Timbre Semantic Variation with Multi-Parameter Interactions

An instrument or sound source most often does not produce only a single timbre, but rather a multitude of timbres: timbre often varies with many other parameters, including pitch, dynamics, register, articulation, and playing technique. This branch of research focuses on developing our understanding this variability with respect to timbre semantics.

Results from the first of these studies mapped out variation of semantic associations across three dynamics and four registers for the oboe and French horn; this manuscript is in press with Empirical Musicology Review.

The second study, carried out in collaboration with Jason Noble (University of Montreal), Charis Saitis (Queen Mary University of London), Caroline Traube (University of Montreal), and Zachary Wallmark (University of Oregon), examined register and pitch height across a group of 8 instruments, finding that instrument, register, and pitch are significantly related to most timbre semantic dimensions.

Presentation at the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition (July 28–30, 2021).

Timbral Motivic Analysis

Timbral motivic analysis understands timbre as a source of motivic identity. The timbral motive can (and usually does) contain rhythmic and melodic content, but it is identified through its timbre. As a melodic motive can undergo pitch-related transformations, so too can a timbral motive undergo timbral transformations.

I developed this approach during an analysis of Karola Obermüller’s different forms of phosphorus, a piece for solo English horn and extreme reverb, premiered by Jacqueline Leclair on her CD, Music for English horn alone. I demonstrate how four principal motives structure the piece and are woven together to create a musical narrative of coalescence. These motives begin as apparently separate entities but struggle for integration throughout, culminating in a climactic, energetic stream spiraling out into the ether, leaving the impression that these motivic processes—and their momentum—endure beyond our listening.

This analysis was presented at the 2021 conference of the Society for Music Theory; a manuscript is currently in preparation.

Timbre in Popular Song (TiPS)

The TiPS (Timbre in Popular Song) corpus project team, consisting of nine collaborators from six universities in Canada and the United States and 15+ graduate research assistants, is in the process of encoding 400 songs across the genres of pop, hip hop, country, and metal. Our aim is to systematically investigate normative timbral and textural characteristics for standard formal song sections, typical trajectories within sections and over the course of a song, normative timbral and textural combinations within different genres, and typical differences among genres. This project has also led to our team’s development of novel sampling methods to address problems of underrepresentation in musical corpora with respect to artist gender and race/ethnicity.

This project has been funded through the ACTOR Partnership; preliminary findings will be presented at the 2022 Music Encoding Conference.

Instrument-Specific Absolute Pitch

with collaborator Niels Christian Hansen (Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies)

Absolute Pitch (AP), or the ability to name or produce pitches without reference, is rare even amongst expert musicians. While many AP possessors can label pitches globally across timbres–spanning from musical instruments to car horns and lawn mowers–anecdotal evidence suggests that some musicians without global AP perform better when identifying pitches played on their native instrument. Our case study results validate the presence of this phenomenon but indicate that not all musicians have an advantage for their primary instrument. We recently tested for instrument-specific absolute pitch in a wider population of oboists and investigated underlying mechanisms of this timbre selectivity, hypothesizing that timbral cues and articulatory motor-planning contribute to instrument-specific advantages in identifying pitches on a primary instrument—these results will be published in PLOS One.

“A Theory of Instrument-Specific Absolute Pitch,” a Hypothesis & Theory article in Frontiers in Psychology

“Articulatory motor planning and timbral idiosyncrasies as underlying mechanisms of instrument-specific absolute pitch in expert musicians,” a Registered Report Protocol in PLOS One; publication of results is forthcoming.

Posters presented at Future Directions of Music Cognition (March 6, 2021), the International Symposium on Performance Science (July 29, 2019), and the conference for the Society of Music Perception and Cognition (August 7, 2019).

Multimodal Emotion Associations in Music and Dance

with collaborators Lindsay Warrenburg (Sonde Health, Inc.) & Daniel Shanahan (Ohio State University)

Both music and dance are known to communicate a variety of emotions. This study focuses on the expressions of melancholy, grief, and fear in music and dance, both as perceived by the audience and as experienced by the dancers. Specifically, we ask whether grief is associated with more prosociality than melancholy and whether this potential difference is modulated by the presence of music.

“The communication of melancholy, grief, and fear in dance with and without music,” published in Human Technology

Presented at the conference for the Society of Music Perception and Cognition (August 7, 2019).

Orchestrated Sadness: When Instrumentation Conveys Emotion

with collaborators Niels Christian Hansen (Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark) & David Orvek (Indiana University)

While recent research has refined the scientific understanding of how musical features convey affect, the impact of orchestration techniques on emotion remains understudied (McAdams, 2013). Countering claims that orchestration cannot be taught (Rimsky-Korsakov, 1912/1964) and that doing so kills creativity (Piston, 1969), this study systematically investigates solo and offstage instrumentation. Potentially, orchestral solos may prove suitable for expressing individuality, vulnerability, and loneliness (Rimsky-Korsakov, 1912/1964), thus evoking sadness in listeners. Offstage instrumentation may metaphorically represent distance or separation, also traditionally associated with sadness (Bowlby, 1980). If so, sadness-related musical features—e.g., quiet dynamics, slow tempo, legato, minor mode, low pitch, narrow pitch range, smooth rhythms, and dark-timbre instruments (Hansen, 2013)—should be more prevalent in solo and offstage passages.

Presentation at the virtual conference “Brain, Cognition, Emotions, Music,” (May 20, 2020) and the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition in Graz, Austria (July 25, 2018).

Musical Expression and Embodiment: Fear, Threat, and Danger in the Music of The Lord of the Rings

Conference Proceedings link: International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition 2018

Research in music perception suggests various ways in which music might portray, express, or evoke fear and threat (e.g. Huron, 2015, Juslin & Laukka, 2003), but how closely do these findings reflect musical practice? Do composers actually use these techniques when aiming to express fear and threat? First, I reviewed recent research in music perception, speech prosody, and animal ethology to create a list of musical techniques that might communicate fear and threat. I compared music from fear-centered with non-fear-centered scenes from The Lord of the Rings; far more of the proposed cues are employed in fear scenes than their length-matched non-fear counterparts, supporting a probabilistic model for fear-related affective musical cues. The analyses demonstrate high consistency between the ways in which recent perceptual research suggests that fear and threat are expressed through music and fear-related music in the context of the soundtrack to The Fellowship of the Ring.

3rd prize for presentation at The Hayes Graduate Research Forum in Columbus, OH (March 2, 2018) and poster presentation at the International Conference for Music Perception and Cognition in Graz, Austria (July 26, 2018).