Music expertise has been shown to enhance emotion recognition from speech prosody. Yet, it is currently unclear whether music training enhances the recognition of emotions through other communicative modalities such as vision and whether it enhances the feeling of such emotions. Musicians and nonmusicians were presented with visual, auditory, and audiovisual clips consisting of the biological motion

The pleasurable desire to move to a beat is known as groove and is partly explained by rhythmic syncopation. While many contemporary groove-directed genres originated in the African diaspora, groove music psychology has almost exclusively studied European or North American listeners. While cross-cultural approaches can help us understand how different populations respond to music, comparing African

Integrating methods from experimental social psychology and music perception, we tested the hypothesis that when listeners personally like a musician, they will be more inclined to experience his or her music as both provoking movement and as subjectively pleasurable, the two core features of perceived groove. In Experiment 1, participants were exposed to a set of moderately-syncopated, high-groove

The aim of the present study was to investigate if the perception of time is affected by actively attending to different metrical levels in musical rhythmic patterns. In an experiment with a repeated-measures design, musicians and nonmusicians were presented with musical rhythmic patterns played at three different tempi. They synchronized with multiple metrical levels (half notes, quarter notes, eighth

Perceived valence, tension, and movement of harmonic musical intervals (from the unison to the octave presented in a low- and high-register) and standard noises (brown, pink, white, blue, purple) were assessed in two studies that differed in the crossmodal procedure by which tension and movement were rated: proprioceptive device or visual analog scale. Valence was evaluated in both studies with the

In charting the “territory between speech and song,” Cummins (2020) identifies various forms of vocal behavior involving “multiple people uttering the same thing at the same time”—what the author calls “joint speech.” I interrogate this conceptual framework in light of specific examples both musical and linguistic, which suggest a usefully expanded category: “collaborative vocality.” At the same time

Speech and song have frequently been treated as contrasting categories. We here observe a variety of collective activities in which multiple participants utter the same thing at the same time, a behavior we call joint speech. This simple empirical definition serves to single out practices of ritual, protest, and the enactment of identity that span the range from speech to song and allows consideration

We explore the effects of trained musical movements on sensorimotor interactions in order to clarify the interpretation of previously observed expertise differences. Pianists and non-pianists listened to an auditory sequence and identified whether the final event occurred in time with the sequence. In half the trials participants listened without moving, and in half they synchronized keystrokes while

Tonal schemata are shaped by culture-specific music exposure. The acquisition process of tonal schemata has been delineated in Western mono-musical children, but cross-cultural variations have not been explored. We examined how Japanese children acquire tonal schemata in a bi-musical culture characterized by the simultaneous, and unbalanced, appearances of Western (dominant) music along with traditional

Steven Demorest, as both a scholar and a singer, had a voice that was strong and resonant. Steve’s passion for singing grew as an undergraduate in the Luther College choirs under the inspiring direction of Weston Noble, as a graduate student at Westminster Choir College, and through his doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin, where he encountered the choral artistry of Robert Fountain. His value

When designing a new study regarding how music can portray and elicit emotion, one of the most crucial design decisions involves choosing the best stimuli. Every researcher must find musical samples that are able to capture an emotional state, are appropriate lengths, and have minimal potential for biasing participants. Researchers have often utilized musical excerpts that have previously been used

Many foundational questions in the psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods

What makes a piece of music appear complex to a listener? This research extends previous work by Eerola (2016), examining information content generated by a computational model of auditory expectation (IDyOM) based on statistical learning and probabilistic prediction as an empirical definition of perceived musical complexity. We systematically manipulated the melody, rhythm, and harmony of short polyphonic

Timbre is an important factor that affects the perception of emotion in music. To date, little is known about the effects of timbre on neural responses to musical emotion. To address this issue, we used ERPs to investigate whether there are different neural responses to musical emotion when the same melodies are presented in different timbres. With a cross-modal affective priming paradigm, target faces

Expressive Musical Terms (EMTs) are commonly used by composers as verbal descriptions of musical expressiveness and characters that performers are requested to convey. We suggest a classification of 55 of these terms, based on the perception of professional music performers who were asked to: 1) organize the considered EMTs in a two-dimensional plane in such a way that proximity reflects similarity;

The present study tested two assumptions concerning the auditory processing of microtiming in musical grooves (i.e., repeating, movement-inducing rhythmic patterns): 1) Microtiming challenges the listener9s internal framework of timing regularities, or meter, and demands cognitive effort. 2) Microtiming promotes a “groove” experience—a pleasant sense of wanting to move along with the music. Using professional

