Canonical analysis concerning musical melodies and the listeners' emotions

Abstract

Following the research on the static parameters treated in the previous report, we have studied the relationship between the dynamic parameters extracted from the musical scores and the emotional responses to the stimulus obtained from the psychological hearing test by the use of the synthesized sound according to those scores. The dynamic parameters treated in this report are the difference of intervals calculated from the successive three notes, the chord, and the chord progression. The canonical analysis used in this study has revealed (1) that there exist high degree of correlations between the three note patterns with the difference of intervals of 2 and the emotional response of “legerity, ” and also those with the difference of intervals of 0 and “vigor” respectively, (2) that the chord of C, G and the chord progression of G→C are closely related with the emotional responses of “joy, ” “vigor” and “legelity” respectively, while the chord of Am, Dm and the chord progression of E7→Am, Dm→E7 are related with the opposite emotional responses, and (3) that the application of the AR model to the evaluated melodies and the use of AIC give the result that the optimal model order is approximately 7 in the quater note unit. These results are in agreement with our intuitions.