Gesture-sound causality from the audience’s perspective: : investigating the aesthetic experience of performances with digital musical instruments.

In contrast to their traditional, acoustic counterparts, digital musical instruments (DMIs) rarely feature a clear, causal relationship between the performer’s actions and the sounds produced. They often function simply as systems for controlling digital sound synthesis, triggering computer-generated audio. This study aims to shed light on how the level of perceived causality of DMI designs impacts audience members’ aesthetic responses to new DMIs. In a preliminary survey, 49 concert attendees listed adjectives that described their experience of a number of DMI performances. In a subsequent experiment, 31 participants rated video clips of performances with DMIs with causal and acausal mapping designs using the eight most popular adjectives from the preliminary survey. The experimental stimuli were presented in their original version and in a manipulated version with a reduced level of gesture-sound causality. The manipulated version was created by placing the audio track of one section of the recording over the video track of a different section. It was predicted that the causal DMIs would be rated more positively, with the manipulation having a stronger effect on the ratings for the causal DMIs. Our results confirmed these hypotheses, and indicate that a lack of perceptible causality does have a negative impact on ratings of DMI performances. The acausal group received no significant difference in ratings between original and manipulated clips. We posit that this result arises from the greater understanding that clearer gesture-sound causality offers spectators. The implications of this result for DMI design and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved

Induced Empathy Moderates Emotional Responses to Expressive Qualities in Music

Recent research has explored the role of empathy in the context of music listening. Here, through an “empathy priming paradigm”, situational empathy was shown to act as a causal mechanism in inducing emotion, however the way empathy was primed had low levels of ecological validity. We, therefore, conducted an online experiment to explore the extent to which information about a composer’s expressive intentions when writing a piece of music would significantly affect the degree to which participants reportedly empathise with the composer and in turn influence emotional responses to expressive music. A total of 229 participants were randomly assigned to three groups. The experimental group read short texts describing the emotions felt by the composer during the process of composition. To control for the effect of text regardless of its content, one control group read texts describing the characteristics of the music they were to hear, and a second control group was not given any textual information. Participants listened to 30 second excerpts of four pieces of music, selected to express emotions from the four quadrants of the circumplex theory of emotion. Having heard each music excerpt, participants rated the valence and arousal they experienced and completed a measure of situational empathy. Results show that situational empathy in response to music is significantly associated with trait empathy. As opposed to those in the control conditions, participants in the experimental group responded with significantly higher levels of situational empathy. Receiving this text significantly moderated the effect of the expressiveness of stimuli on induced emotion, indicating that it induced empathy. We conclude that empathy can be induced during music listening through the provision of information about the specific emotions of a person relating to the music. These findings contribute to an understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underlie emotional responses to music

Towards automatic music recommendation for audio branding scenarios

Within the MIR community, most prediction models of musical impact on listeners focus on mood or emotional effects (perceived or induced). The ABC_DJ project investigates the associative impact of music on listeners from the specific perspective of music branding that surrounds us in our everyday lives. We pre-sent a general concept for applying automatic music rec-ommendation within this domain. Creating a scientifically validated basic terminology for communicating brand at-tributes and human emotions in this field is the key chal-lenge. As a first result, we introduce the Music Branding Expert Terminology (MBET), a comprehensive terminology of verbal attributes used in music branding, upon which a pre-diction model will be developed to facilitate automatic mu-sic recommendation in the context of music branding.EC/H2020/688122/EU/Artist-to-Business-to-Business-to-Consumer Audio Branding System/ABC D

SoundFields: A Virtual Reality Game Designed to Address Auditory Hypersensitivity in Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterised as having impairments in social-emotional interaction and communication, alongside displaying repetitive behaviours and interests. Additionally, they can frequently experience difficulties in processing sensory information with particular prevalence in the auditory domain. Often triggered by everyday environmental sounds, auditory hypersensitivity can provoke self-regulatory fear responses such as crying and isolation from sounds. This paper presents SoundFields, an interactive virtual reality game designed to address this area by integrating exposure based therapy techniques into game mechanics and delivering target auditory stimuli to the player rendered via binaural based spatial audio. A pilot study was conducted with six participants diagnosed with ASD who displayed hypersensitivity to specific sounds to evaluate the use of SoundFields as a tool to reduce levels of anxiety associated with identified problematic sounds. During the course of the investigation participants played the game weekly over four weeks and all participants actively engaged with the virtual reality (VR) environment and enjoyed playing the game. Following this period, a comparison of pre- and post-study measurements showed a significant decrease in anxiety linked to target auditory stimuli. The study results therefore suggest that SoundFields could be an effective tool for helping individuals with autism manage auditory hypersensitivity

Meditation as a tool to counteract music performance anxiety from the experts’ perspective

