Empirical Musicology Review: Volume 3, Number 3 (2008)

Permanent URI for this collection

https://kb.osu.edu/handle/1811/81085

Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 3, No. 3, 2008

Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/81085

Editor's note
Thompson, Bill p. 82
Description | Full Text PDF

Seeing Music? What musicians need to know about vision
Schutz, Michael pp. 83-108
Description | Full Text PDF

Comparison of Word Intelligibility in Spoken and Sung Phrases
Collister, Lauren B.; Huron, David pp. 109-125
Description | Full Text PDF

The Happy Xylophone: Acoustics Affordances Restrict An Emotional Palate
Schutz, Michael; Huron, David; Keeton, Kristopher; Loewer, Gred pp. 126-135
Description | Full Text PDF

Commentary on "The Happy Xylophone: Acoustics Affordances Restrict An Emotional Palate" by Michael Schutz, David Huron, Kristopher Keeton, & Greg Loewer
Eitan, Zohar pp. 136-139
Description | Full Text PDF

Comparative Analysis of Music Recordings from Western and Non-Western traditions by Automatic Tonal Feature Extraction
Gómez, Emilia; Herrera, Perfecto pp. 140-156
Description | Full Text PDF

Commentary on "Comparative Analysis of Music Recordings from Western and Non-Western traditions by Automatic Tonal Feature Extraction" by Emilia Gómez, and Perfecto Herrera
Lartillot, Oliver; Toiviainen, Petri; Eerola, Tuomas pp. 157-160
Description | Full Text PDF

The internal validity of web-based studies
Lacherez, Philippe pp. 161-162
Description | Full Text PDF

Review of "Practicing Perfection: Memory and Piano Performance"
Geeves, Andrew; Christensen, Wayne; Sutton, John; McIlwain, Doris pp. 163-172
Description | Full Text PDF

Review of Fourth Meeting of Neurosciences and Music, Montreal, 2008
McDermott, Josh pp. 173-174
Description | Full Text PDF

