Recognizing the component tones of a major chord.

Listeners judged whether a target tone was contained within a previously or subsequently presented major chord, and targets consisted of either the root, third, fifth, or tritone of the scale based on the root of the chords. Chord position influenced the relative recognition of targets, but listeners exhibited greater recognition of the fifth regardless of chord position (root, first inversion, second inversion). The data were not consistent with notions of root tracking or melody tracking. The data were broadly consistent with the notion that different chord positions may be harmonically equivalent (i.e., that listeners may recognize components of a chord regardless of chord position), with notions of analytic set and the importance of an instantiation of musical context for chord processing, and with the importance of the fifth in harmonic progression.