Hello
I am conducting research into the human emotional response to music.
I have generated a survey asking for emotional evaluation of audio clips.
Each clip is a three second recording of a sine wave playing a musical interval first melodically, then harmonically.
Each interval ascends from middle C up some number of quarter tones up to one octave.
I am looking for a continuous pattern of emotional response, of both valence (positive/negative) and arousal (intensity) so that I may find a mathematical function to describe the relationship between interval and emotion.
The survey should take around 10 minutes. There are 25 three-second recordings followed by two repeating questions each.
If you decide to contribute your time, I thank you in advance.
The link is below.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9PVYFK5
Survey - Music Research
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- KVRist
- 128 posts since 15 Aug, 2012 from Western Australia
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 128 posts since 15 Aug, 2012 from Western Australia
Bit of an update.
I have a few responses so far (four). I'm hoping to reach 40.
He's a chart of valence (positive/negative affect) of one octave broken into quarter tones, based on the small amount of data I have already.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ia1de ... zHB8vqEX9o
Individual responses were normalised to +/-1 to compensate for the varying ranges of responses, then averaged.
Two observations can be made.
One is that there does appear to be a curve to the data and in particular, an anti-semetrical one. That is, the left half is roughly a mirrored and upside-down version of the right half.
The second observation is that there is a lot of noise, which is why I NEED MORE DATA. Which is where you come in by completing the completely easy, ten minute survey. Thanks.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9PVYFK5
I have a few responses so far (four). I'm hoping to reach 40.
He's a chart of valence (positive/negative affect) of one octave broken into quarter tones, based on the small amount of data I have already.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ia1de ... zHB8vqEX9o
Individual responses were normalised to +/-1 to compensate for the varying ranges of responses, then averaged.
Two observations can be made.
One is that there does appear to be a curve to the data and in particular, an anti-semetrical one. That is, the left half is roughly a mirrored and upside-down version of the right half.
The second observation is that there is a lot of noise, which is why I NEED MORE DATA. Which is where you come in by completing the completely easy, ten minute survey. Thanks.
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9PVYFK5
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- KVRAF
- 26033 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
Yeah, after 20 or so of these, it's just too uninteresting. Life is just too short.
I'll tell you my results once for the entire exercise. 0 = neither negative nor positive; 0 = no intensity. Period. It's electronic sine waves.
This isn't music. There is nothing musical really about the tones. There are no cues for negative or positive impressions or experience and no cue for degree of intensity.
What do you hope for with this?
I'll tell you my results once for the entire exercise. 0 = neither negative nor positive; 0 = no intensity. Period. It's electronic sine waves.
This isn't music. There is nothing musical really about the tones. There are no cues for negative or positive impressions or experience and no cue for degree of intensity.
What do you hope for with this?
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- KVRist
- 350 posts since 11 May, 2008
The idea that sound intervals and emotions can be described using a mathematical function as if they were correlated as merely a physical phenomenon is laughable and bogus. Much of those associations are cultural.
Therefore, this survey is deeply flawed and useless.
1) it is not a survey about response to music but to sound which is totally different.
2) it doesn't collect any variables about respondents (for instance native language, age, sex, location, previous musical experience and exposure, etc...), so you're assuming the human responses to sounds to be all equal cross-culturaly, which is not true. Native language, for instance, is a variable that impacts the human perception of sounds. A native chinese does not perceives the same as a native spanish. Neither a 70 year old the same as a 20 year old. Neither someone who has never played a musical instrument compared to someone who has been playing musical instruments for many years. Therefore, without controling those variables (and many others), all you are collecting is noise.
3) You don't provide any reference point for a start. Any sound is only "positive" or "intense" relative to something else. Therefore if you don't provide a starting point for calibration each one of your respondents will perhaps compare the first sound with a different personal imaginary reference, making all subsequent valuations useless.
I could go on forever. It is not possible to make anything scientific about music without studying music in and as culture as the first step: concept, behaviour and only then sounds. perception and production of musical sounds emerge from behaviours shaped by concepts informed by cultural values that differ greatly among humans. IF you collect information from 1000 15-25 year old native english speakers from Arizona, perhaps you could come up with some formula that would make sense for those people. But probably you'd get very different results if say then you collected from 1000 40-60 year olds from Latvia, etc, etc...
Did you ever wondered why Radio stations had to had "target audiences" or why the industry needed to invent "musical genres" to label commercial music?...
Therefore, this survey is deeply flawed and useless.
1) it is not a survey about response to music but to sound which is totally different.
2) it doesn't collect any variables about respondents (for instance native language, age, sex, location, previous musical experience and exposure, etc...), so you're assuming the human responses to sounds to be all equal cross-culturaly, which is not true. Native language, for instance, is a variable that impacts the human perception of sounds. A native chinese does not perceives the same as a native spanish. Neither a 70 year old the same as a 20 year old. Neither someone who has never played a musical instrument compared to someone who has been playing musical instruments for many years. Therefore, without controling those variables (and many others), all you are collecting is noise.
3) You don't provide any reference point for a start. Any sound is only "positive" or "intense" relative to something else. Therefore if you don't provide a starting point for calibration each one of your respondents will perhaps compare the first sound with a different personal imaginary reference, making all subsequent valuations useless.
I could go on forever. It is not possible to make anything scientific about music without studying music in and as culture as the first step: concept, behaviour and only then sounds. perception and production of musical sounds emerge from behaviours shaped by concepts informed by cultural values that differ greatly among humans. IF you collect information from 1000 15-25 year old native english speakers from Arizona, perhaps you could come up with some formula that would make sense for those people. But probably you'd get very different results if say then you collected from 1000 40-60 year olds from Latvia, etc, etc...
Did you ever wondered why Radio stations had to had "target audiences" or why the industry needed to invent "musical genres" to label commercial music?...
Play fair and square!
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- KVRAF
- 16733 posts since 13 Oct, 2009
I can think of very few situations where it makes sense to talk about trends from a sample size of four. Is this for an undergraduate research project, e.g., a class assignment?Ninja_Edit wrote:Bit of an update.
I have a few responses so far (four). I'm hoping to reach 40.
He's a chart of valence (positive/negative affect) of one octave broken into quarter tones, based on the small amount of data I have already.