Marc R. Thompson

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.

Synchronization to metrical levels in music depends on low-frequency spectral components and tempo

Previous studies have found relationships between music-induced movement and musical characteristics on more general levels, such as tempo or pulse clarity. This study focused on synchronization abilities to music of finely-varying tempi and varying degrees of low-frequency spectral change/flux. Excerpts from six classic Motown/R&B songs at three different tempos (105, 115, and 130 BPM) were used as stimuli in this experiment. Each was then time-stretched by a factor of 5% with regard to the original tempo, yielding a total of 12 stimuli that were presented to 30 participants. Participants were asked to move along with the stimuli while being recorded with an optical motion capture system. Synchronization analysis was performed relative to the beat and the bar level of the music and four body parts. Results suggest that participants synchronized different body parts to specific metrical levels; in particular, vertical movements of hip and feet were synchronized to the beat level when the music contained large amounts of low-frequency spectral flux and had a slower tempo, while synchronization of head and hands was more tightly coupled to the weak flux stimuli at the bar level. Synchronization was generally more tightly coupled to the slower versions of the same stimuli, while synchronization showed an inverted u-shape effect at the bar level as tempo increased. These results indicate complex relationships between musical characteristics, in particular regarding metrical and temporal structure, and our ability to synchronize and entrain to such musical stimuli.

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.