Evaluation of the affect of speech intonation using a model of the perception of interval dissonance and harmonic tension

Abstract We report the application of a psychophysical model of pitch perception to the analysis of speech intonation. The model was designed to reproduce the empirical findings on the perception of musical phenomena (the dissonance/consonance of intervals and the tension/sonority of chords), but does not depend on specific musical scales or tuning systems. Application to intonation allows us to calculate the total dissonance and tension among the pitches in the speech utterance. In an experiment using the 144 utterances of 18 male and female subjects, we found greater dissonance and harmonic tension in sentences with negative affect, in comparison with sentences with positive affect

The Psychophysics of Harmony Perception: Harmony is a Three-Tone Phenomenon

In line with musical “common sense” (but contrary to the century-old tradition of musical psychophysics), we show that harmony is an inherently three-tone phenomenon. Previous attempts at explaining the affective response to major/minor chords and resolved/unresolved chords on the basis of the summation of interval dissonance have been notably unsuccessful, but consideration of the relative size of the intervals contained in triads leads directly to solutions to these historical problems. At the heart of our model is Leonard Meyer’s idea from 1956 concerning “intervallic equidistance” – i.e., the perception of “tension” inherent to any three-tone combination that has two intervals of equivalent size (e.g., the augmented chord). By including the effects of the upper partials, a psychophysical explanation of the perceived sonority of the triads (major>minor>diminished>augmented) and the affective valence of major and minor chords is easily achieved. We conclude that the perceptual regularities of traditional diatonic harmony are neither due to the summation of interval effects nor simply arbitrary, learned cultural artifacts, but rather that harmony has a psychophysical basis dependent on three-tone combinations

Emotion Recognition from Speech Signals and Perception of Music

This thesis deals with emotion recognition from speech signals. The feature extraction step shall be improved by looking at the perception of music. In music theory, different pitch intervals (consonant, dissonant) and chords are believed to invoke different feelings in listeners. The question is whether there is a similar mechanism between perception of music and perception of emotional speech. Our research will follow three stages. First, the relationship between speech and music at segmental and supra-segmental levels will be analyzed. Secondly, the encoding of emotions through music shall be investigated. In the third stage, a description of the most common features used for emotion recognition from speech will be provided. We will additionally derive new high-level musical features, which will lead us to an improvement of the recognition rate for the basic spoken emotions

Sensitivity to musical emotion is influenced by tonal structure in congenital amusia

Emotional communication in music depends on multiple attributes including psychoacoustic features and tonal system information, the latter of which is unique to music. The present study investigated whether congenital amusia, a lifelong disorder of musical processing, impacts sensitivity to musical emotion elicited by timbre and tonal system information. Twenty-six amusics and 26 matched controls made tension judgments on Western (familiar) and Indian (unfamiliar) melodies played on piano and sitar. Like controls, amusics used timbre cues to judge musical tension in Western and Indian melodies. While controls assigned significantly lower tension ratings to Western melodies compared to Indian melodies, thus showing a tonal familiarity effect on tension ratings, amusics provided comparable tension ratings for Western and Indian melodies on both timbres. Furthermore, amusics rated Western melodies as more tense compared to controls, as they relied less on tonality cues than controls in rating tension for Western melodies. The implications of these findings in terms of emotional responses to music are discussed

HARMONIC INTONATION AND IMPLICATION (ANALYSES AND COMPOSITIONS): Harmonic perception and intonation in the reception and performance of alternative tuning systems in contemporary composition

Most composers and theorists will acknowledge that some compromise is necessary when dealing with the limitations of human performance, perception, and the realities of acoustic theory. Identifying the thresholds for pitch discrimination and execution is an important point of departure for defining workable tuning schemes, and for training musicians to realise compositions in just intonation and other alternative tuning systems. The submitted paper 'HARMONIC INTONATION AND IMPLICATION (ANALYSES AND COMPOSITIONS): Harmonic perception and intonation in the reception and performance of alternative tuning systems in contemporary composition' is a phenomenological study of harmonic perception and intonation through the analysis of recordings, scores, theoretical papers, and discussion with practicing musicians. The examined repertoire covers western 'art' music of the late nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries. I approach my research from the composer's point of view though filtered through the ears and eyes of the performer, who is here considered 'expert listener'. lt is considered that intonation is a dynamic experience subject to influences beyond just intonation or equal temperament (the two poles for intonational reference)-the performance is assumed 'correct', rather than the idealised version of the composer. My goal is to relate the performance to the intentions of the composer and raise questions regarding the choice of notation, resolution of the tuning systems, the complexity of the harmonic concept, etc. and perhaps to suggest how to extend a general theory of harmony that embraces both musical practice and psychoacoustics. lt is with the understanding that harmonic implication affects intonation, but that intonation is subject to several other forces making intonation a complex system (and therefore not fully predictable)

Perception of affect in unfamiliar music

This thesis comprises a body of work that investigates affect perception of unfamiliar music, with a focus on both the role of potentially culture-independent psychoacoustic features that are intrinsic to a musical signal (e.g. roughness, harmonicity, spectral entropy, and average pitch) and extrinsic culture-dependent features (e.g. familiarity through exposure and evaluative conditioning). Much previous research in music perception has suggested that extrinsic features are of more importance than intrinsic features, but has not systematically tested the impact of intrinsic features on responses to unfamiliar music. The thesis discusses four experiments conducted to test the role of the above mentioned features using musical stimuli that are unfamiliar to participants. By using musical stimuli that are unfamiliar to participants, additional evidence can be provided for the cultural- independence of the tested intrinsic features. In order to achieve this unfamiliarity, two approaches were used. The first approach examined affective responses to chords from the unfamiliar microtonal Bohlen-Pierce system in Western listeners, the second approach tested affective responses to Western musical harmony in remote villages in Papua New Guinea, with varying levels of familiarity with Western music. The results of the listening experiments using Bohlen-Pierce suggest that the tested underlying culture-independent psychoacoustic features consistently impact affective rat- ings more strongly than do the experimentally manipulated culture-dependent factors of familiarity and evaluative conditioning. The results from the cross-cultural experiment suggest a strong role of familiarity on valence ratings of Western cadences and melodies. In summary, by using unfamiliar music (through the use of an unfamiliar microtonal system or through cross-cultural research) we can show that, in addition to extrinsic culture-dependent features, intrinsic features are fundamental for affect perception in music

Using musical structures to communicate emotion

Includes bibliographical references.This study investigates the hypothesis that music has the ability to strongly influence emotions in listeners. It begins by challenging the accuracy of this presumption, provides a general psychological and philosophical overview of human emotions and their relation to music, and hypothesises a theory that accounts for the numerous different findings by authors around this topic. The study then attempts to investigate in what manner specific musical structures are linked to the expression of certain emotions; firstly through a literature review and secondly through the execution of empirical tests. These findings are summarised in the Conclusion. An Annexure to this study provides graphic representations of specific musical structures on valence x arousal diagrams that are of value to composers of music