Thoughts in concert : A multi-method approach to investigate the effect of performers’ focus of attention

Does it matter what a performer feels or thinks about while performing? To investigate the effect of performers’ focus of attention on their performances we asked eight violinists to play the same musical phrase in response to three different instructions. The first instruction was to focus on the technical aspects of playing. The second instruction was to give an expressive performance. Following a sadness-inducing mood induction task, the third instruction was to play while focusing on felt emotions. High quality audio and three-dimensional motion-capture recordings were made of all performances. Subsequently, thirty individuals rated how much they liked each performance, how skilled they…

Exploring relations between Big Five personality traits and musical emotions embodied in spontaneous dance

We explored the hypothesis that musical emotions are embodied differentially by people according to their personality. Nine hundred and fifty two individuals completed the Big Five personality inventory. A subset of 60 participants were asked to spontaneously move to 30 short musical stimuli while being recorded with a motion-capture system. The musical stimuli were separately rated for perceived emotions. Embodied musical emotions were evaluated as the correlation between features derived from the motion-capture data and the mean ratings of perceived emotions. Correlations between embodied musical emotions and personality traits provided tentative support for our hypothesis. A series of l…

Moved through music: The effect of experienced emotions on performers’ movement characteristics

Do performers who feel sad move differently compared to those who express sadness? Although performers’ expressive movements have been widely studied, little is known about how performers’ experienced emotions affect such movements. To investigate this, we made 72 motion-capture recordings of eight violinists playing a melodic phrase in response to three different instructions. The first instruction was to focus on the technical aspects of playing. The second instruction was to give an expressive performance. Before the third instruction, performers were subjected to a mood induction task. Following this, performers played while focusing on their experienced emotions. After each playing co…

Music we move to : Spotify audio features and reasons for listening

Previous literature has shown that music preferences (and thus preferred musical features) differ depending on the listening context and reasons for listening (RL). Yet, to our knowledge no research has investigated how features of music that people dance or move to relate to particular RL. Consequently, in two online surveys, participants (N = 173) were asked to name songs they move to (“dance music”). Additionally, participants (N = 105) from Survey 1 provided RL for their selected songs. To investigate relationships between the two, we first extracted audio features from dance music using the Spotify API and compared those features with a baseline dataset that is considered to represent …

Emotions in motion: Short-term group form Dance/Movement Therapy in the treatment of depression: A pilot study

Abstract Depression is a highly prevalent mood disorder that impairs a person's social skills and quality of life. Depressed patients have been shown to have difficulty in identifying, expressing, and regulating emotions, especially negative emotions, such as anger. Here, we present a study that investigates using body- and movement-based therapy intervention in the treatment of depression. Central to this study is the use of a short-term group form of Dance/Movement Therapy (DMT) intervention. The main research question was whether a short-term group form of DMT intervention could decrease the symptoms of depression and anxiety. Depressed participants ( N  = 21, aged 18–60 years) received …

Music and Emotion: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

One of the key reasons people engage with music, whether as listener or performer, therapist or researcher, is because of its emotional impact. Music comforts us when we’re sad, lifts us up in happier times, bonds us together. We use music to modify our mood, augment current feelings, release tension. Given the ever-growing presence of music in our everyday lives, the investigation of issues related to and subsequent dissemination of knowledge concerning music and emotion is becoming increasingly relevant. This special issue is based on work presented at the 3rd International Conference on Music & Emotion (ICME3) organised by the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Resea…

Hunting for the beat in the body: on period and phase locking in music-induced movement.

