Geoff Luck

Influences of rhythm- and timbre-related musical features on characteristics of music-induced movement.

Music makes us move. Several factors can affect the characteristics of such movements, including individual factors or musical features. For this study, we investigated the effect of rhythm- and timbre-related musical features as well as tempo on movement characteristics. Sixty participants were presented with 30 musical stimuli representing different styles of popular music, and instructed to move along with the music. Optical motion capture was used to record participants’ movements. Subsequently, eight movement features and four rhythm- and timbre-related musical features were computationally extracted from the data, while the tempo was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent correlational analysis revealed that, for instance, clear pulses seemed to be embodied with the whole body, i.e., by using various movement types of different body parts, whereas spectral flux and percussiveness were found to be more distinctly related to certain body parts, such as head and hand movement. A series of ANOVAs with the stimuli being divided into three groups of five stimuli each based on the tempo revealed no significant differences between the groups, suggesting that the tempo of our stimuli set failed to have an effect on the movement features. In general, the results can be linked to the framework of embodied music cognition, as they show that body movements are used to reflect, imitate, and predict musical characteristics.

Exploring relationships between pianists’ body movements, their expressive intentions, and structural elements of the music

Body movements during music performance have been found to be indicative of the performer’s musical intentionality, and contribute to an observer’s perception of expressive playing. This study investigates the effect of structural elements of the score, and the playing of different levels of expression on body movements during a piano performance. Pianists were required to play the same piece in four different performance conditions. Their movements were tracked by an optical motion capture system, and the comparisons that were made between specific parts of the body used, performance condition, and musical score locations were subsequently statistically examined. We found that the head and shoulders exhibited more movement per measure, as well as larger differences between each condition, than the fingers, wrists and lower back. Differences between performance conditions were observed primarily at structurally significant portions of the score, and biomechanical factors also played a role. Moreover, our data supports the view that performers equate playing without expression to playing without nonessential movements.

Embodied metre: hierarchical eigenmodesin spontaneous movement to music

Music and bodily movement are closely linked. Often, the movements associated with music are synchronized with the beat, or tactus, of the music. The latter refers to the subjective sense of periodicity in music evoked by temporal regularities in the acoustical signal. In addition to the tactus, we perceive other pulses with different periods. These are often hierarchically organized, with their periods being integral multiples of the basic pulse period (Palmer and Krumhansl 1990). The interaction between these different pulse sensations results in a percept of periodically alternating between strong and weak beats, corresponding to the generally accepted definition of meter (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983). While music undoubtedly induces movement, there is also some evidence to suggest that movement affects beat perception. Todd et al. (2007) found that 16% of variation in preferred beat rate can be predicted from anthropometric factors, such as weight as well as length and width of certain body segments. Phillips-Silver and Trainor (2007, 2008) found that infants’ perception of meter can be affected by the way they are swayed while listening to rhythmic sequences. In fact, Todd et al. (1999) propose that pulse is an inherently sensorimotor phenomenon in the sense that pulse perception necessarily involves motor system activity. While there exists a substantial body of work on synchronization with a musical beat (Drake et al. 2000; Large et al. 2002; Repp 2005a, b; Snyder and Krumhansl 2001; Toiviainen and Snyder 2003), the kinematic aspects of this activity have been investigated to a lesser extent. Eerola et al. (2006), however, investigated toddlers’ corporeal synchronization with music using a high-definition motioncapture system. They found that 2–4 years old children exhibited periodic movement, and that this movement was at times synchronized with music. The present work investigates the nature of spontaneous movements to music, focusing on how pulsations on different metrical levels are manifested in spontaneous movement to music. To this end, we apply kinetic analysis, body modelling, dimensionality reduction and signal processing to data acquired using a high-resolution motion capture system to identify the most typical movement patterns synchronized with different metrical levels.

Moved through music: The effect of experienced emotions on performers’ movement characteristics

Do performers who feel sad move differently compared to those who express sadness? Although performers’ expressive movements have been widely studied, little is known about how performers’ experienced emotions affect such movements. To investigate this, we made 72 motion-capture recordings of eight violinists playing a melodic phrase in response to three different instructions. The first instruction was to focus on the technical aspects of playing. The second instruction was to give an expressive performance. Before the third instruction, performers were subjected to a mood induction task. Following this, performers played while focusing on their experienced emotions. After each playing condition, performers were interviewed about their thoughts and feelings. Analyses of the amount, speed, acceleration, and smoothness of movement revealed a different pattern of movement characteristics for each performance condition. In the expressive condition, the amount, speed, acceleration, and jerk of movement were highest. In the emotional condition, performers moved less, slower, and more smoothly. The findings of this exploratory study provide concrete evidence that performers’ experienced emotions affect the movement characteristics of their performance.

