (the sections in a moderately changed
order), and highly restructured (more severe
restructuring). The results show that listeners’ judgments
of predictability and liking were largely uninfluenced by
the restructuring of the songs, in line with findings for
classical music. Moment-by-moment liking judgements
of the songs demonstrated a change in liking judgements
with repeated exposure, though the trend was downwards
with repeated exposure rather than upwards. Detailed
analysis of moment-by-moment judgements at the ends
and beginnings of sections showed that listeners were
able to respond quickly to intact songs, but not to
restructured songs. The results suggest that concatenism
prevails in listening to popular song at the expense of
paying attention to larger structural features.
Received May 26, 2010, accepted June 2, 2011.
Key words: concatenism, restructured songs, repeated
exposure, liking, predictability
T
 he issue of formal structure in music is an
important one for composers, musicologists, and
listeners alike. In both classical and contemporary
music there are many forms that the overarching structure
Music Perception volume 29, issue 3, pp . 269–284 issn
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The Role of Form in Popular Music 269
in L iking for P opular M usic
of a piece of music can take. The arrangement of themes
and musical ideas, key structure, and changes of texture
and instrumentation are all important determinants of
form (Bonds, 1991; Carpenter, 1983; Reti, 1951). However,
the salience of form and its influence on listeners’ enjoy-
ment of compositions is a matter of some debate. Several
studies have taken pieces of music with a discernible form
and have reordered sections and presented them to listen-
ers in a new form, only to find that the listener is largely
indifferent to that reordering. Not only does reordering
musical sections have little effect on people’s enjoyment of
the new version of the piece, listeners usually seem not to
have noticed the restructuring (Eitan & Granot, 2008;
Gotlieb & Koneçni, 1985; Karno & Koneçni, 1992; Koneçni,
1984, Tillman & Bigand, 1996; but see Heyduk, 1975). For
example, Eitan and Granot (2008) created hybrid versions
of two of Mozart’s piano sonatas such that sections of one
were heard within the other, and found that participants
did not prefer the original versions of the sonatas over
hybrids (where the two sonatas were combined). In fact,
listeners with music training preferred the hybrids over
the original sonatas. Tillman and Bigand (1996) found
that participants’ ratings of coherence were unaffected
even when the segments of a piano solo were played in
reverse. Tan and Spackman (2005) went one stage further
by rearranging musical segments taken from completely
different compositions. Under these conditions, untrained
participants did rate the “patchwork” versions as less uni-
fied than their intact versions but ultimately preferred
them to the intact versions. However, by rearranging
musical segments in this way, adjacent segments often
differed in key and tempo, as well as volume. As a whole,
these findings suggest that without musical training
people are often insensitive to overall form.
If people’s perceptual experiences are unrelated to the
overall form of a composition, one may ask whether
form has any real importance in listeners’ experience of
a composition. Several studies indicate that listeners at-
tend to the surface features of music rather than the
structural elements (Deliège, 1987; Deliège, Melen,
Stammers, & Cross, 1996; Pollard-Gott, 1983). Indeed,
supporters of concatenism in music (Gurney, 1880/1966;
Levinson, 1997) argue that larger structures in music are
0730-7829, electronic issn 1533-8312. © 2012 by the regents of the university of california all
10.1525/ mp .2012.29.3.269
270 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy
all but irrelevant to the listeners’ enjoyment of a piece,
which is very much “in the moment” and depends more
on local features than on the overall structure and form.
Of course, pieces of music are written with a specific
form in mind and so violations of that form, whether or
not the listener is consciously attending to it, can cause
surprising effects in rearranged music (such as sudden
changes of key, loudness, and other features one might
not expect if the music were presented in the order in-
tended by the composer), thus disrupting the moment-
by-moment listening. There is ample previous research
indicating that untrained listeners have expectations
about local sequences of events in Western music
(Tillmann, Bharucha, & Bigand, 2000; Tillmann &
Lebrun-Guillaud, 2006), whereas the evidence that these
expectations generalize to expectations about the
sequences of sections that determine the form is, at the
very least, ambiguous.
Almost all of the studies looking at listeners’ percep-
tion of form and the effect of changing that form on
liking and other judgments are concerned with classical
music. However, it is important to ascertain the extent
to which these effects might occur in listening to
popular music. As an indication of its popularity and
familiarity in modern Western culture, pop-rock music
accounted for 58% of British record sales in 2009 (BPI
Statistical Handbook, 2009), and is, in general, under-
studied in the music psychology literature. Popular
songs are relatively short, usually about three minutes
in length, and are typically much shorter than the
classical pieces investigated in other studies (though in
many of these studies short excerpts were used). The
subject of form in popular music is one of considerable
interest to musicologists, popular musicians, music
writers, and the like (e.g., Covach, 2005; Everett, 2009;
Stephenson, 2002).
While there is much discussion and some disagree-
ment regarding this topic, writers (e.g., Everett, 2009;
Stephenson, 2002) agree that a basic principle of much
popular music is an alternation between verses and cho-
ruses. While verses tend to have the same music for each
verse but vary in terms of their lyrical content, choruses
are usually either very similar or identical to one another
in terms of their lyrics as well as melody. The repetition
of the same, usually short lyrics is a defining feature of
a chorus. Choruses also often tend to be louder (as more
instruments are typically used) and have higher notes in
them. Songwriters also use other methods to announce
the start of new sections, for example “stop time” is often
used to announce the start of a new verse (Stephenson,
2002). Typically in verse-chorus form and its variations,
a song will have a number of discernible sections such
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as an introduction, followed by two or three verses and
choruses (usually the chorus follows the verse, but there
are famous songs that begin with the chorus), often also
with some kind of contrasting section such as a solo or
a bridge, usually occurring quite late into the song. Songs
often end with some kind of ‘extro’ as well.
In the present studies we tested whether people’s per-
ceptual experiences of form and liking for compositions
can be influenced by disrupting the form of popular
music that follows a familiar verse-chorus form. We
might expect that rearranging the sections of a pop-rock
song would elicit changes in people’s perceptions of
structure and other judgments that might follow, such
as liking. A pop-rock song that starts, for example, with
its extro followed by its third chorus (which, even though
choruses are generally similar to one another, might be
louder and more repetitive than earlier choruses) would
seem to violate its true structure. We would expect that
rearranging these sections will appear both unpleasing
initially and highly unpredictable.
Intriguingly, even in cases where restructured compo-
sitions are rated as less well structured initially, altered
versions are sometimes perceived as more pleasing with
repeated hearings, in contrast to intact versions of those
compositions. Tan, Spackman, and Peaslee (2006) found
that while people initially preferred intact versions over
“patchwork” versions, they instead preferred the “patch-
work” compositions after only four hearings. The
authors reasoned that while the new arrangements were
perceived as more complex and unpredictable initially,
they came to be liked more over repeated hearings as
they became more familiar to the listener. As the authors
note, their findings are readily understood when the
relation between liking and complexity is viewed as an
inverted U curve. According to this account, people have
a preference for moderately complex stimuli (Berlyne,
1971; Hargreaves, 1984; North & Hargreaves, 1995;
Smith & Cuddy, 1986; Szpunar, Schellenberg, & Pliner,
2004). A composition that is initially perceived as highly
complex may be viewed as unpredictable and unpleas-
ing. After repeated hearings, however, the composition
would appear more familiar and predictable. Hence, a
composition that is initially unpredictable, such as one
whose segments have been rearranged, may be perceived
as more pleasing with each hearing. In contrast, an intact
composition that is more balanced may become predict-
able and less pleasing over time. This is in contrast,
however, with a number of findings that are consistent
with a “mere exposure” effect of repetition, whereby
music compositions of any kind are expected to be
perceived as more pleasing over time simply due to
exposure to the stimulus (Bornstein, 1989; Peretz,