Music has the capacity to induce movement in humans. Such responses during music listening are usually spontaneous and range from tapping to full-body dancing. However, it is still unclear how humans embody musical structures to facilitate entrainment. This paper describes two experiments, one dealing with period locking to different metrical levels in full-body movement and its relationships to beat- and rhythm-related musical characteristics, and the other dealing with phase locking in the more constrained condition of sideways swaying motions. Expected in Experiment 1 was that music with clear and strong beat structures would facilitate more period-locked movement. Experiment 2 was assum…

The psychology of streaming : exploring music listeners’ motivations to favour access over ownership

Digital streaming represents the most radical development in the way we experience music since the invention of automatic playback technologies two centuries ago. From zero ownership and on-demand access to a virtually limitless library of music via a disconnected financial transaction, streaming services challenge previous conceptions of how music is defined, experienced and consumed. This paper explores streaming from a psychological perspective, and highlights a range of factors that motivate users to favour access over ownership. From removal of responsibilities of ownership to enhanced discovery, nostalgia-fulfilment to augmented emotional engagement, adoption of access-based consumpti…

Modelling the relationships between emotional responses to, and musical content of, music therapy improvisations

This article reports a study in which listeners were asked to provide continuous ratings of perceived emotional content of clinical music therapy improvisations. Participants were presented with 20 short excerpts of music therapy improvisations, and had to rate perceived activity, pleasantness and strength using a computer-based slider interface. A total of nine musical features relating to various aspects of the music (timing, register, dynamics, tonality, pulse clarity and sensory dissonance) were extracted from the excerpts, and relationships between these features and participants' emotion ratings were investigated. The data were analysed in three stages. First, inter-dimension correla…

Groove as a multidimensional participatory experience

Groove is a popular and widely used concept in the field of music. Yet, its precise definition remains elusive. Upon closer inspection, groove appears to be used as an umbrella term with various connotations depending on the musical era, the musical context, and the individual using the term. Our aim in this article was to explore different definitions and connotations of the term groove so as to reach a more detailed understanding of it. Consequently, in an online survey, 88 participants provided free-text descriptions of the term groove. A thematic analysis revealed that groove is a multifaceted phenomenon, and participants’ descriptions fit into two main categories: music- and experience…

Emotion-driven encoding of music preference and personality in dance

Thirty rhythmic music excerpts were presented to 60 individuals. Dance movements to each excerpt were recorded using an optical motion-capture system, preference for each excerpt recorded on a 5-point Likert scale, and personality assessed using the 44-item version of the Big Five Inventory. From the movement data, a large number of postural, kinematic and kinetic features were extracted, a subset of which were chosen for further analysis using sequential backward elimination with variance inflation factor (VIF) selection. Multivariate analyses revealed significant effects on these 11 features of both preference and personality, as well as a number of interactions between the two. As regar…

Predicting Music Therapy Clients’ Type of Mental Disorder Using Computational Feature Extraction and Statistical Modelling Techniques

Background. Previous work has shown that improvisations produced by clients during clinical music therapy sessions are amenable to computational analysis. For example, it has been shown that the perception of emotion in such improvisations is related to certain musical features, such as note density, tonal clarity, and note velocity. Other work has identified relationships between an individual’s level of mental retardation and features such as amount of silence, integration of tempo with the therapist, and amount of dissonance. The present study further develops this work by attempting to predict music therapy clients’ type of mental disorder, as clinically diagnosed, from their improvisat…

Adolescents’ expression and perception of emotion in music reflects their broader abilities of emotional communication

Background: Musical behavior has been shown to reflect broader individual differences. However, despite the prevalence of music in the lives of young people little is known about the mechanisms through which adolescents’ musical behavior connects to their general socio-emotional behavior and adjustment. The current study focused on abilities of emotional communication and investigated whether adolescents’ abilities in both perceiving and expressing emotions through music would be reflective of their general abilities of socio-emotional communication and interaction, measured through empathy and conduct problems. Due to the lack of previous research the study was mainly exploratory, but we e…

Relationships between perceived emotions in music and music-induced movement

Listening to music makes us move in various ways. Several factors can affect the characteristics of these movements, including individual factors and musical features. Additionally, music-induced movement may also be shaped by the emotional content of the music, since emotions are an important element of musical expression. This study investigates possible relationships between emotional characteristics of music and music-induced, quasi-spontaneous movement. We recorded music-induced movement of 60 individuals, and computationally extracted features from the movement data. Additionally, the emotional content of the stimuli was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent correlational …

