Single chords convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners.

Previous research on music and emotions has been able to pinpoint many structural features conveying emotions. Empirical research on vertical harmony’s emotional qualities, however, has been rare. The main studies in harmony and emotions usually concern the horizontal aspects of harmony, ignoring emotional qualities of chords as such. An empirical experiment was conducted where participants (N = 269) evaluated pre-chosen chords on a 9-item scale of given emotional dimensions. 14 different chords (major, minor, diminished, augmented triads and dominant, major and minor seventh chords with inversions) were played with two distinct timbres (piano and strings). The results suggest significant differences in emotion perception across chords. These were consistent with notions about musical conventions, while providing novel data on how seventh chords affect emotion perception. The inversions and timbre also contributed to the evaluations. Moreover, certain chords played on the strings scored moderately high on the dimension of ‘nostalgia/longing,’ which is usually held as a musical emotion rising only from extra-musical connotations and conditioning, not intrinsically from the structural features of the music. The role of background variables to the results was largely negligible, suggesting the capacity of vertical harmony to convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners

Bilateral Inversion Principles

This paper formulates a bilateral account of harmony that is an alternative to one proposed by Francez. It builds on an account of harmony for unilateral logic proposed by Kürbis and the observation that reading the rules for the connectives of bilateral logic bottom up gives the grounds and consequences of formulas with the opposite speech act. I formulate a process I call 'inversion' which allows the determination of assertive elimination rules from assertive introduction rules, and rejective elimination rules from rejective introduction rules, and conversely. It corresponds to Francez's notion of vertical harmony. I also formulate a process I call 'conversion', which allows the determination of rejective introduction rules from assertive elimination rules and conversely, and the determination of assertive introduction rules from rejective elimination rules and conversely. It corresponds to Francez's notion of horizontal harmony. The account has a number of features that distinguishes it from Francez's

Single chords convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners

Previous research on music and emotions has been able to pinpoint many structural features conveying emotions. Empirical research on vertical harmony’s emotional qualities, however, has been rare. The main studies in harmony and emotions usually concern the horizontal aspects of harmony, ignoring emotional qualities of chords as such. An empirical experiment was conducted where participants (N = 269) evaluated pre-chosen chords on a 9-item scale of given emotional dimensions. 14 different chords (major, minor, diminished, augmented triads and dominant, major and minor seventh chords with inversions) were played with two distinct timbres (piano and strings). The results suggest significant differences in emotion perception across chords. These were consistent with notions about musical conventions, while providing novel data on how seventh chords affect emotion perception. The inversions and timbre also contributed to the evaluations. Moreover, certain chords played on the strings scored moderately high on the dimension of ‘nostalgia/longing,’ which is usually held as a musical emotion rising only from extra-musical connotations and conditioning, not intrinsically from the structural features of the music. The role of background variables to the results was largely negligible, suggesting the capacity of vertical harmony to convey distinct emotional qualities to both naïve and expert listeners

Fantasy and functionality : Surveying personal italo disco related musical experience as a metaphoric-affective conceptualization process