Gaudreau, & Bonnel, 1998; Zajonc, 1968). Hence, in line
with the findings of Tan et al. (2006) we can expect
people’s liking for popular music to change over repeated
hearings, but this may depend on whether song sections
are intact or rearranged. Intact versions of pop-rock
songs may be preferred initially over restructured
versions, but this may reverse with repeated hearings.
One of the central issues of concern with listening to
restructured pieces of music is that of the interplay
between the listener’s experience of the larger structural
and formal features and the local, note-by-note features.
The methodology used in all experiments in this area
until now has been to take judgments at the end of the
piece (or usually at the end of an excerpt). This approach
does not necessarily allow insight into the interplay
between the moment-by-moment features of the music
and the broader structural elements. In Experiment 2,
we use a moment-by-moment methodology where the
listener tracks his or her liking during the playing of the
piece. Such a methodology has not been used in music
preference studies but has been used in other areas in the
psychology of music (e.g., Krumhansl, 1997).
Experiment 1
Since different section types (e.g., verse, chorus, bridge)
tend to have different characteristics, we might expect
that listeners could use these characteristics to guess the
identity of a section and (therefore) its probable loca-
tion within the song. For example, we might expect that
after hearing a chorus section in isolation, listeners
could identify it as a chorus (from its internal features)
and would therefore expect it to follow a verse. Similarly,
they might expect a solo or bridge to occur during the
second half rather than the first half of a song. We do
not know the extent to which listeners might be able to
differentiate between individual verses and choruses,
but that is in part the purpose of Experiment 1. In
Experiment 1 we asked participants to make judgments
about the likely positions of the individual sections of
the three unfamiliar songs used in Experiment 2. Each
song followed a similar Intro – Verse 1 – Chorus 1 –
Verse 2 – Chorus 2 – Solo – Chorus 3 – Extro sequence
in its original form. Participants judged where in the
songs they expected each of the sections to be posi-
tioned. They heard only the sections and not the entire
songs. This allowed us to both gauge the extent to
which listeners understood the intended structure of
the original songs and to form a basis for generating
alternative versions of the songs where the sections
were reordered. For Experiment 2, we generated two
alternative versions of the songs by reordering the
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The Role of Form in Popular Music 271
sections. One was intended to be somewhat reordered
(“medium restructured”) and the other was intended
to be more significantly reordered (“high restruc-
tured”). The results of Experiment 1 allowed us to
gauge the validity of our two restructured versions of
each song.
Method
Participants
Sixteen undergraduate students at the University of
Plymouth participated for course credits. Participants
completed the task in a single sitting lasting up to
25 min.
Design
All participants listened to the individual sections of
each of the three songs used in Experiment 2. The song
sections were heard in a different random order for
each participant and all sections of a song were heard
before moving on to the next song. While hearing each
section, participants were asked to adjust a slider
displayed on a computer monitor to indicate where in
the song they expected to hear the section. The slider
ranged from “the beginning of the song” on the left, to
“the end of the song” on the right, with labels appearing
above the slider at each end. Slider values ranged from
0 (on the left) to 100 (on the right). After hearing each
section, the slider remained on screen until participants
clicked a “continue” button to move on to the next
section of a song, and were informed on screen before
hearing the sections of the next song. The slider
appeared initially in the left most position, under the
label “beginning of the song.”
Materials
Three songs were selected for use in the studies. These
were by unsigned artists/bands that were very unlikely
to be familiar to the participants. The three songs used
in the experiments were made up of eight sections cor-
responding to an Intro – Verse 1 – Chorus 1 – Verse 2
– Chorus 2 – Solo (or Bridge) – Chorus 3 – Extro
layout; Stephenson (2002) describes this as a variant of
what he calls “verse-chorus-bridge strophic form.” The
sections were of different lengths for the three songs,
and the songs were of different lengths overall. The sec-
tions of the songs demonstrate many of the principles
of rock form as delineated by Stephenson (2002,
Chapter 6): The delineation of the different sections
largely comes from the way text, instrumentation,
rhythm, and harmony were used across the songs. For
example, all of the songs had a short instrumental
272 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy
introduction that formed the intro. Verses tended to
start on the tonic, and in all cases had repeated melodic
patterns with different text on each iteration. Choruses
were indicated by one-line long, immediately repeated
text and recurred numerous times throughout the
songs. The choruses sometimes started on the domi-
nant or subdominant harmony, though in one song the
chorus started on the tonic (Song 2). The solo or bridge
for the selected songs was an instrumental section
following the second chorus, in place of a third verse,
and usually with some new musical material such as a
new melody (with new accompanying harmony), or an
instrumental development of music material that
appeared earlier in the song. Differences between the
sections were further delineated by changes in instru-
mentation, the use of stop-time, introduction of back-
ing singers and other devices typical of rock songs. The
focus of interest for the purposes of the research
reported here was the degree to which 1) the main
sections of the songs were typical of songs of this type;
and 2) the extent to which similar, repeated sections
(for example verses and choruses) differed from one
another as the song progressed. In relation to the first
focus of interest, the verses were typically “verse-like” in
that they tended to start on the tonic, be lower in pitch
overall than the choruses, and be accompanied by more
sparse instrumentation than the choruses (typically
there would be no drum for at least a section of each
verse, and on occasion only a single instrument, usually
a guitar, would be heard). Stop-time was sometimes
used in some of the verses. Most importantly, the verses
in all cases carried the narrative of the song, which
unfolded from verse to verse. The melodic line of the
choruses was typically higher in pitch (at least for parts
of the choruses) than the verses and the instrumenta-
tion was generally richer than in verses, and in some
cases a backing chorus was used. For all three songs
there were clear indications that transitions from verses
to choruses were about to occur through the build-up
to each chorus. For example, in Song 1, Chorus 1 is
clearly indicated by an introduction of the drums and a
vocal backing that was not present during Verse 1.
The other parts of the songs were typically indicated
in ways that would be expected; intros tended to be iden-
tifiable by simple repeated chord sequences before the
voice entered, and extros tended to be indicated by tonal
resolution (except Song 1) and fade-out. In all cases the
intro was different in some way to the extro, though this
varied across the songs (for example, the intro and extro
for Song 1 were completely different from one another
whereas the extro for Song 3, though different from the
intro, contained some material originally heard in the
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intro). Solos were indicated by the absence of the voice,
and usually the introduction of some new or modified
material played only on instruments.
In relation to the second focus of interest, the key fea-
ture was that the choruses of all three songs used the
same lyrics throughout, whereas the words of the verses
changed as the songs progressed. In terms of the verses,
there was very little variation in the accompanying music
across the two verses of each song, though occasionally
there was added instrumentation in the second verse (for
example, Song 2 adds a piano to the accompaniment).
In all three songs the lyrics were different across the two
verses. In all three songs, the words of the choruses were
the same throughout. Choruses 1 and 2 tended to be
almost identical, with greater variation in Chorus 3 (for
example, in Song 1 the melodic line was different and
higher in pitch on the third iteration).
Procedure
Participants operated a personal computer custom pro-
grammed in Visual Studio. They were informed that
they would hear the sections of a set of songs in random
order one at a time before moving on to the next song.
While listening to each section, participants were asked
to decide where in the song they thought the section
should go, and to make their judgment by adjusting a
slider presented on the computer screen to some point
between the “beginning of the song” and the “end of the
song.” To ensure that participants’ judgments were
based solely on the characteristics of the song sections,
they were not told how many sections they would hear
for each song, and were not told anything about the
sections they heard (i.e., whether they were listening to
a verse or chorus) or anything about the structure of
the songs (e.g., whether they followed a verse-chorus
form or otherwise). Participants heard each section of
each song only once and were informed on screen
before moving on to the next song.
Results and Discussion
Our first concern was whether participants had expec-
tations about section sequences that were consistent
with the true structure of the songs. Figure 1 shows the
mean group judgments made by participants on the
slider for each section averaged across the three songs
used in Experiment 2. Numeric values adjacent to the
section labels provide the mean group slider values
from 1 to 100. These judgments demonstrate a number
of features that the listeners appeared to understand on
a single hearing; namely, listeners understood where
the intro and extro should go, and that they were

