The ideal tempo of music, and how we perceive it
Cognitive Daily has an interesting series of posts on tempo and how
it is detected. Since tempo is a relevant topic here, I thought I would
pass it along.
Here are some excerpts:
They took 23 Scottish fiddle songs and played them on a
synthesizer as marked in their musical scores. They then artificially
slowed and speeded each tune’s tempo by 10, 20, and 30 beats per
minute. Student volunteers listened to each song, as well as the
original version, in random order (so they weren’t listening to the
same song over and over again). They were simply asked if the song
sounded too slow or too fast.
…
An analysis of the measurable musical features of the songs found
that most features (for example, whether the music was in a major or
minor key) bore no significant relationship to the ideal tempo of the
song. The only feature that did correlate significantly was the number
of descending intervals, which correlated with tempo at r = 0.49.
So how is the optimal tempo picked?
…
Do we have an internal clock that runs at 100 beats per minute?
Quinn and Watt’s results suggest that if we do, we don’t apply it
willy-nilly to every song we hear. Instead, something about content of
the songs suggests an appropriate tempo. While their research doesn’t
give us a definitive answer as to what that tempo might be, they do
have some hunches. If a song has many “strong” events — events that
vary simultaneously across several musical dimensions — then the
authors suggest that these sorts of songs might be preferred at a slow
tempo, compared to songs filled with weak events. Listeners want to
savor those nuances, and can only do so when the song is played slowly
enough.
While the makeup of an ideal tempo is still being investigated, it
is clear that people are extremely accurate at remembering tempo and
detecting tempo changes, but only within certain parameters. From
personal experience, I know that extending a tempo change over 5 or 6
minutes can make it barely noticeable. This is one feature of an
effective relaxation session, where easily detectable changes in tempo
can act to keep the listener too engaged to relax or sleep.
However, in some cases tempo changes are used in the middle of a
session to keep the user awake. This is a common practice for the
middle of theta sessions, where many people find themselves dozing off.
Modulating the tempo up and down within the theta range is a good way
to keep the listener conscious, but still relaxed.
Here are the links to the Cognitive Daily posts. As usual, they have
uploaded some online tests to replicate the results of the studies. Try
them out for yourself:
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/01/some_insight_into_how_we_decid.php
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/01/one_more_try_with_the_internal.php
http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/01/correction.php
Written by admin on January 10th, 2008 with
no comments.
Read more articles on All Posts and Brainwave Entrainment (BWE) and Neuro-Arts.
