An Interactive Approach to Emotional Expression Through Musical Cues

Previous literature suggests that structural and expressive cues affect the emotion expressed in music. However, only a few systematic explorations of have been done, usually focussing on or limited amount predetermined arbitrary cue values. This paper presents three experiments investigating effect six their combinations music's perceived emotional expression. Twenty-eight musical pieces were created with aim providing flexible, ecologically valid, unfamiliar, new stimuli. In Experiment 1, 96 participants assessed which emotions using Likert scale ratings. 2, subset stimuli was modified by (N = 42) via available (tempo, mode, articulation, pitch, dynamics, brightness) to convey seven (anger, sadness, fear, joy, surprise, calmness, power), addressing main exploring impact levels expressions. 3 investigated how well variations original 2 intended emotion. Participants 91) rated them alongside pieces, allowing exploration similarities differences between two sets related pieces. An overall pattern identified for each Some findings corroborate previous studies: mode tempo most impactful shaping emotions, sadness joy amongst accurately recognised emotions. Novel include soft dynamics being used anger, brightness least informative cues. These provide further motivation investigate music as multiple rather than individual cues, one might not give enough information portray specific The discrepancies are discussed relation current theories