Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical themes
This study investigated cognitive and emotional effects of syncopation, a feature of musical rhythm that produces expectancy violations in the listener by emphasising weak temporal locations and de-emphasising strong locations in metric structure. Stimuli consisting of pairs of unsync...
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University of Finance and Management in Warsaw
2011
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3259101/ |
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pubmed-32591012012-01-17 Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical themes Keller, Peter E. Schubert, Emery Research Article This study investigated cognitive and emotional effects of syncopation, a feature of musical rhythm that produces expectancy violations in the listener by emphasising weak temporal locations and de-emphasising strong locations in metric structure. Stimuli consisting of pairs of unsyncopated and syncopated musical phrases were rated by 35 musicians for perceived complexity, enjoyment, happiness, arousal, and tension. Overall, syncopated patterns were more enjoyed, and rated as happier, than unsyncopated patterns, while differences in perceived tension were unreliable. Complexity and arousal ratings were asymmetric by serial order, increasing when patterns moved from unsyncopated to syncopated, but not significantly changing when order was reversed. These results suggest that syncopation influences emotional valence (positively), and that while syncopated rhythms are objectively more complex than unsyncopated rhythms, this difference is more salient when complexity increases than when it decreases. It is proposed that composers and improvisers may exploit this asymmetry in perceived complexity by favoring formal structures that progress from rhythmically simple to complex, as can be observed in the initial sections of musical forms such as theme and variations. University of Finance and Management in Warsaw 2011-12-22 /pmc/articles/PMC3259101/ /pubmed/22253676 http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/v10053-008-0094-0 Text en Copyright: © 2011 University of Finance and Management in Warsaw http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Keller, Peter E. Schubert, Emery |
| spellingShingle |
Keller, Peter E. Schubert, Emery Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical themes |
| author_facet |
Keller, Peter E. Schubert, Emery |
| author_sort |
Keller, Peter E. |
| title |
Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical
themes |
| title_short |
Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical
themes |
| title_full |
Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical
themes |
| title_fullStr |
Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical
themes |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical
themes |
| title_sort |
cognitive and affective judgements of syncopated musical
themes |
| description |
This study investigated cognitive and emotional effects of syncopation, a feature
of musical rhythm that produces expectancy violations in the listener by
emphasising weak temporal locations and de-emphasising strong locations in
metric structure. Stimuli consisting of pairs of unsyncopated and syncopated
musical phrases were rated by 35 musicians for perceived complexity, enjoyment,
happiness, arousal, and tension. Overall, syncopated patterns were more enjoyed,
and rated as happier, than unsyncopated patterns, while differences in perceived
tension were unreliable. Complexity and arousal ratings were asymmetric by
serial order, increasing when patterns moved from unsyncopated to syncopated,
but not significantly changing when order was reversed. These results suggest
that syncopation influences emotional valence (positively), and that while
syncopated rhythms are objectively more complex than unsyncopated rhythms, this
difference is more salient when complexity increases than when it decreases. It
is proposed that composers and improvisers may exploit this asymmetry in
perceived complexity by favoring formal structures that progress from
rhythmically simple to complex, as can be observed in the initial sections of
musical forms such as theme and variations. |
| publisher |
University of Finance and Management in Warsaw |
| publishDate |
2011 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3259101/ |
| _version_ |
1611500159592562688 |