Verse 2 (30.00)
Intro (19 54)
0 10 20 30 40
Verse 1 (22.48)
FIGURE 1. Overall mean group judgments for each of the song sections for songs used in Experiment 2.
different from one another, that Verse 1 preceded Verse
2, that choruses came after verses, and that solos (or
bridges) tended to come in the second half of a song.
What the results also demonstrated is that listeners, on
average across the three songs, were unable to put the
choruses in the correct order but located all three cho-
ruses in approximately the same position. Though
there were some differences between the choruses
within each of the three songs, the cues available did
not allow listeners to order them.
However, note that judgments for the sections showed
a noticeable resemblance to the actual order of sections,
indicating that participants’ expectations were broadly
consistent with the musical structure of the songs. This
is even more striking when we consider that participants
heard each section of each song only once, and the sec-
tions of the songs were heard in random order. We may
expect that judgments about the order of sections in a
song would be further improved with repeated hearings,
as people begin to discern more about the structure of
the song.
Although the results do indicate that listeners had
some degree of competence at ordering the sections,
there were also inconsistencies between participants’ ex-
pectations and the actual order of sections in the songs.
This discrepancy can be calculated separately for each
participant for each song. This is done by first ordering
the sections by the positions that the participant placed
them on the slider. For example, a sequence indicated by
a participant could be Intro – Verse 2 – Chorus 2 – Verse
1 – Chorus 3 – Chorus 1 – Solo – Extro, where some of
the sections are out of place with respect to the actual
sequence of sections in the song. In this example, the
intro is correctly placed at the beginning of the song, but
Verse 2 is incorrectly placed second in the sequence.
Sections that are placed in incorrect positions in a song
indicate the discrepancy between participants’ expecta-
tions and the true structure of the song. The size of the
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The Role of Form in Popular Music 273
Chorus 2 (61.38)
Solo (65.77)
50 60 70 80 90 100
Chorus 1 (61.27) Extro (92.85)
Chorus 3 (57.77)
discrepancy depends on the number of positions that
each section is out of place. Verse 2 in our example is two
positions out of place with respect to its actual position
in the song. The number of positions that each section
is out of place for each incorrectly placed section can
then be summed for each song as a measure of the total
inconsistency between a participants’ expectations and
the actual structure of a song. If the order in which a
participant places the sections is identical to the song
structure, then no sections will be out of place and the
sum score will equal zero. If the score is a value other
than zero then one or more of the sections are out of
place to some degree, indicating some inconsistency
between the individual’s expectations and the actual
structure of the song. We refer to these summed scores as
inconsistency scores. Inconsistency scores were calculated
for each of the songs used in Experiment 2 separately for
each participant. Mean group scores are provided in
Table 1. Note that these were positive for all three songs,
indicating some inconsistency between participants’
expectations and the true structure of the songs.
In Experiment 2 the eight song sections were heard
in their original order in an “intact” condition, but in
rearranged orders for “medium” and “high” restructured
conditions. In the medium restructured condition, the
sections instead followed an Intro – Chorus 2 – Verse
1 – Solo – Chorus 1 – Verse 2 – Chorus 3 – Extro
sequence, and in the high restructured condition an
Extro – Chorus 3 – Verse 2 – Solo – Chorus 1 – Verse 1
– Chorus 2 – Intro sequence. We hence also calculated
Table 1.   Mean Group Inconsistency Scores for Songs Used in
Experiment 2
Song 1 Song 2 Song 3
Intact 8.88 12.31 10.88
Medium Restructured 11.73 17.56 12.63
High Restructured 26.63 22.56 24.63
274 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy
participants’ inconsistency scores in relation to the
three songs in medium and high restructured condi-
tions. This provides a measure of the degree to which
restructured songs fit with people’s expectations com-
pared with when the songs are heard intact. These were
calculated separately for each participant. The highest
inconsistency score possible is 32, which would indicate
that all eight sections are out of place with respect to
the individual’s expectations by the greatest possible
amount. By viewing Table 1 it can be seen that the
mean group inconsistency scores are substantially
higher for medium and high restructured songs than
for intact songs, suggesting that the songs are less con-
sistent with participants’ expectations about song
structure when their sections are rearranged. Note that
inconsistency scores in the three conditions are esti-
mated from participants’ expectations about the
sequence of sections in a song. Participants did not
themselves rate the structure of the intact and
restructured songs.
A two-way repeated-measures analysis of variance
(ANOVA) using condition (intact, medium, and high
restructured) and song (Song 1, Song 2, and Song 3) as
repeated measures and inconsistency scores as the depen-
dent variable confirmed that inconsistency scores differed
significantly between conditions, F(2, 30) = 75.39, p < .001,
indicating that restructured music conflicts with people’s
expectations about song structure. Follow-up one-way
ANOVAs confirmed that inconsistency scores were higher
for medium restructured (13.97) than for intact (10.69)
songs, F(1, 15) = 52.45, p < .001, and larger for high (24.61)
compared with medium restructured songs, F(1, 15) =
100.73, p < .001. There was also an effect of song, F(2, 30) =
5.88, p = .007, and an interaction between condition and
song, F(4, 60) = 4.88, p = .002. This suggests that the effects
of restructuring may depend on which song is restruc-
tured. Follow-up ANOVAs revealed differences between
medium and intact, F(1, 15) = 23.57, p < .001, and high
and medium, F(1, 15) = 103.45, p < .001 conditions for
Song 1. This confirms that inconsistency scores differed
between all three conditions for Song 1. For Song 2,
differences were also found between medium and intact
conditions, F(1, 15) = 58.54, p < .001, and a difference that
was close to significant between high and medium, F(1, 15)
= 2.36, p = .15, conditions. Finally, for song 3, differences
between medium and intact conditions were marginally
significant, F(1, 15) = 4.40, p = .05, and highly significant
between high and medium conditions, F(1, 15) = 59.18,
p <.001. These results confirm that restructuring these
songs by rearranging their sections violates people’s
expectations about the intended song structure. The
interaction between song and condition, however, suggests
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that the effects of restructuring on people’s perceptions of
music may depend in part on the song that is restructured.
This is to be expected and will be due to a number of
reasons, for example, the level of narrative in the song, the
degree to which the choruses differ from one another, and
so on. But our results show that for two of the songs there
is a clear distinction between all three levels of restructuring,
and for the third there is at least one clear difference and
one difference approaching significance. Thus, the
restructuring of the versions, from intact to medium to
high, show a clearly increasing deviation from how the
listener would expect the song to be ordered.
In light of the results of Experiment 1, we can say with
some confidence that listeners had quite significant
awareness of the intended structure of the songs.
Restructured songs should therefore violate their expec-
tations, which may or may not influence other important
aesthetic judgements about the songs. In Experiment 2
we test whether restructuring the songs influences
people’s perceptions of predictability and, in turn, their
liking for the songs over several hearings. We can also
test whether or not listeners are sensitive to song form
by observing their immediate reactions to new sections.
If, for example, a new section is not what the listeners
were expecting (because the song has been restructured)
then we might expect people’s reactions to differ in some
way from reactions to expected sections. Differences in
participants’ immediate reactions to new sections can
give further insight into the degree to which concatenism
is figuring in the listeners’ responses to songs.
Experiment 2
Experiment 2 was designed to investigate the effects of
rearranging song sections on people’s perceptions of
structure and liking for a set of popular songs. In
previous published studies participants have rated com-
positions or excerpts only after hearing each stimulus in
its entirety. Retrospective reports may be influenced by
memory decay, and also not necessarily tap into the
moment-by-moment processing of a song. This may
especially be the case for restructured versions of
compositions; unpredictable or complex compositions
may quickly be forgotten before the rating task is
administered. For this reason, in Experiment 2 partici-
pants also rated their liking continuously on a
moment-by-moment basis while listening to the compo-
sitions using a methodology similar to that used in other
areas of music psychology (Krumhansl, 1997). Three
versions of each of the three songs were used. In the
intact version, the original version of the song was used.
In the medium restructured versions, the songs were

