Fig. 1.

Melodic stimuli. A: amplitude envelope of a representative original expressive melody, together with its neutral melody counterpart. Neutral versions of original melodies (composed of various pitches) are simply the repetition of a unique pitch of the same instrument timbre, with all other acoustical features (intensity and rhythm) being matched. B: normalized modulation spectrum of the acoustic temporal envelope of the melodies depicted in A. C: normalized averaged modulation spectrum of the 21 original and neutral melodies. D: coherence computed between the acoustic temporal envelopes of the original and their matched neutral melodies, estimated across all melodies between (1–10) Hz. Shaded error bars indicate SE. E: distribution of the note rate, i.e., the number of acoustic events per second (with chords counting for one event), across melodies for each of the two monophonic lines (left and right hands). Circles on the distributions depict means for each monophonic line. Circles under the distributions depict individual pieces.