Traditional neurobiological theories of musical emotions explain well why extreme music such as punk, hardcore or metal, whose vocal and instrumental characteristics share much similarity with acoustic threat signals, should evoke unpleasant feelings for a large proportion of listeners. Why it doesn't for metal music fans, however, remains a theoretical challenge: metal fans may differ from non-fans

The neural activation patterns provoked in response to music listening can reveal whether a subject did or did not receive music training. In the current exploratory study, we have approached this two-group (musicians and nonmusicians) classification problem through a computational framework composed of the following steps: Acoustic features extraction; Acoustic features selection; Trigger selection;

Composers convey emotion through music by co-varying structural cues. Although the complex interplay provides a rich listening experience, this creates challenges for understanding the contributions of individual cues. Here we investigate how three specific cues (attack rate, mode, and pitch height) work together to convey emotion in Bach9s Well Tempered-Clavier (WTC). In three experiments, we explore

Note-to-note changes in brightness are able to influence the perception of interval size. Changes that are congruent with pitch tend to expand interval size, whereas changes that are incongruent tend to contract. In the case of singing, brightness of notes can vary as a function of vowel content. In the present study, we investigated whether note-to-note changes in brightness arising from vowel content

In a study of tempo perception, London, Burger, Thompson, and Toiviainen (2016) presented participants with digitally ‘‘tempo-shifted’’ R&B songs (i.e., sped up or slowed down without otherwise altering their pitch or timbre). They found that while participants’ relative tempo judgments of original versus altered versions were correct, they no longer corresponded to the beat rate of each stimulus.

Skilled ensemble musicians coordinate with high precision, even when improvising or interpreting loosely-defined notation. Successful coordination is supported primarily through shared attention to the musical output; however, musicians also interact visually, particularly when the musical timing is irregular. This study investigated the performance conditions that encourage visual signalling and interaction

In order to be heard over the low-frequency energy of a loud orchestra, opera singers adjust their vocal tracts to increase high-frequency energy around 3,000 Hz (known as a “singer9s formant”). In rap music, rhymes often coincide with the beat and thus may be masked by loud, low-frequency percussion events. How do emcees (i.e., rappers) avoid masking of on-beat rhymes? If emcees exploit formant structure

Musicians are typically identified in research papers by some single item measure (SIM) that focuses on just one component of musicality, such as expertise. Recently, musical sophistication has emerged as a more comprehensive approach by incorporating various components using multiple question items. However, the practice of SIM continues. The aim of this paper was to investigate which SIM in musical

Infants and children are able to track statistical regularities in perceptual input, which allows them to acquire structural aspects of language and music, such as syntax. However, much more is known about the development of linguistic compared to musical syntax. In the present study, we examined 3.5-year-olds’ implicit knowledge of Western musical pitch structure using electroencephalography (EEG)

In a recent article, Bonin, Trainor, Belyk, and Andrews (2016) proposed a novel way in which basic processes of auditory perception may influence affective responses to music. According to their source dilemma hypothesis (SDH), the relative fluency of a particular aspect of musical processing—the parsing of the music into distinct audio streams—is hedonically marked: Efficient stream segregation elicits

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Portuguese children9s use of singing voice and their singing accuracy on the pitches belonging to the Singing Voice Development Measure (SVDM) criterion patterns (Rutkowski, 2015), as well as the influence on singing with a neutral syllable or text on both variables. Children aged 4 to 9 (n = 137) were administered the SVDM individually

While syncopation generally refers to any conflict between surface accents and underlying meter, in rock and other recent popular styles it takes a more specific form in which accented notes occur just before strong beats. Such “anticipatory” syncopations suggest that there is an underlying cognitive representation in which the accented notes and strong beats align. Syllabic stress is crucial to the

This paper investigates the role of musical features in shaping peak-pleasurable experiences of electronic dance music (EDM). Typically, large structural and dynamic changes occur in an EDM track, which can be referred to as the break routine, consisting of breakdown, build-up, and drop. Twenty-four participants listened to four EDM excerpts featuring break routines, and one excerpt without a break

We investigated perception of virtual pitches at missing fundamentals (MFs) in musical chords of three chromas (simultaneous trichords). Tone profiles for major, minor, diminished, augmented, suspended, and four other trichords of octave-complex tones were determined. In Experiment 1, 40 musicians rated how well a tone went with a preceding chord; in Experiment 2, whether the tone was in the chord

