While melody, rhythm, and harmony are important emotional triggers in music, there has been little consideration of timbre. The authors designed a series of listening tests to compare the emotionality of sounds from eight wind and bowed stringed instruments. The violin, trumpet, and clarinet were best at evoking the emotions of happy, joyful, heroic, and comic. Conversely, the horn and flute evoked the emotions of sad and depressed. The oboe was emotionally neutral. Emotions correlated with average spectral centroid and spectral centroid deviation. The results suggest that the even/odd harmonic ratio is perhaps the most salient timbral feature after attack time and brightness. This research has direct implications for musicians and audio engineers who are doing orchestration for such applications as computer games, film sound, and stage music.
(See document for exact affiliation information.)
https://aes2.org/publications/elibrary-page/?id=17544
(351KB)
Click to purchase paper as a non-member or login as an AES member. If your company or school subscribes to the E-Library then switch to the institutional version. If you are not an AES member Join the AES. If you need to check your member status, login to the Member Portal.