Music performance anxiety (MPA) affects numerous musicians, preventing them from performing to the full extent of their abilities. A variety of tools are used to cope with MPA among which is meditation. Although research conducted to date has made a distinction between the types of meditative techniques and their effects, this aspect is still not thoroughly investigated. The aim of this qualitative study is to investigate the experience of specialists in the field and identify the meditations employed for counteracting MPA. Sixteen semi-structured interviews were held with experts; recordings and transcripts were verified multiple times and imported into NVivo software. Thematic analysis was conducted, developing three main themes which illustrate how the experts describe MPA, the influencing factors for the effectiveness of meditation, the employed meditative techniques and how they reduce MPA. Within the last theme, body-centered meditations and breathing techniques, along with visualizations and Vipassana meditation, occupy a prominent place. Results show furthermore that affect-centered meditations offer interesting perspectives for counteracting perfectionism and self-criticism. The findings of this study may be of interest to educational institutions and musicians who want to acquire emotional awareness, self-regulation strategies for counteracting MPA, and improving performance skills

Music-Evoked Nostalgia and Wellbeing During the United Kingdom COVID-19 Pandemic: Content, Subjective Effects, and Function

Nostalgic music is defined as that which evokes feelings of nostalgia through reminders of certain periods of life, places or people. Feelings of nostalgia are said to occur during times of hardship and difficult transitionary periods, such as the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom in 2020. Here, the reassurance of the past might have held certainty that could sustain a sense of meaning and purpose in life and influence wellbeing. The aims of the presented study were to explore the nature of music-induced nostalgia during the lockdown, by analysing participants’ narratives conjured by the music and their emotional responses to them, and to determinethe extent that using nostalgic music listening as an emotion regulation strategy had an impact on wellbeing. Data was collected by means of an online questionnaire, which retrospectively investigated nostalgic music during the lockdown. Participants listened to a self-selected piece of music that they had listened to 3 months prior whichinduced feelings of nostalgia, reported their resulting emotion and the content of memories associated with their nostalgia, and completed a questionnaire rating their experienced effect of nostalgia in relation to their piece of music. Following this, we investigated the functions that nostalgic music tends to have in regulating emotions through means of a pre-validated scale. 570 participants (34% identified as male) were recruited (age years M = 44, SD = 16). Concurrent with existing research, the findings suggest that there are significant differences in the affective and narrative content of nostalgicmusic listening in relation to which emotion regulation strategy was used, and that employing nostalgic music listening as a form of approaching difficult emotions can have a positive impact on wellbeing

Towards a Holistic Understanding of Musician's Focal Dystonia : Educational Factors and Mistake Rumination Contribute to the Risk of Developing the Disorder

Musicians' Focal Dystonia (MFD) is a task-specific neurological movement disorder, affecting 1-2% of highly skilled musicians. The condition can impair motor function by creating involuntary movements, predominantly in the upper extremities or the embouchure. The pathophysiology of the disorder is not fully understood, and complete recovery is extremely rare. While most of the literature views the condition through a neurological lens, a handful of recent studies point out certain psychological traits and the presence of adverse playing-related experiences and preceding trauma as possible contributors to the onset. The nature and the frequency of these factors, however, are under-researched. The present quasi-experimental study aimed to compare musicians with and without MFD in terms of the frequency of various adverse psychosocial and psychological factors to explore their contribution to the onset of the condition. Professional musicians with MFD (n = 107) and without MFD (n = 68) were recruited from online platforms, musicians' unions, and organisations to fill out a survey. The survey was based on two previously conducted interview studies and included the Student-Instructor Relationship Scale (SIRS), the Mistake Rumination Scale (MRS), the Trauma History Screen, and self-constructed questions about the received music education, early success, and personal experiences. To identify potential risk factors, independent samples t-tests were conducted and found that there are significant differences in musicians with and without MFD in terms of mistake rumination, early success, and the received music education. A logistic regression showed that six factors contributed to the construct to various extents; we observed a significant model [χ2 (80) = 22.681, p < 0.001], which predicted 71.2% of the cases correctly. This exploratory study shows that psychological and psychosocial factors might play a role in the development of MFD. Understanding these in more detail could inform preventative strategies and complement the current therapeutic approaches to support this vulnerable population better

Do dance movements communicate how we feel? Investigating Emotion Recognition in Dance

Current research into music and free dance movement explores differences in corporeal articulation of basic emotions. Accordingly, Van Dyck et al. (2014) report congruent emotion recognition in free dance movements recorded after happiness or sadness inductions in lay dancers. The current study replicates this previous study with an advanced methodological approach measuring ratings of happiness and sadness recognition separately within both happy and sad conditions. We then tested the differences between the recognition of happiness and sadness in free dance movements. Therefore, a dance movement pre-study was conducted in two different conditions where either happiness or sadness were induced within four lay dancers using guided imagery and music listening. Subsequent to this, dancers were video recorded while moving freely to a neutral piece of music. Those silenced video recordings were then presented to participants (N=37) in an online experiment, who were instructed to rate the emotion they recognised. Based on the Effort-Shape Theory (Laban, 1947), observers also rated kinematic features of velocity/acceleration, directness, impulsiveness and expansion. Participants rated higher levels of happiness for the happy-induction condition compared to sadness. However, participants rated higher levels of sadness in the sad condition compared to happiness for just one of the four dancers. This finding indicates that it is easier to recognise happiness in free dance movements than sadness. The results of the kinematic features supported previous research which rated higher intensities for the happy condition than the sad condition