Deconstruction of perceived emotional expression in music.

Micallef Grimaud, A.

Abstract

This paper focusses on the relationship between music and perceived emotions, specifically looking at how altering the structure and expressive cues of a musical composition affects the perceived emotional expression. This study identifies two issues in previous studies; familiarity bias of the musical examples used, and retaining ecological validity of music while it is being altered to communicate different emotional expressions. To tackle both issues simultaneously, short musical pieces were especially composed, ones that can be regarded as ‘real music’ and hold ecological validity even when manipulated. Subsequently, an analysis by-synthesis approach is taken, where participants personally alter features of these pre composed musical pieces, using a specifically-created computer interface. In this study, 42 participants were instructed to alter 6 parameters (tempo, mode, articulation, pitch, dynamics, and brightness) of 7 musical examples in order to convey a variety of emotional expressions (anger, sadness, fear, joy, surprise, calm, and power) for each musical piece. The distinct values of the 6 parameters for each combination of musical piece and emotion were recorded. Results indicate that there is a significant main effect of emotions and target musical pieces for each emotion. The means of the different parameter values for each emotion are mostly consistent with the past literature, however, distinct differences have also been identified in the way parameter combinations are made to convey emotions, which might shed new information over past studies. The analysed results will allow to discover how the structural parameters and expressive cues of a musical composition aid in altering emotion perception in music and will contribute to a better understanding of how music communicates emotions, having significant implications on musicology and also applied fields such as music information retrieval, music therapy, music streaming services, and other fields were music is used to create immersive experiences.

Citation

Micallef Grimaud, A. (2019, August). Deconstruction of perceived emotional expression in music. Paper presented at Biennial Meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC 2019), New York, USA

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Biennial Meeting of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition (SMPC 2019)
• Conference Location: New York, USA
• Start Date: Aug 5, 2019
• End Date: Aug 7, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jun 15, 2020
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1141060