Effects of musical valence on the cognitive processing of lyrics

The effects of music on the brain have been extensively researched, and numerous connections have been found between music and language, music and emotion, and music and cognitive processing. Despite this work, these three research areas have never before been drawn together into a single research paradigm. This is significant as their combination could lead to valuable insights into the effects of musical valence on the cognitive processing of lyrics. This research draws on theories of cognitive processing suggesting that negative moods facilitate systematic and detail-oriented processing, while positive moods facilitate heuristic-based processing. The current study (n = 56) used an error detection paradigm and found that significantly more error words were detected when paired with negatively valenced sad music compared to positively valenced happy music. Such a result explains previous findings that sad and happy lyrics have differential effects on emotion induction, and suggests this is due to sad lyrics being processed at deeper semantic levels. This study provides a framework in which to understand the interaction of lyrics and music with emotion induction – a primary reason for listening to music.

Emotion-driven encoding of music preference and personality in dance

Thirty rhythmic music excerpts were presented to 60 individuals. Dance movements to each excerpt were recorded using an optical motion-capture system, preference for each excerpt recorded on a 5-point Likert scale, and personality assessed using the 44-item version of the Big Five Inventory. From the movement data, a large number of postural, kinematic and kinetic features were extracted, a subset of which were chosen for further analysis using sequential backward elimination with variance inflation factor (VIF) selection. Multivariate analyses revealed significant effects on these 11 features of both preference and personality, as well as a number of interactions between the two. As regards preference, a U-shaped curvilinear relationship between excerpt preference and amount of movement was identified, hypothesized to relate to the role of emotional arousal in guiding music preference and dance moves. As regards personality, a different pattern of movement characteristics was associated with each of the Big Five dimensions, broadly supporting previous work.

Predicting Music Therapy Clients' Type of Mental Disorder Using Computational Feature Extraction and Statistical Modelling Techniques

Background. Previous work has shown that improvisations produced by clients during clinical music therapy sessions are amenable to computational analysis. For example, it has been shown that the perception of emotion in such improvisations is related to certain musical features, such as note density, tonal clarity, and note velocity. Other work has identified relationships between an individual’s level of mental retardation and features such as amount of silence, integration of tempo with the therapist, and amount of dissonance. The present study further develops this work by attempting to predict music therapy clients’ type of mental disorder, as clinically diagnosed, from their improvisatory material.

Music and Emotion: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

One of the key reasons people engage with music, whether as listener or performer, therapist or researcher, is because of its emotional impact. Music comforts us when we’re sad, lifts us up in happier times, bonds us together. We use music to modify our mood, augment current feelings, release tension. Given the ever-growing presence of music in our everyday lives, the investigation of issues related to and subsequent dissemination of knowledge concerning music and emotion is becoming increasingly relevant. This special issue is based on work presented at the 3rd International Conference on Music & Emotion (ICME3) organised by the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the Department of Music of the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland, 11-15 June 2013. This five-day meeting, which followed previous ICME meetings in Durham, UK (2009) and Perth, Australia (2011), featured over 200 invited keynote addresses, papers, posters, and symposia presented by leading scientists, pedagogues, practitioners, and performers from 35 countries. Work presented at the conference explored many different facets of music and emotion, and when soliciting contributions for this special issue a major aim was to offer breadth of content while remaining inside the confines of the limited number of papers that could realistically be included in such a volume. Consequently, the papers presented herein cover a wide range of topics related to music and emotion, include both empirical and theoretical contributions, and are written by authors ranging from early stage scholars to established figures within the music and emotion community. The volume begins with a consideration of a fundamental yet understudied factor that might affect perception of emotion in music – time of day (Brabant et al.). This is followed by an examination of emotional outcomes derived from regulation strategies used during music listening (Randall et al.), and an exploration of spatial and bodily metaphors in descriptions of listening to sad music (Peltola et al.). A slightly different approach is taken by the guest editor and colleagues in an investigation of emotion-driven effects of music preferences and personality on musicrelated movement characteristics (Luck et al.). Emotional connotations of major-minor tonality are subsequently explored in the context of Schenkerin prolongation (Parncutt), and the volume is (rather fittingly) wrapped up with a paper that questions the suitability of the term ‘emotion’ to describe the wide range of music-related phenomena to which it is applied (Clarke). It gives me great pleasure to submit this special issue to the music and emotion community. For those whose appetite is sufficiently whetted, the 4th International Conference on Music & Emotion (ICME4), will be organised by the University of Geneva and the Geneva University of Music in 2015. 543751 MSX0010.1177/1029864914543751Musicae ScientiaeEditorial editorial2014