Musicians and nonmusicians were tested with dichotic pitch pattern triads which consisted of three tone bursts of 200 ms each with interburst intervals of 150 ms. Frequencies of the tone bursts were 630 and 1065 Hz for one set of pitch patterns and 1500 and 1935 Hz for the other set. There was an intrastimulus interval of 10 s. Subjects responded using three different response modes: (1) manual response by pressing buttons on two response boxes, (2) hummed response, and (3) verbal‐linguistic response by labeling each tone in the pattern as “high” or “low.” Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians on all three response mode conditions. Right and left ear performances did not shift significantly in direction of ear advantage across the three response modes for either experimental group. Percentage of correct identifications did not vary significantly across response modes. Neither musicians nor nonmusicians demonstrated statistically significant ear advantages. Stimulus set bias was present in both experimental groups in favor of the higher pitched pattern set (tone bursts of 1500 and 1935 Hz). [Work supported by NIH.]