Exploring the club experience: Affective and bodily experiences of electronic dance music

Euphoric dance and intense affects are signature attributes of the club experience, and DJs use a range of production techniques with the explicit aim to synchronize the clubbing crowd’s bodily and emotional engagement. This doctoral research investigates the correlations between musical features of Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and pleasurable affective and bodily experiences. But how and to what extent do structural and sonic features of EDM relate to clubbers’ experiences? Particularly the EDM sections ”˜build-up’ and ”˜drop’ are filled with tension-building musical features with the purpose to peak the dance floor, and my claim is that certain features occurring in these sections, such as i) extensive use of sounds and effects with upward movements, ii) compression of rhythmical structures, iii) large changes in frequency spectrum and textural density, and iv) removal and reintroduction of bass and bass drum, can be associated with arousal in emotional responses and bodily movements. This PhD research examines these musical structures and how they are perceived in terms of motor activity, physiological responses and cognitive appraisal.The project includes a two-part empirical study comprising a physiology study and a dance study. In the dance study 16 participants danced to a DJ mix in a club-like atmosphere created in a motion capture lab. The crowd’s bodily movements were recorded and measured using an infrared marker-based motion capture system. A self-report questionnaire completed after dancing gathered information on pleasure, as well as bodily and cognitive appraisal of the music.The results from the dance study indicate correlations between the participants’ degree of movement, the self-reported intensity of their emotional experience and the above-mentioned musical features. The participants reported about the same musical features and moments as especially pleasurable and as causing arousal in their emotional and bodily engagement. This was further supported by the motion capture data, which showed a high level of synchronization at these moments and an increase in the degree of their body movements. Evidence from the qualitative data indicated that this experience was also consciously shared.Keywords: electronic dance music; motor responses; dance; affective states; pleasur

Evaluation of Musical Creativity and Musical Metacreation Systems

The field of computational creativity, including musical metacreation, strives to develop artificial systems that are capable of demonstrating creative behavior or producing creative artefacts. But the claim of creativity is often assessed, subjectively only on the part of the researcher and not objectively at all. This article provides theoretical motivation for more systematic evaluation of musical metacreation and computationally creative systems and presents an overview of current methods used to assess human and machine creativity that may be adapted for this purpose. In order to highlight the need for a varied set of evaluation tools, a distinction is drawn among three types of creative systems: those that are purely generative, those that contain internal or external feedback, and those that are capable of reflection and self-reflection. To address the evaluation of each of these aspects, concrete examples of methods and techniques are suggested to help researchers (1) evaluate their systems' creative process and generated artefacts, and test their impact on the perceptual, cognitive, and affective states of the audience, and (2) build mechanisms for reflection into the creative system, including models of human perception and cognition, to endow creative systems with internal evaluative mechanisms to drive self-reflective processes. The first type of evaluation can be considered external to the creative system and may be employed by the researcher to both better understand the efficacy of their system and its impact and to incorporate feedback into the system. Here we take the stance that understanding human creativity can lend insight to computational approaches, and knowledge of how humans perceive creative systems and their output can be incorporated into artificial agents as feedback to provide a sense of how a creation will impact the audience. The second type centers around internal evaluation, in which the system is able to reason about its own behavior and generated output. We argue that creative behavior cannot occur without feedback and reflection by the creative/metacreative system itself. More rigorous empirical testing will allow computational and metacreative systems to become more creative by definition and can be used to demonstrate the impact and novelty of particular approaches

“Waiting for the Bass to Drop”: Correlations between Intense Emotional Experiences and Production Techniques in Build-up and Drop Sections of Electronic Dance Music

This study investigates the correlations between theories of intense emotional experiences and production techniques used in the electronic dance music (EDM) sections “build-up” and “drop”, which are designed to build tension and create a heightened emotional intensity among clubbers. This is done by descriptive and interpretive music analysis, where spectrograms and a schematic model visually represent the dominant production techniques. Through a theoretical framework consisting of musical expectancy and gravity, the analysis suggests that i) extensive use of uplifters, ii) the “drum roll effect”, iii) large frequency changes, iv) removal and reintroduction of bass and bass drum and v) a contrasting “breakdown” cause tension and anticipation, which seems to correlate with a possible intensification of emotional experience. This is furthermore discussed and more broadly related to the club experience seen as a whole, drawing on the psychological concepts Peak experience, Strong experiences with music (SEM) and Absorption

Feeling, moving and grooving in timelessness : ein studie av tidsoppleving knytt til elektronisk dansemusikk (EDM)

