The Cognition of Basic Musical Structures
David Temperley
In this book, David Temperley addresses a fundamental question about                  music cognition: how do we extract basic kinds of musical information, such as                  meter, phrase structure, counterpoint, pitch spelling, harmony, and key from music                  as we hear it? Taking a computational approach, Temperley develops models for                  generating these aspects of musical structure. The models he proposes are based on                  preference rules, which are criteria for evaluating a possible structural analysis                  of a piece of music. A preference rule system evaluates many possible                  interpretations and chooses the one that best satisfies the rules.After an                  introductory chapter, Temperley presents preference rule systems for generating six                  basic kinds of musical structure: meter, phrase structure, contrapuntal structure,                  harmony, and key, as well as pitch spelling (the labeling of pitch events with                  spellings such as A flat or G sharp). He suggests that preference rule systems not                  only show how musical structures are inferred, but also shed light on other aspects                  of music. He substantiates this claim with discussions of musical ambiguity,                  retrospective revision, expectation, and music outside the Western canon (rock and                  traditional African music). He proposes a framework for the description of musical                  styles based on preference rule systems and explores the relevance of preference                  rule systems to higher-level aspects of music, such as musical schemata, narrative                  and drama, and musical tension.