The current study explores how individuals9 tendency to empathize with others (trait empathy) modulates interaction and social entrainment in dyadic dance in a free movement context using perceptual and computationally derived measures. Stimuli consisting of 24 point-light animations were created using motion capture data selected from a sample of 99 dyads, based on self-reported trait empathy. Individuals

Research on rock harmony accords with common practice in guitar playing in that power chords (fifth interval) with an indeterminate chord quality as well as major chords are preferred to more complex chords when played with a distorted tone. This study explored the interrelated effects of distortion and harmonic structure on acoustic features and perceived pleasantness of electric guitar chords. Extracting

The normalized pairwise variability index (nPVI) is a measure originally used to compare the rhythms of languages. Patel and Daniele (2003a) introduced the nPVI to music research and it has since been used in a number of studies. In this paper, I present a methodological criticism of the nPVI as applied to music. I discuss the known qualitative features of the nPVI and illustrate the nPVI9s fundamental

Sociolinguists frequently examine the nature of gradual, internal shifts in languages and dialects over time, arguing for both cognitive and cultural factors, as well as those that might be somehow internal to the language itself. Similarly, musicologists have often argued that musical genres and even specific songs can be examined through gradual diachronic shifts, which seem to be especially accelerated

This article introduces the notion ofpleasant musical imagery (PMI) for denoting everyday phenomena where people want to cherish music “in their heads.” This account differs from current paradigms for studying musical imagery in that it is not based a priori on (in)voluntariness of the experience. An empirical investigation of the structure and experiential content in 50 persons’ experiences of PMI

Classical musicians in ensembles are accustomed to performing in the same physical space. However, situations such as networked music performance (NMP) require physical separation with audio and sometimes video links. Effects of latency on synchronization have been extensively studied; however, research is limited on the effects of physical separation on the subjective experience of musicians. This

Distinctive stimuli are better recognized than typical stimuli in many domains (e.g., faces, words). Distinctiveness predicts the point of recognition of a melody (Bailes, 2010), and the recognition of unique tones within a melody (Vuvan, Podolak, & Schmuckler, 2014), yet no studies have examined the role of distinctiveness in recognizing whole melodies. We composed a set of novel melodies according

Music information retrieval (MIR) is a fast-growing research area. One of its aims is to extract musical characteristics from audio. In this study, we assumed the roles of researchers without further technical MIR experience and set out to test in an exploratory way its opportunities and challenges in the specific context of musical emotion perception. Twenty sound engineers rated 60 musical excerpts

The perception of speech in noise is challenging for children with cochlear implants (CIs). Singing and musical instrument playing have been associated with improved auditory skills in normal-hearing (NH) children. Therefore, we assessed how children with CIs who sing informally develop in the perception of speech in noise compared to those who do not. We also sought evidence of links of speech perception

This article seeks to unveil quantitative relations between the patterns of movement recurrence of a group of expert clarinetists and expressive sonic manipulations they employ during their performances. The main hypothesis is that the recurrent ancillary gestures of musicians are closely related to their sounded expressive intentions, and that the expressive content imposed by them according to the

In most Western music, notes in a melody relate not only to each other, but also to a “key”—a tonal center combined with an associated scale. Music is often classified as in a major or minor key, but within a scale that defines a major key, emphasizing different notes as the tonic yields different “modes.” Thus, within a set of notes, changing the tonal center changes the putative role of any given

This article examines the effects of composition length, familiarity, and likeability—as well as the location of performance errors—on the process of forming performance quality ratings. Five piano works by Chopin and a twentieth-century composer were chosen to vary by length and familiarity. Three of these pieces were then manipulated to contain performance errors in the opening material, and two

The goal of the current study was to explore outstanding questions in the field of timbre perception and cognition—specifically, whether memory for timbre is better in trained musicians or in nonmusicians, whether short-term timbre recognition is invariant to pitch differences, and whether timbre dissimilarity influences timbre recognition performance. Four experiments examined short-term recognition

Our community has lost a truly exceptional man and scholar who combined the scientific worlds of acoustics, psychology, and music in a unique way during his career that spanned over half a century. Andrzej Rakowski, Emeritus Professor at the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music passed away on April 3, 2018 in Warsaw, Poland, at the age of 87. He was an internationally acclaimed authority on musical

According to Juslin (2001), final ritardandi constitute part of the acoustic code employed by musicians to communicate two distinct emotional states: sadness and tenderness. To test this proposition, in two experiments, participants were exposed to a set of hymns that were modified in mode and/or tempo to primarily express either happiness, sadness, or tenderness. In addition, the inclusion of final