reordered in the following way: Intro – Chorus 2 – Verse
1 – Solo – Chorus 1 – Verse 2 – Chorus 3 – Extro and in
the high restructured condition they were reordered as
follows: Extro – Chorus 3 – Verse 2 – Solo – Chorus 1 –
Verse 1 – Chorus 2 – Intro. However, it is important to
note that the increase in inconsistency from the medium
to the high restructured versions is largely due to the
placement of the verses, intro, and extro as the data from
Experiment 1 showed that while listeners were able to
place Verse 1, Verse 2, the intro, and the extro in an
appropriate position, they were only able to discern that
the choruses on average should follow verses and were
unable to place the choruses in any particular order.
Method
Participants
Fifty-seven undergraduate students at the University of
Plymouth participated for course credits. None of these
participants participated in Experiment 1.
Design
All participants listened to three of the pop-rock songs
tested in Experiment 1 (Songs 1, 2, and 3), six times
each across two sessions, generating 18 hearings in total
for each participant. For each session, the 9 hearings
were presented in random order for each participant.
Participants were divided into three independent
groups of 19 participants depending on whether they
heard the three songs in their original ‘intact’ form, or
under ‘medium’ or ‘high’ restructured conditions
Materials
The average song length was 3 min and 11 s, ranging
from two min and 50 s to three min and 54 s. The
Audacity 1.3 Beta program was used to divide and rear-
range the song sections for medium and high
restructured conditions.
Procedure
All participants listened to the three songs three times
each in each of the two sessions completed on
consecutive days, lasting up to 40 min. For each hearing
participants operated a personal computer custom pro-
grammed in Visual Basic for the present study. During
each hearing participants were instructed to rate their
liking for each song on a moment-by-moment basis by
adjusting the position of a mechanical slider. Following
each hearing, they clicked a ‘continue’ then a ‘play’ but-
ton to begin the next hearing. Following the 1st and 6th
hearing of each song, an additional display appeared on
screen for participants to rate the song. Participants
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The Role of Form in Popular Music 275
rated their liking for each song on a 7-point scale, rang-
ing from “I did not like this song at all” (on the left;
with a value of 1) to “I liked this song a lot” (on the
right; with a value of 7). As our measure of perceptions
of song structure, participants also rated whether the
song followed a “predictable structure” on the same
scale, this time ranging from “the song did not follow
any predictable structure” (on the left) to “the song fol-
lowed a highly predictable structure” (on the right).
Importantly, participants were not made aware that the
songs had been structurally altered in restructured
conditions.
Slider rating. A mechanical slider was developed spe-
cifically for the present study as a tool for recording
participants’ liking ratings on a moment-by-moment
basis while listening to the songs. This consisted of a
slider secured in a box that could be moved by the par-
ticipant from left to right. A slider also appeared on the
computer monitor and tracked the position of the me-
chanical slider. This allowed participants to monitor
their liking ratings on screen while adjusting the me-
chanical slider. The slider on screen ranged from “I do
not like this bit at all” on the left (the labels appeared
just above the slider) to “I like this bit a lot” on the right.
The numerical values of the slider ranged from 0 to 255
from left to right. Participants were instructed to hold
one hand on the slider while listening to the songs to
ensure that they could respond to changes in their liking
as fast as possible. At the beginning of each hearing,
both the mechanical slider and the slider displayed on
the computer monitor appeared initially in the center
(with a value of 127.5). This was ensured by requiring
participants to return the slider to its center point before
beginning the next hearing (albeit within a tolerance of
2 points).
Results and Discussion
Overall Liking Ratings
After the 1st (Session 1) and 6th (Session 2) hearings,
participants rated on a 7-point scale their liking for
each of the songs. Mean group ratings for each song in
the intact, medium, and high restructured conditions
are displayed in Table 2. We expected that participants’
liking for the compositions would change over repeated
hearings, but that this would depend on whether they
heard intact or altered versions of the compositions. In
order to test for effects of restructuring over repeated
hearings we performed a three-way mixed ANOVA on
participants’ overall liking ratings, using condition (in-
tact, medium restructured, or high restructured) as a
between-subjects factor, and song (Song 1, Song 2, and
276 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy
Table 2. Overall Liking and Predictability Ratings in Experiment 2
Song 1
Session 1 Session 2
Overall Liking Rating
Intact 4.79 4.74
Medium Restructured 4.18 3.89
High Restructured 5.17 4.63
Overall Predictability Rating
Intact 5.05 5.26
Medium Restructured 4.65 5.58
High Restructured 5.06 4.74
Song 3) and hearing (Sessions 1 and 2) as repeated
measures. There was no effect of rearranging song sec-
tions on participants’ overall liking ratings, F(2, 54) =
0.60, p = .56, and their liking for the songs did not ap-
pear to change from the 1st to the 2nd session, F(1, 54) =
.45, p = .51. The only significant effect was for song,
F(2, 108) = 11.53, p < .001, and there were no signifi-
cant interactions. Follow-up ANOVAs confirmed that
participants liked Song 1 (mean rating = 4.57) more
than Song 2 (3.42), F(1, 54) = 16.12, p < .001, and Song
3 (3.34), F(1, 54) = 21.20, p < .001, but rated Song 2 and
Song 3 similarly, F(1, 54) = 0.07, p = .80. Hence, par-
ticipants’ overall liking for the songs did not appear to
be affected by rearranging the song sections in medium
and high restructured conditions, and did not differ
from the 1st to the 2nd session.
Slider Ratings
While listening to the songs, participants rated continu-
ously how much they liked what they were listening to by
adjusting a mechanical slider, ranging from 0 to 255
(mid point = 127.5). Recall that recording participants’
likings for songs on a moment-by-moment basis avoids
relying on retrospective reports. One possibility, therefore,
is that participants liked the song sections to differing
degrees. Hence, we averaged participants’ slider ratings
for each section within each hearing for each song. We
then performed a four-way mixed ANOVA on the average
slider ratings for each section using condition (intact,
medium restructured, high restructured) as a between-
subjects factor and song (Song 1, Song 2, Song 3), hearing
(1-6), and song-section (1-8) as repeated measures. As
with our analysis of overall liking ratings, there was no
effect of rearranging song section, F(2, 54) = 0.24, p = .79.
However, consistent with our earlier findings there was an
effect of song, F(2, 108) = 14.75, p < .001. Follow-up
ANOVAs confirmed that participants generally liked
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Song 2 Song 3
Session 1 Session 2 Session 1 Session 2
3.21 3.11 3.47 2.84
3.18 3.79 3.59 3.47
3.72 3.53 3.11 3.58
5.16 5.42 4.21 4.11
4.29 5.42 4.59 4.89
3.94 4.89 4.44 4.63
Song 1 (mean rating = 148.77) more than Song 2
(104.44), F(1, 54) = 24.65, p < .001, and Song 3 (106.18),
F(1, 54) = 24.09, p < .001, but rated Song 2 and Song 3
similarly, F(1, 54) = 0.03, p = .86. This confirms that
participants’ overall ratings were consistent with those
recorded on a moment-by-moment basis.
In contrast with our analysis of overall liking ratings,
however, there was also an effect of hearing, F(2, 270) =
4.40, p = .001. A trend analysis confirmed that this effect
was cubic, F(1, 54) = 13.57, p = .001, whereby participants’
liking for the songs decreased from the 1st (127.46) to the
3rd (115.46) hearing, but returned almost to their initial
rating during the 4th (122.70) hearing before decreasing
again by the 6th (114.90). This effect is illustrated in Figure
2. Recall that participants heard the songs three times in
each session. The two sessions were completed on
consecutive days, leaving a gap of an entire day between
the 3rd hearing (Session 1) and 4th hearing (Session 2). It
appears that while participants found the songs less
pleasing over time within each session, their ratings
changed little from session 1 to session 2 (see Figure 2).
There was also an effect of section, F(7, 378) = 10.87,
p < .001, in which participants appeared to like the extro
of the compositions least. However, there were a number
of interactions involving section, including an interac-
tion between song and section, F(14, 756) = 5.90, p <
.001, and between song, section, and condition, F(28,
756) = 1.89, p = .004. We thus conducted a number of
follow-up ANOVAs on slider ratings separately for each
condition. These analyses revealed interactions between
song and section in the intact, F(14, 252) = 2.12, p = .012,
and high restructured condition, F(14, 252) = 6.61, p <
.001, but not in the medium restructured condition,
F(14, 252) = 1.51, p = .11. This suggests that the
interaction between song and section on slider ratings
was apparent only for the intact and high restructured
conditions. For this reason, we then conducted follow-up

