Expressing emotion in music

Combinations of performance rules and of their parameters can be used for synthesizing interpretations that differ in emotional quality. Performances were synthesized so as to elicit listeners' associations to six different emotions (fear, anger, happiness, sadness, tenderness, and solemnity). The rules and their parameters were selected so as to match previous findings about emotional aspects of music performance, conducted by Alf Gabrielsson & Patrik Juslin, Uppsala. The rules produced variations of the performance timing and dynamics with respect to a nominal performance. In a forced-choice listening test 20 listeners were asked to classify the performances with respect to emotions. The results showed that the listeners, with very few exceptions, recognized the intended emotions correctly. This shows that a proper selection of rules and rule parameters in Director Musices can indeed produce a wide variety of meaningful, emotional performances, even extending the scope of the original rule definition

Possible applications:
Emotional melodies for mobile phones
New features for WAP phones
New features for music sequencers and editors
Emotional juke-box for the Internet

Sound examples:
Click here for listening to some sound examples