Empirical Musicology Review: Volume 6, Number 3 (2011)
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Empirical Musicology Review Vol. 6, No. 3, 2011
Issue DOI: https://doi.org/10.18061/1811/81100
Editor's Note
Peter E. Keller p. 146
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Beyond Happiness and Sadness: Affective Associations of Lyrics with Modality and Dynamics
Tiemann, Laura; Huron, David pp. 147-154
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Fast/Major and Slow/Minor pairings in J.S. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2
Horn, Katelyn; Costa-Giomi, Eugenia pp. 155-163
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The Edit Distance as a Measure of Perceived Rhythmic Similarity
Post, Olaf; Toussaint, Godfried pp. 164-179
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Coupling factors, visual rhythms, and synchronization ratios
Will, Udo pp. 180-185
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Item Coupling factors, visual rhythms, and synchronization ratios(Empirical Musicology Review, 2011-07) Will, UdoThe inter-group entrainment study by Lucas, Clayton, and Leante (2011) is an interesting research report that advances studies in both empirical ethnomusicology and entrainment research in several ways, and provides an important addition to the much needed empirical case studies on musical entrainment. I submit that the authors’ analysis of an instant of resistance to entrainment is a key demonstration of the complementarity of analytical and ethnographic approaches in entrainment research. Further, I suggest that the evidence for the influence of visual information on entrainment supports the idea that there are two types of visuo-temporal information, each with different influence on the entrainment process, those derived from static and those from moving visual objects. As a final point, I argue that if we take into consideration the possibility of higher-order synchronization, some of the authors’ interpretations would need modification.Item The Edit Distance as a Measure of Perceived Rhythmic Similarity(Empirical Musicology Review, 2011-07) Post, Olaf; Toussaint, GodfriedThe ‘edit distance’ (or ‘Levenshtein distance’) measure of distance between two data sets is defined as the minimum number of editing operations – insertions, deletions, and substitutions – that are required to transform one data set to the other (Orpen and Huron, 1992). This measure of distance has been applied frequently and successfully in music information retrieval, but rarely in predicting human perception of distance. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of the edit distance as a predictor of perceived rhythmic dissimilarity under simple rhythmic alterations. Approaching rhythms as a set of pulses that are either onsets or silences, we study two types of alterations. The first experiment is designed to test the model’s accuracy for rhythms that are relatively similar; whether rhythmic variations with the same edit distance to a source rhythm are also perceived as relatively similar by human subjects. In addition, we observe whether the salience of an edit operation is affected by its metric placement in the rhythm. Instead of using a rhythm that regularly subdivides a 4/4 meter, our source rhythm is a syncopated 16-pulse rhythm, the son. Results show a high correlation between the predictions by the edit distance model and human similarity judgments (r = 0.87); a higher correlation than for the well-known generative theory of tonal music (r = 0.64). In the second experiment, we seek to assess the accuracy of the edit distance model in predicting relatively dissimilar rhythms. The stimuli used are random permutations of the son’s inter-onset intervals: 3-3-4-2-4. The results again indicate that the edit distance correlates well with the perceived rhythmic dissimilarity judgments of the subjects (r = 0.76). To gain insight in the relationships between the individual rhythms, the results are also presented by means of graphic phylogenetic trees.Item Fast/Major and Slow/Minor pairings in J.S. Bach's Well Tempered Clavier Books 1 and 2(Empirical Musicology Review, 2011-07) Horn, Katelyn; Costa-Giomi, EugeniaSome studies have found that subjects give higher preference ratings and clearer emotional descriptions to pieces with the tempo/mode pairs fast/major and slow/minor. If these findings are true, one might expect to find a predominance of fast/major and slow/minor pairings in musical literature. This study looks for just such a trend in the canonical work of J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier. Books 1 and 2 together contain 24 Major Preludes, 24 Minor Preludes, 24 Major Fugues and 24 Minor Fugues. We use four different measurements of fast/slow tempo based both on elements within the musical notation as well as the interpretive markings of four different music editors: 1. Attacks Per Beat (APB) – measures the number of subdivisions of each piece 2. Attacks Per Minute (APM) – is the APB of a piece multiplied by the editor’s metronome marking 3. Time Signature Distribution and 4. Editor’s Tempo Distribution. We find a significant amount of fast/major and slow/minor pairings in Book 1 but not in Book 2.Item Beyond Happiness and Sadness: Affective Associations of Lyrics with Modality and Dynamics(Empirical Musicology Review, 2011-07) Tiemann, Laura; Huron, DavidA study is reported investigating the relationship between modality (major/minor) and dynamics (piano/forte) on four affects – as evident in the content of musical lyrics. Forty solo vocal works were sampled: 10 in the major mode with a loud (forte) dynamic level, 10 in the major mode with a quiet (piano) dynamic level, 10 in the minor mode with a loud dynamic level, and 10 in the minor mode with a quiet dynamic level. Sampled compositions were all tonal works from the Western vocal repertoire. Without hearing the music, 60 native-speakers of English, German, and French judged the language-appropriate lyrics according to four affects: sadness, happiness, passion, and tenderness. Results were consistent with predicted associations between minor-piano music and sadness, major-forte music and happiness, and minor- forte music and passion. A fourth predicted association between major-piano music and tenderness was skewed in the predicted direction, but was not statistically significant.Item Editor's Note(Empirical Musicology Review, 2011-07) Peter E. Keller