Mapping between Lexical Tones and Musical Notes in Thai Pop Songs
Chawadon Ketkaew, Pittayawat Pittayaporn · 2014
The aim of this paper is to examine the parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions in Thai pop songs based on the data from 30 current pop songs. The results suggest that there is a statistically significant parallelism between tonal transitions and musical note transitions. Interestingly, the results show that both contour tones, RISING and FALLING, typically pattern with HIGH with respect to the mapping between tonal transitions and note transitions. Nevertheless, when two FALLING occur consecutively, the offset of the second one is used for mapping. Our results seem to find further support for decomposability of contour tones in Thai. Furthermore, they suggest that Thai pop music composition does not strive to maximize parallel transitions but prefer to avoid opposing transitions. 1.