Tag Archives: music psychology

Reading: Perception of basic emotions in music: Culture-specific or multicultural?

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Heike Argstatter. Psychology of Music June 16, 2015. Published online before print June 16, 2015, doi: 10.1177/0305735615589214

Questions:

– How are six basic universal emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise) perceivable in music unknown to listeners with different cultural backgrounds?
– Which particular aspects of musical emotions show similarities and differences across cultural boundaries?

Method:

The Western European participants came from Germany and Norway, and the Asian participants came from Indonesia and South Korea. Professional musicians were instructed to improvise short musical pieces on instruments of their choice in a way that a listener should be able to decode one of the intended basic emotions (happiness, anger, disgust, surprise, sadness, and fear). Duration of the segments was limited to a maximum of 7 seconds. Different instruments. NB! All from western culture!

Answers:

To both questions the answer is: Generally, yes.

Reading: In Tune or Out of Tune: Are Different Instruments and Voice Heard Differently?

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Geringer, J. M., MacLeod, R. B., & Sasanfar, J. K. (2015). In Tune or Out of Tune: Are Different Instruments and Voice Heard Differently?. Journal Of Research In Music Education, 63(1), 89-101. doi:10.1177/0022429415572025

Main point: diff. instruments are perceived differently to be or not to be in tune with piano acc. Soprano vocalist was heard as more in tune than the violonist and trumpeter. Particulary if the deviation was toward sharp direction.

My first concern when reading this abstract – what temperation did they use for Bach? Answer comes later in text – equal 440Hz. Well, OK, it’s in C major.

Interesting citation: Lindgren, Sundberg (1979) found that experienced listeners accepted errors of 50-70 cents as in tune. Easier to accept are sharp notes, emotionally prominent points, metrically unstressed situations, real audio not synth.

Curious fact: they had hard time finding a soprano who would sing in tune :)

Procedure: they recorded players, then used AutoTune to manipulate the tunings.

Cites Estonians! Vurma, Ross, Kuuda.

Takeaway: when designing automatic feedback for vocalist, be prepared for lots of out-of-tune performances that people claim to be in tune. Need more tolerance for vocal as compared to other instruments.