A cochlear implant (CI) restores hearing for profoundly deaf patients by transmitting sound to an array of electrodes that stimulates the inner ear. The small number of frequency bands and limited transmission of temporal fine structure affects the music perception. The present work investigates the pleasantness of chords and chord sequences in adults using such electric hearing. In the first task

Asynchrony between tactile and auditory feedback (action-sound latency) when playing a musical instrument is widely recognized as disruptive to musical performance. In this paper we present a study that assesses the effects of delayed auditory feedback on the timing accuracy and judgments of instrument quality for two groups of participants: professional percussionists and non-percussionist amateur

Previous research suggests that musical context affects the formation of similarity relations among motivic/thematic materials during listening, and that three contextual aspects, namely contrasts in surface features and the organization and development of the musical materials, shape the listening experience of complete works. We empirically investigate the effects of these three contextual aspects

It has long been assumed that rhythm cognition builds on perceptual categories tied to prototypes defined by small-integer ratios, such as 1:1 and 2:1. This study aims to evaluate the relative contributions of both generic constraints and selected cultural particularities in shaping rhythmic prototypes. We experimentally tested musicians’ synchronization (finger tapping) with simple periodic rhythms

Given the extensive instrumental resources afforded by an orchestra, why would a composer elect to feature a single solo instrument? In this study we explore one possible use of solos—that of conveying or enhancing a sad affect. Orchestral passages were identified from an existing collection and categorized as solos or non-solos. Independently, the passages were characterized on seven other features

We compared young adults’ autobiographical (AB) memories involving Music to memories concerning other specific categories and to Everyday AB memories with no specific cue. In all cases, participants reported both their most vivid memory and another AB memory from approximately the same time. We analyzed responses via quantitative ratings scales on aspects such as vividness and importance, as well as

Previous research indicates that people gain musical information from short (250 ms) segments of music. This study extended previous findings by presenting shorter (100 ms, 150 ms, and 200 ms) segments of Western popular music in rapid temporal arrays; similar to scanning through music listening options. The question remains, is there a critical feature, such as the song’s vocalist, that listeners

Death Metal music with violent themes is characterized by vocalizations with unnaturally low fundamental frequencies and high levels of distortion and roughness. These attributes decrease the signal to noise ratio, rendering linguistic content difficult to understand and leaving the impression of growling, screaming, or other non-linguistic vocalizations associated with aggression and fear. Here, we

The importance of harmony perception in understanding tonal melodies has been extensively studied, but underlying processes of implied harmonic perception remain unexplored. This study explores how listeners perceive implied harmony in real-time while hearing tonal melodies by addressing two questions: How is each tone of a tonal melody harmonically interpreted and integrated into the previous tones

Adult musicians tend to outperform nonmusicians in a variety of language and language-relevant tasks. Moreover, children who take music lessons will show an increased ability in several types of language skills. However, it is still unclear what the time course of these developmental effects might be, and the degree to which young children improve in their musical abilities. Here, we present the first

Certain spoken phrases, when removed from context and repeated, begin to sound as if they were sung. Prior work has uncovered several acoustic factors that determine whether a phrase sounds sung after repetition. However, the reason why repetition is necessary for song to be perceived in speech is unclear. One possibility is that by default pitch is not a salient attribute of speech in non-tonal languages

Lundqvist, Carlsson, Hilmersson, and Juslin (2009) presented evidence of differential autonomic emotional responses to “happy” and “sad” music in healthy adult listeners. The present study sought to replicate and extend these findings by employing a similar research design and measurement instruments. Therefore, we used instrumental film music instead of vocal music, and assessed listeners’ music expertise

Some movements that musicians make are non-essential to their instrumental playing, yet express their intentions and interpretations of music’s structures. One such potential interpretation is the choice to emphasize short melodic groupings or to integrate these groupings into a phrase. This study aimed to characterize the nature of head motions associated with either interpretation by having cellists

The Pythagoreans linked musical intervals with integer ratios, cosmic order, and the human soul. The empirical approach of Aristoxenus, based on real musicians making real music, was neglected. Today, many music scholars and researchers still conceptualize intervals as ratios. We argue that this idea is fundamentally incorrect and present convergent evidence against it. There is no internally consistent

When a deviant stimulus is presented within a stream of homogeneous stimuli, its duration tends to be overestimated. Two experiments investigated the effects of oddball serial position and pitch deviancy on perceived duration. In Experiment 1, the oddball method was used, in which an oddball stimulus is embedded in a series of standard stimuli and randomly positioned in each trial. In Experiment 2