Emotions in Motion

Depression is a disabling medical illness characterized by persistent and all-encompassing feelings of sadness, loss of interest, or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities, as well as problems in emotion regulation. Medication, sometimes in combination with verbal psychotherapy or counselling, is the predominant method of treatment for depression. This article argues that body movement, being fundamental to the perception and production of emotion, should also be considered in approaches and methods utilized in the treatment of depression. This chapter introduces motion capture technology as a method for studying dance movement, and provides a short overview of related studies. Recent fi…

Exploring relationships between pianists’ body movements, their expressive intentions, and structural elements of the music

Body movements during music performance have been found to be indicative of the performer’s musical intentionality, and contribute to an observer’s perception of expressive playing. This study investigates the effect of structural elements of the score, and the playing of different levels of expression on body movements during a piano performance. Pianists were required to play the same piece in four different performance conditions. Their movements were tracked by an optical motion capture system, and the comparisons that were made between specific parts of the body used, performance condition, and musical score locations were subsequently statistically examined. We found that the head an…

Effects of the Big Five and musical genre on music-induced movement

Nine-hundred-and-fifty-two individuals completed the Big Five Inventory, and 60 extreme scorers were presented with 30 music excerpts from six popular genres. Music-induced movement was recorded by an optical motion-capture system, the data from which 55 postural, kinematic, and kinetic movement features were computed. These features were subsequently reduced to five principal components of movement representing Local Movement, Global Movement, Hand Flux, Head Speed, and Hand Distance. Multivariate Analyses revealed significant effects on these components of both personality and genre, as well as several interactions between the two. Each personality dimension was associated with a differen…

Influences of rhythm- and timbre-related musical features on characteristics of music-induced movement

Music makes us move. Several factors can affect the characteristics of such movements, including individual factors or musical features. For this study, we investigated the effect of rhythm- and timbre-related musical features as well as tempo on movement characteristics. Sixty participants were presented with 30 musical stimuli representing different styles of popular music, and instructed to move along with the music. Optical motion capture was used to record participants’ movements. Subsequently, eight movement features and four rhythm- and timbre-related musical features were computationally extracted from the data, while the tempo was assessed in a perceptual experiment. A subsequent c…

Relationships Between Audio and Movement Features, and Perceived Emotions in Musical Performance

A core aspect of musical performance is communicating emotional and expressive intentions to the audience. Recognition of the musician's intentions is constructed from a combination of visual and auditory performance cues, as well as compositional features. The current study attempted to quantify these contributions by measuring relationships between ratings of perceived emotion, and motion and auditory performance features. A pianist and violinist with advanced degrees in music performance individually performed four short western tonal pieces. The musicians were tasked with performing the pieces while invoking different expressive intentions: sad, happy, angry, and as a control, deadpan. …

An investigation of conductors' temporal gestures and conductor— musician synchronization, and a first experiment

This article reports an empirical investigation into the characteristics of conductors' temporal gestures and people's ability to synchronize with them. It describes a new approach to the investigation of the characteristics of conductors' gestures, the investigation of conductor—musician synchronization, and a first experiment to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach. As part of this approach, a new computer-based environment for manipulating and presenting conductors' gestures, and recording participants' responses, was developed. This involved the creation of several pieces of new software, all of which were developed under Microsoft® Windows® using Visual C++. Used in combination…

The Sound of Emotion

What is the effect of performers’ experienced emotions on the auditory characteristics of their performances? By asking performers to play a music phrase in response to three different instructions we attempted to answer this question. Performers were instructed to do the following: 1) play while focusing on the technical aspects of their playing; 2) give an expressive performance; and 3) focus on their experienced emotions, prior to which they were subjected to a sadness-inducing mood induction task. Performers were interviewed after each playing condition. We analyzed the tempo, articulation, dynamics, timbre, and vibrato of the performances obtained as well as the interview data. A focus…

Dance moves reflect current affective state illustrative of approach–avoidance motivation.

