Torin Hopkins, PhD

Neuroscience & BCI · Health & Learning

How Do We Learn to Read Music?

Using psychological methods and eye-tracking to investigate the effectiveness of several popular approaches to music literacy.

The task: colored notation on screen and a MIDI keyboard with matching colors.
The task: colored notation on screen and a MIDI keyboard with matching colors.

Traditional music notation is the backbone of Western music education, yet its effectiveness has rarely been tested empirically. Using psychological methods and eye tracking, I investigated how popular learning aids, colored notation and stickers on piano keys, affect how beginners learn to play.

Background

Learning an instrument is a dual cognitive task: understanding what a symbol means and translating it into a motor action. Color in notation and stickers on keys are widely used in beginner method books, but their effects on learning have rarely been measured. Drawing on theories of procedural learning, structural mapping, statistical learning, and guided visual search, I hypothesized that color would reduce the load of recognizing notes and that matching stickers would strengthen the mapping from notation to keys.

The experiment

In a between-subjects 2×2 factorial design (color vs. black-and-white notation, with vs. without key stickers), adults with no musical training played 80 seven-note sequences on a piano keyboard. The sequences were drawn at controlled levels of difficulty using transition entropy, a measure of how predictable each note-to-note step is. We recorded accuracy and trial time in PsychoPy, and used Pupil Labs Invisible mobile eye tracking to count how often participants looked at their hands.

Key findings

  • In the first 85 participants, colored notation sped up trials considerably (≈10 s vs. ≈14 s per sequence).
  • Color combined with matching colored stickers produced the highest accuracy (94%) and the fastest trials (≈7.8 s).
  • Stickers paired with traditional notation lowered accuracy. Reinforcing a poor representation with symbol mapping can make performance worse.
  • Visual aids work best as a coordinated system, not as isolated additions.

Gallery

The 2×2 design: color vs. no color notation, with and without key stickers.
The 2×2 design: color vs. no color notation, with and without key stickers.
An example trial containing all seven colors.
An example trial containing all seven colors.
Average trial time by condition. All color conditions were significantly faster.
Average trial time by condition. All color conditions were significantly faster.

Publications

  1. Computer-Supported Music Improvisation

    Torin Hopkins

    Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Colorado Boulder (ProQuest), Boulder, CO, USA, 2024.

TENOR 2020

Jam Tabs

Investigating alternative, color-based music notation and tools for novice improvisation.

ProjectPDF (TENOR)