180
160
140
Mean Liking Rating
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
Hearing 1 Hearing 2 Hearing 3
Session 1
FIGURE 2.  Mean group slider ratings for each song across the six hearings in Experiment 2.
analyses separately for each song for these two conditions.
This revealed that the effect of section was significantly
higher for Song 1 compared with Song 2 and Song 3 in
both the intact, F(7, 126) = 3.83, p = .002, and F(7, 126)
= 2.02, p = .06, respectively, and the high restructured
conditions, F(7, 126) = 5.34, p < .001, and F(7, 126) =
11.45, p < .001. These effects as a whole suggest that par-
ticipants’ ratings for the song sections were generally
more dispersed for Song 1 than for Songs 2 and 3, but
only in the intact and high restructured conditions. This
effect appears to be carried largely by participants’
ratings for the extro section. This suggests that there may
have been something about the extro of Song 1 that
participants particularly disliked. Analysis of this song
indicates that the extro contained some harsh and hith-
erto unheard harmonies, and ended with a single falling
bass guitar, that participants appeared not to have liked.
Finally, there were interactions between hearing and
section, F(35, 1890) = 1.89, p = .001, and between song,
hearing, and section, F(70, 3780) = 1.31, p = .05.
Follow-up ANOVAs conducted on each song separately
revealed significant interactions between section and
hearing for Song 1, F(35, 1890) = 1.43, p = .05, and for
Song 2, F(35, 1890) = 2.32, p < .001, but not for Song 3,
F(35, 1890) = 0.83, p = .75. By viewing Figure 3 it can be
seen that participants’ ratings for all eight sections of
Song 3 broadly followed similar (cubic) patterns over
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The Role of Form in Popular Music 277
Song 1
Song 2
Song 3
Hearing 4 Hearing 5 Hearing 6
Session 2
hearings. For Song 1 and Song 2, however, some sections
followed flatter patterns. Specifically, Verse 2 and Chorus
2 of Song 1 did not appear to jump up during the 4th
hearing. For Song 2, participants’ liking for the solo ap-
peared to generally increase, whereas their liking for
Chorus 2, Chorus 3, and the extro appeared relatively flat.
While participants’ liking for the songs did not appear
to differ between each of the sections, one possibility is
that participants were sensitive to transitions between
sections. If their listening is directed more to the
moment-by-moment progress of the songs than to their
overall structure, then we might expect them to be sensi-
tive to those transitions, and also for their responses to
transitions to differ depending on whether they are hear-
ing an intact or restructured version of the song. We
might expect adjustments made to the slider to be more
abrupt as a song moves from one section to another. This
is because the listener is likely to have expectations about
upcoming changes in song section, anticipating a transi-
tion. But this may depend on whether songs have been
structurally altered. When song sections are rearranged
in restructured conditions, transitions between sections
may be more surprising to the listener. As an example,
plotted in Figure 4 are the mean group moment-
by-moment slider ratings recorded every 100 ms across
the entire length of Song 1 in the intact and high
restructured conditions on the first hearing. Viewing the
 278 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy

