Singing and Accompaniment Support the Processing of Song Lyrics and Change the Lyrics' Meaning

Abstract

A growing body of evidence indicates that music can support the processing of language. Some of its beneficial effects may even occur after one exposure. Accompaniment can also have an impact: in a-cappella singing, silences and out-of-key notes may confuse listeners, while accompaniment avoids silences and elucidates both rhythm and harmony, thereby supporting music-processing and concentration. These hypotheses were tested in two experiments. In a classroom setting, 271 pupils (M = 15.7 years old, SD = 0.9), listened to five out of 24 tracks (four songs in six different conditions) and completed a questionnaire after each one. As expected, the instrumental interludes between sung or spoken phrases in accompanied versions were rated less distracting than the silences that replace them in unaccompanied ones. Furthermore, perceived arousal, emotion, valence, and purity of singing were rated more positively in accompanied versions. Singing, on the other hand, supports the perceived intelligibility and comprehensibility of the lyrics. Finally, the music makes repetitions of words and phrases more meaningful and changes the lyrics' emotional meaning, wereby some aspects of sadness are associated with negative affect while other aspects of sadness are associated with positive affect. These results were by and large replicated in a better randomized laboratory experiment among 24 adults (M = 24.4; SD = 4.8).

Reanalyzing Schotanus 2020: A reaction to Lee's commentary

“…Additionally, the exclusion of items evaluating the quality of the lyrics has weakened the model, as fewer factors are significant right now. Yet, the results support the assumption that the differences in the results for the two studies, observed in Schotanus (2020a), are due to different ratings.…”

“…After each track they filled out a questionnaire, mainly consisting of Likert-scale items, seven of which were asked for music and lyrics separately. For more details concerning participants, materials and procedure, see Schotanus (2020a), and for songs (lead sheets and recordings) and questionnaires, see Schotanus (2017).…”

“…IN Schotanus (2020a), I reported on two studies, a classroom study and a laboratory experiment involving EEG measures, in which participants listened to different song versions of the same four songs and answered some questions about them (see also Schotanus, Eekhof and Willems, 2018). The studies were created in order to test several aspects of the Musical Foregrounding Hypothesis (Schotanus 2015(Schotanus , 2020b, including the assumption that presenting a text sung instead of spoken would support text processing, even after just one exposure, in particular in a classroom setting.…”

“…As I have pointed out in Schotanus (2020a), the classroom study met with several methodological problems: there were issues with randomization, and the data could not be analysed using a single factor analysis because most of the questions could not be asked in all conditions. Furthermore, several questions in the questionnaire seemed to have been misunderstood, among other problems.…”

The effect of timing on the singer’s tone of voice.

“…One example of these “affects” is sincerity (which has been mentioned by Pattison [2015]). Other interactive emotional communication through music may involve a nagging or a calming quality, which is defined by the effect on the listener (Schotanus, 2020a, 2020b, Part 3), and social or psychological constructions (Warrenburg, 2020) such as the impression of authenticity, which is very important in the music industry (Auslander, 1999; Frith, 1981/2007). Authenticity and sincerity may not seem to be directly related to emotion, yet, if a singer is interpreted to be inauthentic or insincere, this will affect both the listener’s interpretation of the emotional state of the singer and the listener’s own emotional state, and consequently it will also affect the listener’s ability to connect with the music.…”