Announcements
Thompson, William Forde pp. 175-176
Description | Full Text PDF

Browse

Now showing 1 - 11 of 11

Announcements
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Thompson, William Forde
Review of Fourth Meeting of Neurosciences and Music, Montreal, 2008
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) McDermott, Josh
Review of "Practicing Perfection: Memory and Piano Performance"
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Geeves, Andrew; Christensen, Wayne; Sutton, John; McIlwain, Doris
The internal validity of web-based studies
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Lacherez, Philippe
Honing and Ladinig (2008) make the assertion that while the internal validity of web-based studies may be reduced, this is offset by an increase in external validity possible when experimenters can sample a wider range of participants and experimental settings. In this paper, the issue of internal validity is more closely examined, and it is agued that there is no necessary reason why internal validity of a web-based study should be worse than that of a lab-based one. Errors of measurement or inconsistencies of manipulation will typically balance across conditions of the experiment, and thus need not necessarily threaten the validity of a study’s findings.
Commentary on "Comparative Analysis of Music Recordings from Western and Non-Western traditions by Automatic Tonal Feature Extraction" by Emilia Gómez, and Perfecto Herrera
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Lartillot, Oliver; Toiviainen, Petri; Eerola, Tuomas
The article by Gómez and Herrera presents an original methodology, audaciously situated on a challenging junction between computer science, cognitive science and ethnomusicology. We hope expert ethnomusicologists will understand the experimental aspect of such a cross-disciplinary undertaking, and will pardon the potential imperfection in this computational attempt toward cross-cultural understanding. Despite the few shortcomings discussed in this commentary, we think the general methodology described in this paper is of high interest.
Comparative Analysis of Music Recordings from Western and Non-Western traditions by Automatic Tonal Feature Extraction
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Gómez, Emilia; Herrera, Perfecto
The automatic analysis of large musical corpora by means of computational models overcomes some limitations of manual analysis, and the unavailability of scores for most existing music makes necessary to work with audio recordings. Until now, research on this area has focused on music from the Western tradition. Nevertheless, we might ask if the available methods are suitable when analyzing music from other cultures. We present an empirical approach to the comparative analysis of audio recordings, focusing on tonal features and data mining techniques. Tonal features are related to the pitch class distribution, pitch range and employed scale, gamut and tuning system. We provide our initial but promising results obtained when trying to automatically distinguish music from Western and non- Western traditions; we analyze which descriptors are most relevant and study their distribution over 1500 pieces from different traditions and styles. As a result, some feature distributions differ for Western and non-Western music, and the obtained classification accuracy is higher than 80% for different classification algorithms and an independent test set. These results show that automatic description of audio signals together with data mining techniques provide means to characterize huge music collections from different traditions and complement musicological manual analyses.
Commentary on "The Happy Xylophone: Acoustics Affordances Restrict An Emotional Palate" by Michael Schutz, David Huron, Kristopher Keeton, & Greg Loewer
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Eitan, Zohar
In this commentary, I raise several issues of method and presentation and suggest a number of follow-up experiments associated with some of these issues. Broad suggestions are also made (or rather preached): the need to deal empirically with musical emotions subtler than the oft-investigated basic emotions, and the role that interactions between musical variables may play in shaping subtle musical expression, as exemplified by some well-known xylophone soli from the orchestral repertory.
The Happy Xylophone: Acoustics Affordances Restrict An Emotional Palate
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Schutz, Michael; Huron, David; Keeton, Kristopher; Loewer, Gred
In many ways, the structure of music resembles that of language, including the acoustic cues used to communicate emotion. In speech, sadness is imparted through a combination of low fundamental frequency, dark timbre, and a slow rate of articulation. As the acoustic properties of the xylophone are not conducive to mimicking these cues, it seems to follow that composers would avoid attempts to write “sad” music for it. We investigated this idea by comparing the repertoire of the xylophone with that of the marimba – a similar instrument whose acoustic structure permits a greater variety of timbres, pitch heights, and tone durations. An analysis of repertoire drawn from the Percussive Arts Society database of recital programs reveals that 60% of the tonal marimba examples surveyed were written in minor (nominally “sad”) keys. In contrast, a parallel analysis of xylophone literature found minor keys used in only 6% of the examples surveyed. Further investigation revealed that the only examples of minor-key xylophone compositions included in this survey are in fact typically performed on the marimba. The avoidance of minor-key works on xylophone by both composers and performers is consistent with the idea that instruments restricted to producing tones with short durations, bright timbres, and high pitch heights are unable to mimic the speech cues used to convey sadness and/or depression.
Comparison of Word Intelligibility in Spoken and Sung Phrases
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Collister, Lauren B.; Huron, David
Twenty listeners were exposed to spoken and sung passages in English produced by three trained vocalists. Passages included representative words extracted from a large database of vocal lyrics, including both popular and classical repertoires. Target words were set within spoken or sung carrier phrases. Sung carrier phrases were selected from classical vocal melodies. Roughly a quarter of all words sung by an unaccompanied soloist were misheard. Sung passages showed a seven-fold decrease in intelligibility compared with their spoken counterparts. The perceptual mistakes occurring with vowels replicate previous studies showing the centralization of vowels. Significant confusions are also evident for consonants, especially voiced stops and nasals.
Seeing Music? What musicians need to know about vision
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Schutz, Michael
Music is inherently an auditory art form, rooted in sound, and generally analyzed in terms of its acoustic properties. However, as the process of hearing is affected by seeing, visual information does in fact play an important role in the musical experience. Vision influences many aspects of music – from evaluations of performance quality and audience interest to the perception of loudness, timbre, and note duration. Moreover, it can be used to achieve musical goals that are in fact acoustically impossible. As such, understanding the benefits of embracing (and the costs of ignoring) vision’s role is essential for all musicians. Furthermore, since music represents a pervasive and ubiquitous human practice, this topic serves as an ideal case study for understanding how auditory and visual information are integrated. Given that some musically-based studies have challenged and even contributed to updating psychological theories of sensory integration, this topic represents a rich area of research, relevant to musicians and psychologists alike.
Editor's note
(Empirical Musicology Review, 2008-07) Thompson, Bill

Browse

Recent Submissions