A B
Song 1 Song 2
180 180
160 160
140 140
Mean Liking Rating

Mean Liking Rating

120 120
100 100
80 80
60 60

40 40

20 20

0 0
Hearing 1 Hearing 2 Hearing 3 Hearing 4 Hearing 5 Hearing 6 Hearing 1 Hearing 2 Hearing 3 Hearing 4 Hearing 5 Hearing 6
Session 1 Session 2 Session 1 Session 2

C
Song 3
180
160
140 Intro
Mean Liking Rating

120 Verse 1
100 Chorus 1
80 Verse 2

60 Chorus 2

40 Solo
Chorus 3
20
Extro
0
Hearing 1 Hearing 2 Hearing 3 Hearing 4 Hearing 5 Hearing 6
Session 1 Session 2

FIGURE 3. Interaction effect between song, hearing, and section on slider ratings in Experiment 2.

transitions between each section (marked by the vertical
bars) provides some preliminary support that slider ad-
justments were more abrupt during transitions between
sections. This appears most apparent after Verse 2, the
solo, and Chorus 3 in the intact version of the song and
after the extro, the solo, and Chorus 3 in its highly
restructured form (See Figure 4).
In order to examine participants’ responses in more
detail, we compared average slider ratings 200 ms before
a transition into a new section with their average ratings
200 ms after a transition. This provides a measure of
participants’ reaction to the transition from one section
to another. The crucial test is whether this difference is
larger for adjustments made in the 200 ms after a transi-
tion than for the preceding 200 ms. If adjustments to the
slider are larger between sections, then this would
suggest that adjustments to the slider are more abrupt
during a transition than before a transition. We con-
ducted the following analysis only on the 1st hearing of
each song in the three conditions. This is because par-
ticipants’ reactions to changes in sections should be most
abrupt when the songs are still relatively unfamiliar. We
reversed the sign of negative values for this analysis in
order to investigate overall change, rather than its direc-
tion. We then conducted a three-way mixed ANOVA on
difference scores, using condition as a between-subjects
factor, and song and type of change (before transition
and after transition) as repeated measures. This analysis
yielded some interesting results. While there were no
significant main effects, there was an interaction between
type of change and condition, F(2, 52) = 4.70, p = .01.
Follow-up ANOVAs conducted on each condition

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 The Role of Form in Popular Music 279

Intact
250

200
Mean Liking Rating

150

100

50

0
Intro Verse 1 Chorus 1 Verse 2 Chorus 2 Solo Chorus 3 Extro

High Restructured
250

200
Mean Liking Rating

150

100

50

0
Extro Chorus 3 Verse 2 Solo Chorus 1 Verse 1 Chorus 2 Intro
FIGURE 4. Overall mean slider ratings for the first hearing of Song 1 for intact and high restructured conditions.

separately revealed that while average adjustments to the
slider were significantly more abrupt during transitions
(mean group adjustment = 1.02) than before a transition
(0.67) for intact songs, F(1, 18) = 6.26, p = .02, this was
not the case for restructured songs. Instead, for both
medium and high restructured songs, adjustments to the
slider before a transition were similar (0.96 and 0.43, for
medium and high restructured groups respectively) to
the adjustments made to the slider during transitions
(0.86 and 0.45), F(1, 17) = 1.08, p = .31, and F(1, 17) =
0.10, p = .75, respectively. This indicates that intact and
restructured songs differed in the way that participants
responded to transitions between sections. The abrupt
changes that participants made to the slider as they
entered a new section of the songs in their intact form
seems to be entirely eliminated when the order of
sections is rearranged from their intended order.
Participants’ sensitivity to transitions between sections
for intact songs must occur within a strikingly short tem-
poral window. In the above analysis, we compared slider
ratings that were made just 200 ms before and after a
section change. This would seem too early for the listener
to consciously reflect on changes in music, and far too
early for the individual to begin to reflect on their liking
for the new section. Instead, what these results seem to
imply is a knee jerk reaction to transitions between
sections for intact songs and a clear focus on the immedi-
ate thrust of the song. Intriguingly, this reaction is
eliminated by rearranging their sections in restructured
songs. Hence, at some level of processing people do appear

