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Melodies are full of repeated patterns of pitch, interval, and rhythm. It has been suggested that these repeated patterns aid the listener in creating an efficient encoding; this raises the possibility that compositional practice might have evolved to facilitate this process. I propose three specific hypotheses about compositional practice: 1) Repeated intervallic patterns tend to be metrically parallel, with each instance of the pattern falling at the same position in relation to the metrical structure; 2) Purely intervallic repetitions tend to be confined to short distances (longer-distance repetitions tend to involve repetition of scale-degrees as well); 3) Repeated intervallic patterns tend to involve multiple intervals rather than single ones. In each case, I explain how such a compositional strategy might facilitate efficient encoding. Corpus analyses of classical themes and European folk songs find support for all three hypotheses.

A well-known phenomenon in melodic structure is “step inertia”: the tendency for a step to be followed by another step in the same direction. There is strong evidence of step inertia in three corpora of Western common-practice melodies: European folk songs, classical instrumental themes, and English hymn tunes. Surprisingly, modern Western popular music does not reflect step inertia. In Billboard’s Hot 100, and Rolling Stone magazine's list of “greatest songs,” inertial (same-direction) steps are less likely than non-inertial ones. To further explore the role of step inertia in different corpora, we created a generative model that assigns probabilities to melodies, considering just four factors: range, pitch proximity, scale-degree frequency within a key, and step inertia. We optimized the weights of these factors for the Essen Folksong Collection and the Billboard corpus, and compared them with n -gram models. The optimal (normalized) weight of the inertia factor is large and positive for the Essen collection (.51) and small for the Billboard corpus (.02). This is further evidence that step inertia plays a much smaller role in popular melodies than common-practice ones, and that non-inertial steps are slightly favored.

I define a second-position syncopation as one involving a long note or accent on the second quarter of a half-note or quarter-note unit. I present a corpus analysis of second-position syncopation in 19th-century European and American vocal music. I argue that the analysis of syncopation requires consideration of other musical features besides note-onset patterns, including pitch contour, duration, and text-setting. The corpus analysis reveals that second-position syncopation was common in English, Scottish, Euro-American, and African-American vocal music, but rare in French, German, and Italian vocal music. This suggests that the prevalence of such syncopations in ragtime and later popular music was at least partly due to British influence.

The following is a commentary of Christopher White's article on tonal stability and metrical accents.

While the concept of the perceptual “pitch frame” resembles leading theories of pitch structure in music in some respects, it contains some innovative elements that are discussed in this commentary. Additionally, the commentary focuses on the question of whether the “pitch frame” is a temporal or atemporal construct.