Continuous rating experiments on the affective impression and congruence between moving picture and music of visual media productions were conducted to clarify the psychological process for creating congruence between moving picture and music. The audio-visual stimuli were the excerpts from commercial DVDs. The rating experiments revealed that the moving picture and music of the audio-visual stimuli evoked similar affective impression. Furthermore, when moving picture and music evoked similar affective impression, the perceived congruence between moving picture and music was high. This type of congruency between moving picture and music is called semantic congruency. When moving picture and music of different productions were combined, the affective impression of moving picture was not similar to that of music. Therefore, the semantic congruency was not created and the perceived congruence was low. A specific duration was required to create semantic congruency between moving pictures and music, because the congruency was created after affective impressions of moving picture and music were perceived. However, once the semantic congruency was created, the effect continued after the factors of semantic congruency disappeared. Furthermore, the congruence gradually increased according to the progress of the moving picture.

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We explored the context effect with respect to perceived congruence between music and images in audiovisual stimuli. We conducted rating experiments using music and images with cheerful or gloomy affective impressions. When the affective impressions of the music and images in two successively presented audiovisual scenes were similar and consistent, the perceived congruence of one of the audiovisual scenes was higher when it was presented as the second part of the stimulus than when it was presented first. The perceived congruence between music and images with opposite affective impressions was low, and this perceived incongruence decreased when the incongruent audiovisual combination was presented as the second part of the stimulus. Interestingly, when the affective impressions produced by music and images were consistent in two successive scenes, the perceived incongruence was especially low. Furthermore, when the affective impressions produced by music and images shown first were opposite, the perceived congruence of a subsequent audiovisual combination with the similar affective impressions decreased. The perceived incongruence of opposite audiovisual impressions decreased when the incongruent audiovisual combination was presented after congruent audiovisual combinations. These tendencies were caused by the context effect in audiovisual stimuli.

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Authors propose an automatic arrangement method for ensemble playing targeting popular music. Proposed method categorized each of tracks in MIDI music as either of melody, bass, backing or percussion. Plenty of MIDI files are analyzed to extract the one-bar-length backing phrases out of melody, bass and percussion phrases. In turn, principle components for the collected backing patterns are named as “Eigenphrase of backing”, that is used to label phrases in MIDI file for the purpose of automatic arrangement. The eigenphrase of backing is obtained to take part in the categorization of phrases in MIDI file to be arranged as either of melody, bass or backing. An automatic arrangement method based on extraction of phrases to be played by fewer players is therefore realized. Experimental results for the naturalness of music showed that the proposed method gives higher score than random-selected method. Also, the naturalness of sheet music given by proposed method was confirmed to be comparative with those by human.

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It is called “absorption” that people are obsessed with music to the extent listening situations are forgot any more, and it is associated with intense emotional experiences. In this study, we developed a scale to measure absorption tendency for music and examined its reliability and validity. Based on listenerʼs representations of sensations and emotions in music listening, we developed the scale involved in 19items, which consisted of three factors; that is, “forgetting of time and ambient “, “absorption and fusion “, and “attention to acoustic characteristics“. Coefficients of reliability by the test-retest method were .60-.62 for three factors. Pearsonʼs correlations of scores of the absorption tendency scale for music and other absorption scales (the Japanese version III and CEQ-J) were .43-.49, which were significant but not so high. We examined absorptions to actual music listening as a predictive validity. High absorption tendency group was absorbed in music more than low group (t(39)=4.21, p < .001). These results showed the sufficient reliability and validity of the absorption tendency scale for music.

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