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280 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy
sensitive to violations in song structure because they are
able, in a very short period of time, to respond to the
change in section and to begin to offer an appraisal of how
much they like it. One possibility is that during the build
up to a change in song section the individual anticipates
the change and prepares to make an adjustment to the
slider. When their expectations about the upcoming
change in section are consistent with the structure of the
song, as when the song is intact, they react to the new
section. When the sections of the song are rearranged,
however, the listener can no longer anticipate which section
will follow. This would appear to suggest that at some
perceptual level people are responsive to restructured music
when this violates their expectations about song structure.
It also supports the view that while they are sensitive to
some degree to the overall structure, they are focused on
the moment-by-moment exposition of the song.
Overall Predictability Ratings
As well as rating their overall liking for the songs, partici-
pants also rated whether they followed a predictable
structure on a 7-point scale after the 1st (Session 1) and 6th
hearing (Session 2). Mean group predictability ratings are
displayed in Table 2. In our analysis of participants’
ratings, we performed a three-way mixed ANOVA, this
time replacing participants’ overall liking ratings with
their predictability ratings as the dependent variable.
Rearranging song sections should have had a strong effect
5.4
5.2
Overall Predictability Rating
5.0
4.8
4.6
4.4
4.2
4.0
Session 1
FIGURE 5. Interaction effect between condition and hearing on predictability ratings in Experiment 2.
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at least on participants’ ratings of predictability. However,
again there was no effect of restructuring, F(2, 54) = 0.63,
p = .54, which was not close to significant. This is particu-
larly surprising in the high restructured condition where
songs were severely restructured.
Consistent with our analysis of liking ratings, there
was a significant effect of song, F(2, 108) = 5.02, p = .008.
Follow-up ANOVAs confirmed that while participants
rated Song 1 and Song 2 as equally predictable, F(1, 54) =
1.09, p = .30, they rated Song 1 as more predictable than
Song 3, F(1, 54) = 12.11, p = .001, and Song 2 as margin-
ally more predictable than Song 3, F(1, 54) = 3.70,
p = .06. This pattern of results is broadly consistent with
our analysis of participants’ liking for the songs. It
appears that participants generally liked more predict-
able songs. However, there was also an effect of hearing,
F(1, 54) = 13.95, p <.001, and an interaction between
condition and hearing, F(2, 54) = 3.64, p = .03. Follow-up
ANOVAs indicated that while participants rated the
songs as more predictable after the 6th hearing (5.30)
than the 1st hearing (4.51) in the medium restructured
condition, F(1, 18) = 21.22, p < .001, this was not the case
for the intact, F(1, 18) = 0.51, p = .48, and high restruc-
tured, F(1, 18) = 1.78, p = .20, conditions.
This effect can be seen in Figure 5, and appears to
provide some support for our hypothesis that restructured
music would initially be perceived as less predictable.
However, two-way mixed ANOVAs comparing
Intact
Medium Restructured
High Restructured
Session 2

