Empirical Musicology Review: Volume 4, Number 3 (2009)

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Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 4, No. 3, 2009

Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/81088

Editor's Note
Thompson, Bill p. 92
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Facial Expression and Vocal Pitch Height: Evidence of an Intermodal Association
Huron, David; Dahl, Sofia; Johnson, Randolph pp. 93-100
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Signaling with the Eyebrows – Commentary on Huron, Dahl, and Johnson
Ohala, John pp. 101-102
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Characterizing Idiomatic Organization in Music: A Theory and Case Study of Musical Affordances
Huron, David; Berec, Jonathon pp. 103-122
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The Price of (Perceived) Affordance: Commentary for Huron and Berec
Gjerdingen, Robert pp. 123-125
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Announcements
Thompson, Bill pp. 125-128
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    Announcements
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-07) Thompson, Bill
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    The Price of (Perceived) Affordance: Commentary for Huron and Berec
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-07) Gjerdingen, Robert
    It is argued that the symbolic objects in music and musical scores can permit affordances much as physical objects can. This construction of "affordance" places greater emphasis on cultural forms and human memory than the original idea proposed by James J. Gibson, and it aligns itself more closely with the refinements to "affordance" suggested by Donald Norman. For symbolic objects to permit strongly perceived affordances, it may be necessary for perceivers to have developed schematized perception in the course of over-learning culturally significant forms.
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    Signaling with the Eyebrows – Commentary on Huron, Dahl, and Johnson
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-07) Ohala, John
    Huron, Dahl, and Johnson, in their paper “Facial Expression and Vocal Pitch Height: Evidence of an Intermodal Association”, demonstrated a positive correlation between the pitch of a sung note and the vertical position of the singer’s eyebrows. Moreover, other subjects viewing photographs of the faces of the singers, with the lower part of the face and neck of the singers blocked out, could accurately judge whether a high note or low note had been sung. The authors offer a number of hypothetical explanations for their findings. I propose a speculative, ethologically-based, explanation for these correlations: namely, how both pitch of voice and eyebrow position would be correlated in this way to convey to the viewer the degree of potential threat – or lack of threat – posed by the signaler.
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    Characterizing Idiomatic Organization in Music: A Theory and Case Study of Musical Affordances
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-07) Huron, David; Berec, Jonathon
    A theory of idiomaticism is developed and illustrated using music for B- flat valve trumpet. Physical measures were collected from two trumpet performers and used to construct a computer model of the instrument/performer. Using this model, several works composed by both trumpet virtuosi and non-trumpet players were analyzed. A conceptual distinction is made between measures of performance difficulty (how hard it is to play a particular passage) and measures of performance idiomaticism (how well suited a passage is to a specific instrument). Methods for characterizing both difficulty and idiomaticism are described. In general, the results suggest that detailed modeling of the mechanics of performance can help to pinpoint aspects of musical organization that arise from performance idioms or affordances. Repercussions for ethnomusicology, historical musicology and music analysis are discussed.
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    Facial Expression and Vocal Pitch Height: Evidence of an Intermodal Association
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-07) Huron, David; Dahl, Sofia; Johnson, Randolph
    Forty-four participants were asked to sing moderate, high, and low pitches while their faces were photographed. In a two-alternative forced choice task, independent judges selected the high-pitch faces as more friendly than the low-pitch faces. When photographs were cropped to show only the eye region, judges still rated the high-pitch faces friendlier than the low-pitch faces. These results are consistent with prior research showing that vocal pitch height is used to signal aggression (low pitch) or appeasement (high pitch). An analysis of the facial features shows a strong correlation between eyebrow position and sung pitch—consistent with the role of eyebrows in signaling aggression and appeasement. Overall, the results are consistent with an inter-modal linkage between vocal and facial expressions.
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    Editor's Note
    (Empirical Musicology Review, 2009-07) Thompson, Bill