Dataset Information

Rhythmic Density Affects Listeners' Emotional Response to Microtiming.

ABSTRACT: Microtiming has been assumed to be vital for the experience of groove, but past research presented conflicting results: some studies found that microtiming is irrelevant for groove, others reported that microtiming has a detrimental effect on the groove experience, yet others described circumstances under which microtiming has no negative impact on groove. The three studies in this paper aim at explaining some of these discrepancies by clarifying to what extent listeners' emotional responses to microtiming depend on the distribution of microtiming deviations across instrumental parts (voicing) or other moderating factors like tempo or rhythmic density. The studies use data from two listening experiments involving expert bass and drums duo recordings in swing and funk style. - Study A investigates the effect of fixed time displacements within and between the parts played by different musicians. Listeners (n = 160) reacted negatively to irregularities within the drum track, but the mutual displacement of bass vs. drums did not have an effect.- Study B develops three metrics to calculate the average microtiming magnitude in a musical excerpt. The experiment showed that listeners' (n = 160) emotional responses to expert performance microtiming aligned with each other across styles, when microtiming magnitude was adjusted for rhythmic density. This indicates that rhythmic density is a unifying moderator for listeners' emotional response to microtiming in swing and funk.- Study C used the data from both experiments in order to compare the effect of fixed microtiming displacements (from Study A) with scaled versions of the originally performed microtiming patterns (from Study B). It showed that fixed snare drum displacements irritated expert listeners more than the more flexible deviations occurring in the original performances. This provides some evidence that listeners' emotional response to microtiming deviations not only depends on the magnitude of the deviations, but also on the kind and origin of the microtiming patterns (fixed lab displacements vs. flexible performance microtiming).

SUBMITTER: Senn O

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5643849 | biostudies-literature | 2017

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Rhythmic Density Affects Listeners' Emotional Response to Microtiming.

Senn Olivier O Bullerjahn Claudia C Kilchenmann Lorenz L von Georgi Richard R

Frontiers in psychology 20171012

Microtiming has been assumed to be vital for the experience of groove, but past research presented conflicting results: some studies found that microtiming is irrelevant for groove, others reported that microtiming has a detrimental effect on the groove experience, yet others described circumstances under which microtiming has no negative impact on groove. The three studies in this paper aim at explaining some of these discrepancies by clarifying to what extent listeners' emotional responses to ...[more]

PMID: 29075210

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Project description:Music psychology defines groove as humans' pleasureable urge to move their body in synchrony with music. Past research has found that rhythmic syncopation, event density, beat salience, and rhythmic variability are positively associated with groove. This exploratory study investigates the groove effect of 248 reconstructed drum patterns from different popular music styles (pop, rock, funk, heavy metal, rock'n'roll, hip hop, soul, R&B). It aims at identifying factors that might be relevant for groove and worth investigating in a controlled setting in the future. Drum patterns of eight bars duration, chosen from 248 popular music tracks, have been transcribed and audio reconstructions have been created on the basis of sound samples. During an online listening experiment, 665 participants rated the reconstructions a total of 8,329 times using a groove questionnaire. Results show that, among 15 tested variables, syncopation (R2 = 0.010) and event density (R2 = 0.011) were positively associated with the groove ratings. These effects were stronger in participants who were music professionals, compared to amateur musicians or mere listeners. A categorisation of the stimuli according to structural aspects was also associated with groove (R2 = 0.018). Beat salience, residual microtiming and rhythmic variability showed no effect on the groove ratings. Participants' familiarity with a drum pattern had a positive influence on the groove ratings (?2 = 0.051). The largest isolated effect was measured for participants' style bias (R2 = 0.123): groove ratings tended to be high if participants had the impression that the drum pattern belonged to a style they liked. Combined, the effects of style bias and familiarity (R2 = 0.152) exceeded the other effects as predictors for groove by a wide margin. We conclude that listeners' taste, musical biographies and expertise have a strong effect on their groove experience. This motivates groove research not to focus on the music alone, but to take the listeners into account as well.

Dataset Information

Rhythmic Density Affects Listeners' Emotional Response to Microtiming.

Publications

Rhythmic Density Affects Listeners' Emotional Response to Microtiming.

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