participants’ ratings between the three groups in Session
1 indicated that differences in predictability between the
intact (mean rating = 4.81) and medium restructured
(4.51), F(1, 37) = 1.30, p = .26, and between intact and
high (4.48), F(1, 36) = 0.99, p = .33, restructured condi-
tions were small and insignificant. Participants did,
however, rate medium restructured songs as more
predictable (5.30) than high restructured songs (4.75),
F(1, 37) = 4.67, p = .04, but not intact songs (4.93),
F(1, 37) = 1.63, p = .21, in Session 2. Recall, however, that
participants’ overall liking ratings did not appear to
follow a similar pattern. Hence, any effects of restructur-
ing popular music on perceptions of liking and
predictability appear to be small and inconsistent at best.
The results demonstrate that violating the structure of
songs with clearly discernable sections has no substantial
effects on people’s perceptual experiences of those songs.
This finding is perhaps more surprising when we
consider the results of Experiment 1. We found that par-
ticipants’ expectations about the order of sections in
songs were broadly consistent with their true structure.
However, restructuring the songs and thus violating
people’s expectations about the songs did not appear to
influence people’s perceptions of either predictability or
liking for them.
Our results also demonstrate that immediate responses
to transitions across sections are made very quickly when
songs are intact, but not when they are restructured.
Listeners are able very quickly to adjust their rating of a
new section as it begins in the intact version, but in the
restructured version they appear to not be able to make
such an immediate response. This is somewhat counter-
intuitive as we would expect a transition to an unex-
pected section to be met with almost immediate
disapproval. This appears not to be the case. Transitions
to unexpected sections seems to lead to momentary
indifference and/or inability to judge that new section.
This suggests both that listeners are attending to the
moment-by-moment structure of the music (because
they offer an opinion so quickly in the intact version)
but are also attentive, in some way, to the anticipated
structure of the songs.
General Discussion
These studies demonstrate that while in principle lis-
teners are sensitive to the form of the songs used, and
understand how they should proceed, they are relatively
impervious to the effects of alterations in that form
when they listen to a song in its entirety. Their liking
and predictability ratings of those songs are much the
same whether the song is intact or restructured. The
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The Role of Form in Popular Music 281
evidence we obtained from the analysis of the
boundaries between changes in sections (the transi-
tions) also indicated that at some level the overall form
of the song, at least at the structural boundaries,
influences their responses. Overall, however, listeners
showed no preference for intact rather than restruc-
tured songs. Taken as a whole the results point towards
a model of listening to music of this sort that is largely
local and in the moment, but which can be influenced
by overall form and structure. Whether the influence of
the overall structure is due to the listener maintaining a
mental representation of what that form should be, or
is a result of the vagaries of taking songs composed
according to a particular form and subsequently
violating them, is a topic for research in the future.
Structure appears to be fundamental to music
composition (Cohn & Dempster, 1992; Epstein, 1979;
Nadeau & Tesson, 1968). Despite this, people appear
largely insensitive to rearranging segments within a
composition (e.g., Tillman & Bigand, 1996). One would
expect that rearranging the order of musical segments
should affect people’s perceptions of liking and predict-
ability if form is important for composition. However,
previous studies have often used excerpts from composi-
tions, which are then divided into arbitrary segments. It
seemed likely to us that such methods may have only
subtle effects on the overall coherence and structure of a
composition, which are perhaps not easily perceived by
the listener. In Experiment 2, by contrast, our
rearrangements were based on coherent formal units. To
our surprise, but in a similar vein to established findings
in classical and romantic music, this restructuring
appeared to have no effect on people’s liking for
compositions and their ratings of structural predictability.
The present findings suggest that untrained listeners
are less sensitive to disruptions in musical form than one
might expect. One possibility is that people are simply
insensitive to form in music, or at the very least are less
concerned with overall form than they are with the
moment-by-moment progress of the song. Our findings
suggest that while listeners do have some sensitivity to
overall form, this seems not to affect either their liking
for a song or their judgments of a song’s predictability. In
Experiment 2 we found that participants generally
preferred songs that they rated as more structurally
predictable. This would seem to suggest that form does
influence people’s perceptions. The results of
Experiment 2 provide some suggestion that people are
sensitive to restructuring when this violates their
expectations about transitions between sections. One
possibility is that by disrupting the sequence of sections
in a song people’s expectations about song form are
282 Jonathan J. Rolison & Judy Edworthy
reduced. Hence, rather than influencing their perceptions
of form, violating people’s expectations simply causes
them to think less about the form of the song. A further
possibility is that listeners are not sensitive to the form of
a song per se, but are responsive to the vagaries of form
that restructuring a song will have on its moment-
by-moment progress. For example, a song in which an
intro is followed by a late chorus (due to restructuring)
is likely to produce a large change in loudness and change
in instrumentation, or result in some other important
and unexpected musical contrast. A song that has been
conceived as an intro followed by a chorus is likely to flow
more smoothly from one section to another and therefore
be less disturbing for the listener. Thus our findings may
not be so much about the form of popular music per se
but more about disruption to the form intended by the
songwriter. Our experiments do not allow this important
distinction to be made, but is a topic that seems worthy
of future research and would necessitate the rerecording
of songs in new structural formats. More drastic restruc-
turing of songs should also be investigated. In the studies
presented here, we did not investigate restructured
versions where, for example, two verses or two choruses
were heard in succession. Studies using more drastically
restructured versions would therefore be worthy of
investigation.
Interpreting our findings in terms of restructuring
forcing listeners to focus on local rather than structural
features seems compatible with studies of restructuring
using nonmusical stimuli. For example, when the parts
of a face (such as the nose and mouth) are rearranged,
recognition for individual parts is better when they are
presented in isolation than when they are displayed as
part of the whole face (Collishaw & Hole, 2000; Tanaka
& Farah, 1993). The reverse is true for intact faces, where
parts are instead more easily recognized in the whole
face. What this suggests is that by scrambling the features
of a face people attend more to their individual parts
than the face as a whole. In terms of our findings, when
song sections are rearranged people may attend more to
the individual sections than the overall structure of the
song as a whole. Viewed in this way, disrupting the struc-
ture of a composition would have little effect on people’s
perceptions of predictability and liking for music, which
our findings seem to have shown. People may not be
insensitive to structure, but may instead simply attend
less to overall coherence when song sections are rear-
ranged. Moreover, people seem quite resilient to breaks
in continuity, such as those imposed by reordering song
sections. For instance, when sentences within a written
story are rearranged, one may expect that this would
disrupt our understanding of the text. However, studies
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of text comprehension have found that we are strikingly
tolerant of such disruptions in coherence (Lehman &
Schraw, 2002).
The use of concurrent rating tasks has become a popular
method for studying people’s moment-by-moment
emotional experiences while listening to music (Gregory,
1995; Krumhansl, 1997). For example, Sloboda and
L e h m a n n ( 2 0 0 1 ) f o u n d t h a t p a r t i c i p a n t s’
moment-by-moment ratings of emotionality reflected
changes in loudness and timing of a piano composition.
In Experiment 2, we instead measured people’s concurrent
liking for compositions. While participants’ ratings
appeared to be generally independent of the sections
within a composition, their concurrent ratings did corre-
spond with their overall ratings made retrospectively.
Participants were told to rate their liking for each part of
the compositions as they heard them. However, it is
possible that their concurrent ratings instead reflected their
overall liking for each song, though at a finer level. We
expect that if people are exposed to individual sections of
a composition in isolation, rather than as part of a
composition, their ratings may differ more between
sections. This is a topic worthy of future investigation.
We also investigated whether people’s liking for music
changed over time, but our findings are not in line with
those typically found in repeated exposure listening stud-
ies. They do however inform some potentially important
methodological issues. In Experiment 2, the overall liking
ratings did not indicate any change in liking with repeated
exposure but the data obtained from the slider ratings
indicated that there was a change in response with
repeated exposure. Participants liked the songs less with
repeated hearings within each session, but rated the songs
similarly across the two sessions, so that they liked the
songs more on the first than the third hearing in each
listening session. An obvious explanation is that
participants in Experiment 2 were frustrated or bored by
hearing the same compositions repeatedly in a single
sitting. It is well acknowledged that the “mere exposure”
effect, whereby a complex stimulus appears more pleas-
ing with repeated exposure, is enhanced when a delay
separates exposure and ratings of a stimulus (Bornstein,
1989). Exposure effects are likely to be a function of
people’s explicit memory for the stimulus, whereby
recognition of a stimulus can actually abate the effects of
exposure on liking (Bornstein & D’Agostino, 1992;
Szpunar et al., 2004). Songs heard more than once within
a session may appear too familiar, causing participants’
liking ratings to drop. Hence, overexposure to a musical
composition may satiate individuals’ interest. Other data
(Edworthy & Rolison, 2011) demonstrates that liking of
a popular song can increase with repeated exposure when

the repetitions of the song are spaced out over weeks,
even when the song is restructured as in the studies
reported here. Disentangling the effects of repeated
exposure from aesthetic preference, listening regime, and
restructuring is a sizeable topic for future research.
Our results also demonstrate an effect of repeated ex-
posure on liking only for the moment-by-moment
tracking data, suggesting that this methodology might
tap into the processes at work more readily than overall
liking ratings. These moment-by-moment ratings also
give us more detail on the aesthetic judgement of
sections; for example, our data show that one particular
section of one song (the extro from Song 1) was disliked
more than any other section of the song. Thus, using this
methodology should give more insight into the detailed
aesthetic responses that might be at the heart of broader
aesthetic judgements. For example, we do not know how
people’s liking for a song is distributed across the song,
and our methodology can be used to tap into this.
An intriguing question is whether overexposure can
satiate our interest in a song when we instead choose our
own listening regime. In the present studies participants
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Author Note
Jonathan Rolison and Judy Edworthy contributed equally
to this work. The work reported in this article was sup-
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(ESRC) grant RES-000-22-3783. Jonathan J. Rolison
would like to thank Swiss&Global-Ca’ Foscari Foundation
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