Effects of musical valence on the cognitive processing of lyrics

The effects of music on the brain have been extensively researched, and numerous connections have been found between music and language, music and emotion, and music and cognitive processing. Despite this work, these three research areas have never before been drawn together into a single research paradigm. This is significant as their combination could lead to valuable insights into the effects of musical valence on the cognitive processing of lyrics. This research draws on theories of cognitive processing suggesting that negative moods facilitate systematic and detail-oriented processing, while positive moods facilitate heuristic-based processing. The current study ( n = 56) used an erro…

Musification of Accelerometry Data Towards Raising Awareness of Physical Activity

Previous research has shown that the temporal dynamics of human activity recorded by accelerometers share a similar structure with music. This opens the possibility to use musical sonification of accelerometry data to raise awareness of daily physical activity. In this study a method was developed for quantifying the daily structure of human activity using multigranular temporal segmentation, and applying it to produce musical sonifications. Two accelerometry recordings of physical activity were selected from a dataset, such that one shows more physical activity than the other. These data were segmented in different time-scales so that segmentation boundaries at a given time-scale have a co…

Embodied Metre in Spontaneous Movement to Music

Listening to music is often associated with spontaneous body movements, frequently synchronized with its periodic structure. The notion of embodied cognition assumes that intelligent behavior does not emerge from mere passive perception, but requires goal-directed interactions between the organism and its environment. According to this view, one could postulate that we use our bodily movements to help parse the metric structure of music. The aim of the study was to investigate how pulsations on different metrical levels are manifested in spontaneous movement to music. Participants were presented with a piece of instrumental music in 4/4 time, played in five different tempi ranging from 92 B…

The Sound of Sadness : The Effect of Performers' Emotions on Audience Ratings

Very few studies have investigated the effect of performers’ felt emotions on the audience perception of their performances. Does it matter what a performer feels or thinks about when performing? To investigate this, we asked four violinists to play the same musical phrase in response to three different instructions. The first in-struction was to focus on the technical aspects of their playing. The second instruction was to give an expres-sive performance. Following a sadness-inducing mood induction task, the third instruction was to play while focusing on their felt emotions. High quality audio and motion-capture recordings were made of all perfor-mances. Subsequently, motion-capture anima…

Hot or Not? Personality and attraction on the dance floor

Previous research has shown that personality plays a significant role in interpersonal attraction. We took this issue to the dance floor, and investigated how personality characteristics of both observers and dancers affect the former’s attractiveness ratings of the latter. Sixty-two heterosexual adult participants watched 48 short audio-visual point-light animations of eight male and eight female adults dancing to Techno, Pop, and Latin music. Participants rated perceived skill of each dancer, and the likelihood with which they would go on a date with them. Both dancers’ and observers’ personality characteristics were assessed using the Big Five Inventory. Multivariate analyses of variance…

On Happy Dance : Emotion Recognition in Dance Movements

Movements are capable of conveying emotions, as shown for instance in studies on both non-verbal gestures and music-specific movements performed by instrumentalists or professional dancers. Since dancing/moving to music is a common human activity, this study aims at investigating whether quasi-spontaneous music-induced movements of non-professional dancers can convey emotional qualities as well. From a movement data pool of 60 individuals dancing to 30 musical stimuli, the performances of four dancers that moved most notably, and four stimuli representing happiness, anger, sadness, and tenderness were chosen to create a set of stimuli containing the four audio excerpts, 16 video excerpts (w…

Emotions in motion - Tunteet Liikkeessä (TuLi)

Depression is a highly prevalent mood disorder which impairs a person’s social skills and quality of life, and affects their ability to recognise and express emotions. Here, we describe the first study to investigate how depression affects expression of emotions perceived in music through spontaneous, expressive body movement. Central to this study is the use of a Dance Movement Therapy (DMT) intervention. Specifically, we investigate how depression and possible co-morbid anxiety affect a person’s ability to express emotions perceived in music through spontaneous movement, regulate their emotions through music and music related movement, and whether DMT can improve these skills in depressed…