REMUPP - An Interactive Tool for Investigating Musical Properties and Relations

A typical experiment design within the field of music psychology is playing music to a test subject who listens and reacts – most often by verbal means. One limitation of this kind of test is the inherent difficulty of measuring an emotional reaction in a laboratory setting. This paper describes the design, functions and possible uses of the software tool REMUPP (Relations between musical parameters and perceived properties), designed for investigating various aspects of musical experience. REMUPP allows for non-verbal examination of selected musical parameters (such as tonality, tempo, timbre, articulation, volume, register etc.) in a musical context. The musical control is put into the hands of the subject, introducing an element of creativity and enhancing the sense of immersion. Information acquired with REMUPP can be output as numerical data for statistical analysis, but the tool is also suited for the use with more qualitatively oriented methods.