Denne oppgåva tar for seg elektronisk dansemusikk (EDM) og korleis visse musikalske og kontekstuelle element påverkar tidopplevinga vår når vi lyttar og responderer til denne type musikk i klubbsituasjonen. Utgangspunktet for oppgåva er det å vere dansande tilstades her-og-no på klubb, og oppleve korleis musikken og konteksten kan gje ei endra tidserfaring. Klubbsituasjonen er høgst avgjerande når det kjem til tidsoppleving og elektronisk dansemusikk, og dei musikalske elementa blir forsterka i denne situasjonen og kan tydelegast sjåast gjennom kroppslege og emosjonelle responsar til musikken. Eg forsøkjer å tilnærme denne problemstillinga gjennom ei interdisiplinær vinkling der blant anna sosiokulturelle studier, filosofi, psykologi, kognisjon og musikkanalyse blir nytta. Eg lanserer omgrepet tidløyse som står for den opplevinga vi kan ha i klubbsituasjonen; ei nedprioritering av tidsaspektet gjennom å vere tilstades her-og-no i ein eigna kontekst der ein kroppsleg og emosjonelt responderer til ein god groove. Først drøftar eg sjølve fenomenet og kva som ligg i klubbingomgrepet. Deretter gir eg ein gjennomgang av kva som har skjedd med utforminga av klubblokalet for å fremje ei oppleving av tidløyse gjennom blant anna musikken, dansen og lydkvaliteten samt eit bilete av klubbsituasjonen anno 2011. Augustin, Henri Bergson og Edmund Husserl er dei filosofane som har vore særskilt viktige i tilknyting til emnet musikk og tid, og det som er mest avgjerande for mi avhandling er skilnaden mellom den objektive klokkestyrte tida og den subjektive erfaringsbaserte tida. Sistnemnde tidsoppleving er den som står sterkast i klubbsituasjonen. Kroppslege og emosjonelle responsar er sentrale aspekt ved denne problemstillinga og påverkar også tidsopplevinga vår i stor grad. Spesielt emosjonane glede/nyting og ekstase/eufori utmerkar seg som avgjerande i ei klubboppleving. Gjennom dei tre låtane Celsius (2002) – Swayzak, Tik Tok (Soul-O-Matic’s Original Mix) (2005) – Bionik Phunk og Housebeat (The Original Mix) (2008) – Spencer & Hill, forsøkjer eg å vise dei musikalske trekka ved EDM som mest ser ut til å påverke tidsopplevinga vår. Dette er blant anna formutviklinga som i stor grad er basert på ei sekvensbasert innføring av elementa, samt ei generell syklisk form. Låtoppbyggingsprinsippet som brukast svært aktivt i EDM handlar om å bygge grooven lag-på-lag med enkle, korte rytmiske og melodiske strukturar som i lag blir til ein velfungerande heilskap

Group behaviour and interpersonal synchronization to electronic dance music

The present study investigates how people move and relate to each other – and to the dance music – in a club-like setting created within a motion capture laboratory. Three groups of participants (29 in total) each danced to a 10-minute-long DJ mix consisting of four tracks of electronic dance music (EDM). Two of the EDM tracks had little structural development, while the two others included a typical “break routine” in the middle of the track, consisting of three distinct passages: (a) “breakdown”, (b) “build-up” and (c) “drop”. The motion capture data show similar bodily responses for all three groups in the break routines: a sudden decrease and increase in the general quantity of motion. More specifically, the participants demonstrated an improved level of interpersonal synchronization after the drop, particularly in their vertical movements. Furthermore, the participants’ activity increased and became more pronounced after the drop. This may suggest that the temporal removal and reintroduction of a clear rhythmic framework, as well as the use of intensifying sound features, have a profound effect on a group’s beat synchronization. Our results further suggest that the musical passages of EDM efficiently lead to the entrainment of a whole group, and that a break routine effectively “re-energizes” the dancing

Pleasurable and Intersubjectively Embodied Experiences of Electronic Dance Music

How do dancers engage with electronic dance music (EDM) when dancing? This paper reports on an empirical study of dancers' pleasurable engagement with three structural properties of EDM: (1) breakdown, (2) build-up, and (3) drop. Sixteen participants danced to a DJ mix in a club-like environment, and the group’s bodily activity was recorded with an infrared, marker-based motion capture system. After they danced, the subjects filled out questionnaires about the pleasure they experienced and their relative desire to move while dancing. Subsequent analyses revealed associations between the group’s quantity of motion and self-reported experiences of pleasure. Associations were also found between certain sonic features and dynamic changes in the dancers' movements. Pronounced changes occurred in the group's quantity of motion during the breakdown, build-up, and drop sections, suggesting a high level of synchronization between the group and the structural properties of the music. The questionnaire confirmed this intersubjective agreement: participants perceived the musical passages consistently and marked the build-up and drop as particularly pleasurable and motivational in terms of dancing. Self-reports demonstrated that the presence and activity of other participants were also important in the shaping of one's own experience, thus supporting the idea of clubbing as an intersubjectively embodied experience