The Effects of MP3 Compression on Perceived Emotional Characteristics in Musical Instruments

Mo, Ronald; Choi, Ga Lam; Lee, Chung; Horner, Andrew

doi:10.17743/jaes.2016.0031

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…The uniform effects of reverberation on instruments is in contrast to another post-process that we studied, MP3 compression, where the results were instrument-dependent [57]. There, the trumpet was much more effected than other instruments with more compression and the horn much less effected.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

An Investigation into How Reverberation Effects the Space of Instrument Emotional Characteristics

Mo¹,

So²,

Horner³

2016

J. Audio Eng. Soc.

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Previous research has shown that musical instruments have distinctive emotional characteristics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] and that these characteristics can be significantly changed with reverberation [10][11][12][13]. This paper considers whether these changes in character are relatively uniform or instrument-dependent. We compared eight sustained instrument tones with different amounts and lengths of simple parametric reverberation over eight emotional characteristics. The results show a remarkable consistency in listener rankings of the instruments for each of the different types of reverberation, with strong correlations ranging from 90 to 95%. These results indicate that the underlying instrument space does not change much with reverberation in terms of emotional characteristics, and that each instrument has a particular footprint of emotional characteristics. Among the tones we tested, the instruments cluster into two fairly distinctive groups: those where the positive energetic emotional characteristics are strong (e.g., oboe, trumpet, violin) and those where the low-arousal characteristics are strong (e.g., bassoon, clarinet, flute, horn). The saxophone is an outlier and is somewhat strong for most emotional characteristics. In terms of applications, the relatively consistent rankings of emotional characteristics between the instruments certainly helps each instrument retain its identity in different reverberation environments and suggests possible future work in instrument identification. INTRODUCTIONResearchers have considered various relationships between timbre and music emotion [14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] and, in particular, have found that dfferent instruments have different timbral and emotional characteristics [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. By changing the pitch, dynamics, and other aspects of the performance, the timbre and emotional characteristics also change [9,[30][31][32][33][34][35][36]. These characteristics are further modified by the performance environment-by the amount and length of reverberation in the space [10,11,37,38], which smears the temporal and spectral envelopes and changes the emotional character of the sound. The same idea holds when artificial reverberation is added as a post-process. For example, concert hall reverberation can bring out emotional characteristics such as Mysterious or Heroic from the original studio recording, or the recording engineer and musicians might use a dry sound to emphasize its Comic character [12].While reverberation can strengthen or deemphasize particular emotional characteristics, does it change the underlying instrument space? In other words, when reverberation changes the emotional characteristics of the instruments, does it change them uniformly or some instruments more than others? If we compare the instruments in terms of the emotional characteristic Heroic, for example, and rank them, is the ranking about the same for different amounts and lengths of reverberation? Or, does a bright instrument such as ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 54%

An Investigation into How Reverberation Effects the Space of Instrument Emotional Characteristics

Mo¹,

So²,

Horner³

2016

J. Audio Eng. Soc.

Self Cite

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“…We selected the same categories we have used in previous studies [37,[44][45][46][47][48]. Composers often use these terms in tempo and expression markings in their scores.…”

Section: Emotional Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Emotional Characteristics of Bowed String Instruments with Different Pitch and Dynamics

Chau¹,

Gilburt²,

Mo³

et al. 2017

J. Audio Eng. Soc.

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Previous research has shown that different musical instrument sounds have strong emotional characteristics. This paper investigates how emotional characteristics vary with pitch and dynamics within the bowed string instrument family. We conducted listening tests to compare the effects of pitch and dynamics on the violin, viola, cello, and double bass. Listeners compared the sounds pairwise over 10 emotional categories. Results showed that the emotional characteristics Happy, Heroic, Romantic, Comic, and Calm generally increased with pitch but decreased at the highest pitches. Angry and Sad generally decreased with pitch. Scary was strong in the extreme low and high registers, while Shy and Mysterious were unaffected by pitch. For dynamics, the results showed that Heroic, Comic, and Angry were stronger for loud notes, while Romantic, Calm, Shy, Sad, and the high register for Happy were stronger for soft notes. Scary and Mysterious were unaffected by dynamics. The results also showed significant differences between different bowed string instruments on notes of the same pitch and dynamic level. These results help quantify our understanding of the relative emotional characteristics of the strings. They provide audio engineers and musicians with suggestions for emphasizing emotional characteristics of the bowed strings in sound recordings and performances.

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The Effects of MP3 Compression on Perceived Emotional Characteristics in Musical Instruments

Cited by 2 publications

References 34 publications

An Investigation into How Reverberation Effects the Space of Instrument Emotional Characteristics

An Investigation into How Reverberation Effects the Space of Instrument Emotional Characteristics

The Emotional Characteristics of Bowed String Instruments with Different Pitch and Dynamics

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