In this thesis, I study personal musical experience in the light of so-called embodied cognition. According to this research paradigm, meaning arises from our interaction with the physical world in a process where the human body has a mediating role. The process has been shown to be metaphorical by nature, due to which I base my introspective findings mostly on the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT) of Lakoff & Johnson. Interaction with environment invokes affects, which has consequences in terms of person’s preference for metaphoric content. The goal of my work is to investigate reasons for my penchant for certain kind of music. Addressing this involves scrutinising my own perceptions and feelings when listening to italo disco, thus, music that I like, and supporting the findings with theories and earlier research. Besides CMT and also traditional music analysis, I utilise, for example, the complementary theories of the sonic object and musical gestures in pointing out experiential entities from textural and timbral elements of an italo disco song. The entities (sonic objects) are expected to arise from an affective sensation of motion, a process where conceptual metaphor plays an important role. Therefore, at the second stage of the analysis, I demonstrate metaphors on the grounds of the sonic objects in an attempt of establishing at least a part of my personal “metaphorical repertoire”. Arnie Cox’s mimetic hypothesis and framework for the study of musical affect is applied particularly during the second part of the analysis. The results of the inquiry confirm my hypothesis about the central role of conceptual metaphor in the emergence of (personal) musical experience. The set of metaphors I succeeded to point out suggest that I’m inclined to music that communicates powerful and energetic, thus clearly arousing affects–music that responds to the need of indulging in fantasy.Tutkin työssäni yksilöllistä musiikkikokemusta niin sanotun kehollisen kognition paradigman kautta. Tämän lähestymistavan mukaan merkitykset syntyvät vuorovaikutuksessa fyysisen maailman kanssa. Keholla on tässä prosessissa välittävä rooli. Prosessi on osoittautunut metaforiseksi, minkä vuoksi pohjaan introspektiiviset havaintoni pääasiassa Lakoffin & Johnsonin käsitteelliseen metaforateoriaan. Ympäristön kanssa vuorovaikutuksessa oleminen herättää affekteja, millä on vaikutusta siihen, minkälaisen metaforasisällön henkilö laittaa etusijalle. Työni tavoitteena on tutkia syitä musiikkimieltymyksiini. Metodina käytän omien aistimusteni ja tunteideni tarkkailua kuunnellessani italodiskoa–musiikkia, joka vetoaa minuun. Tuen introspektion tuloksia eri teorioilla sekä aiemmalla tutkimuksella. Käsitteellisen metaforateorian ja esimerkiksi perinteisen musiikkianalyysin lisäksi käytän muun muassa niin sanotun ääniobjektin ja musiikillisten eleiden teorioita pyrkiessäni osoittamaan kokemusperäisiä kokonaisuuksia italodiskokappaleen tekstuurisista ja äänenvärillisistä osatekijöistä. Kokonaisuuksien (ääniobjektien) voidaan olettaa syntyvän affektiivisen liikkeen aistimuksen pohjalta. Tässä prosessissa käsitteellinen metafora on tärkeässä roolissa. Siksi analyysin toisessa vaiheessa osoitan ääniobjekteihin pohjautuvia käsitteellisiä metaforia tarkoituksenani esitellä osa henkilökohtaisesta ”metaforarepertuaaristani”. Arnie Coxin mimeettistä hypoteesia ja musiikillisen affektin viitekehystä sovelletaan varsinkin analyysin toisessa vaiheessa. Tutkimuksen tulokset vahvistavat hypoteesini käsitteellisen metaforan keskeisestä roolista (henkilökohtaisen) musiikkikokemuksen synnyssä. Osoittamani metaforakokoelma viittaa viehtymykseeni voimakkaita ja energisiä, selvästi kiihottavia affekteja viestivää musiikkia kohtaan–musiikkia, joka mahdollistaa heittäytymisen fantasian maailmaan

CoCoFormer: A controllable feature-rich polyphonic music generation method

This paper explores the modeling method of polyphonic music sequence. Due to the great potential of Transformer models in music generation, controllable music generation is receiving more attention. In the task of polyphonic music, current controllable generation research focuses on controlling the generation of chords, but lacks precise adjustment for the controllable generation of choral music textures. This paper proposed Condition Choir Transformer (CoCoFormer) which controls the output of the model by controlling the chord and rhythm inputs at a fine-grained level. In this paper, the self-supervised method improves the loss function and performs joint training through conditional control input and unconditional input training. In order to alleviate the lack of diversity on generated samples caused by the teacher forcing training, this paper added an adversarial training method. CoCoFormer enhances model performance with explicit and implicit inputs to chords and rhythms. In this paper, the experiments proves that CoCoFormer has reached the current better level than current models. On the premise of specifying the polyphonic music texture, the same melody can also be generated in a variety of ways

Editor's Note

No abstract available

Commentary on Lahdelma and Eerola

This commentary offers a critique of the idea that nostalgia can be conveyed by a single chord – a major 7th. The commentary questions the constancy of emotion conveyed by a single chord in its different manifestations, and the extent to which it can afford perception of a complex emotion such as nostalgia