Modelling the relationships between emotional responses to, and musical content of, music therapy improvisations

Abstract

This article reports a study in which listeners were asked to provide continuous ratings of perceived emotional content of clinical music therapy improvisations. Participants were presented with 20 short excerpts of music therapy improvisations, and had to rate perceived activity, pleasantness and strength using a computer-based slider interface. A total of nine musical features relating to various aspects of the music (timing, register, dynamics, tonality, pulse clarity and sensory dissonance) were extracted from the excerpts, and relationships between these features and participants' emotion ratings were investigated. The data were analysed in three stages. First, inter-dimension correlations revealed that ratings of activity and pleasantness were moderately negatively correlated, activity and strength were strongly positively correlated, and strength and pleasantness were moderately negatively correlated. Second, a series of cross-correlation analyses revealed that the temporal lag between musical features and listeners' dimension ratings differed across both variables and dimensions. Finally, a series of linear regression analyses produced significant feature prediction models for each of the three dimensions, accounting for 80 percent ( activity), 57 percent ( pleasantness ) and 84 percent ( strength) of the variance in participants' ratings. Activity was best predicted by high note density and high pulse clarity, pleasantness by low note density and high tonal clarity, and strength by high mean velocity and low note density. The results are discussed in terms of their fit with other work reported in the music psychology literature, and their relevance to clinical music therapy research and practice.

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