Continuous multi-dimensional assessment of musical performance

Abstract

Musical performances have many aspects and vary temporally. Conventional psychological methods cannot be applicable to the measurement of instantaneous and multidimensional impression of such sounds. For that, a new method termed the “method of continuous judgment by selected description” was proposed. A list of adjectives were prepared and subjects were asked to select the most suitable adjective from the list as they listened to music and input the capital letter of that adjective to a computer. Performances of Promenades in “Pictures at an Exhibition” played by three musicians were used as stimuli. Instantaneous judgments, overall judgments and physical measurements were analyzed and compared with each other. A fairly good relation was found between the overall and instantaneous impressions, but close analysis showed some discrepancy between them. Some interaction between parts may give rise to a new impression. “Tempo” of the performances seemed to be one of the most important factors to decide the similarity between performances. The possibilities of further investigation using this new method were proposed.