Music Perception

[daijaw1]

Hello.  My name is Tyson Platt, and I am an Associate Professor of Psychology at Alabama State University.  I am currently investigating how listeners detect and experience emotional content in atonal/experimental music.  To that end, I need your help!  I am conducting an experiment on the detection of emotional content in atonal music, and I am seeking participants for the experiment.  If you are interested in participating in the experiment, please follow this link to learn more about the research and participate in the experiment.  The experiment will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.  During the experiment, you will be asked to listen to a clip of music and indicate what emotional content you detect in the music.  You will not be asked to provide any identifiable information (e.g., name, address, etc.) during the experiment.  If you are willing to participate in the experiment, please only complete the experiment once.  Thank you for your consideration. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AbsolomPick

[some guy]

Hello.  My name is Tyson Platt, and I am an Associate Professor of Psychology at Alabama State University.  I am currently investigating how listeners detect and experience emotional content in atonal/experimental music.  To that end, I need your help!  I am conducting an experiment on the detection of emotional content in atonal music, and I am seeking participants for the experiment.  If you are interested in participating in the experiment, please follow this link to learn more about the research and participate in the experiment.  The experiment will take approximately 20 minutes to complete.  During the experiment, you will be asked to listen to a clip of music and indicate what emotional content you detect in the music.  You will not be asked to provide any identifiable information (e.g., name, address, etc.) during the experiment.  If you are willing to participate in the experiment, please only complete the experiment once.  Thank you for your consideration. https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/AbsolomPick

Hello. My name is Michael Karman, and I am a listener who enjoys listening to music, preferably new musics of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. I am also someone who has spent a fair amount of time in academia and with academics, so have done a fair amount of thinking about the musics I enjoy. And the first thing that strikes me about your set-up is that I don't know which pieces (or really even which genres) you're referring to with "atonal/experimental music." If you take a fairly standard academic definition of "atonal," then you are talking about things like Fartein Valen and Elliott Carter. Anyone who knows anything about twentieth century music knows that those two are miles apart, aesthetically, expressively, sonically, technically. And of course the same is true for Bach and Handel or Haydn and Gluck or Berlioz and Mendelssohn. And so on.

Experimental music points to at least two different things, the historical movement in the fifties and sixties, spearheaded by Cage--a movement diametrically opposed to the academic idea of "atonal"--or any kind of music that a decade or two ago would have been called "alternative." The former is fairly straightforward; the latter is as fuzzy as "atonal."

That is, your study is handicapped from the start by not only the troublesome categories but by your conflating two of the more incompatible categories of the past century.

So much for the materials. The goal of your study is philosophically troublesome. Human beings are emotional creatures. You may have noticed this yourself! They respond emotionally to all sorts of different things. As you can see, I have identified "emotion" as something that's built into the perceiving apparatus of this human creature, not as something that inheres in whatever the creature is perceiving. You seemed to have already answered a question that I'm not sure you've even considered, namely "Does any music of any kind have emotional content?"

I am perfectly capable of listening to modern and contemporary classical music and responding emotionally. As a human, it's just what I do. There is nothing about the music I favor that is more or less emotional than any other music, including those that I don't favor (a dwindling list). My responses, however, always include emotion. So as far as I can tell, you have set up a situation with multiple and contradictory flaws, flaws both factual and ideological, which leads me to conclude that the results of your study will be similarly flawed.

I'm going to go listen to your clips now. Another thing about humans is curiousity. I am curious what you have chosen to exemplify "atonal" and "experimental."

[Monsieur Croche]

This survey is so greatly flawed that any possibility of getting a truly unbiased and sincere reaction from your subjects is as near to fully eliminated as possible.  I estimate that from those who take it (and last all the way through to click on 'submit,') the results will bring you next to a universal response that is negative about atonal music.

First this list of about, what, 150 - 200 words about emotional states, feelings, attitudes for which the subject is required to select one of five degrees of 'a little to a lot' for each word... all that prior any listening to the actual piece on soundcloud.

Your subjects are first exposed to and put through the gamut of a terrain of terms all about their feelings (I suppose for you to better determine if they are more or less inclined to be depressive, ebullient, etc.)  No matter how they have answered, your subjects have been exposed to a list of words loaded for bear with implications; they have concentrated on SELF, and 'Their Condition or state,' and that can not but help color their perceptions and predispose their mood of the moment -- again, prior hearing anything musical.

Then comes the audio link:
You have a longish narrative fictional bio of a composer, Jewish (anyone could have a pro, or negative bias toward that) and the bio is a life of struggle, hardship and agonies.  It is at least a bit lugubrious, highly romanticized, and this will also heavily influence the subjects' frame of mind prior 'just hearing a piece of music.'[/i]  This is a complete no-no if you really hope to get an honest, uninfluenced response to the piece of music.

As much as some classical listeners do pay attention to the biography of the composer, and it does influence them, there are many more who never think of that when they are listening to an actual piece. It is pretty well known and understood that the artist, their life, their personality, is so often not the art they produce.

So, tsk, tsk, and shame on you for manipulatively setting that arch-romantic biography up.

Any of your profs could point out these blatant flaws.

If you want the subjects to be open to whatever they perceive about that little serial piece, you should ask those questions to determine their basic personalities in a preliminary questionnaire, given some time before their being asked to listen, or after they have listened to the piece.  I.e. trying to fit it all in one go, at least the way it is set up now, is going to yield false results.

If you want complete neutrality and to not in any way influence your subjects prior listening to the little piece (which for anyone curious who won't make it through, is brief and rather in the style of the early Second Viennese school) you do not provide a somewhat lugubrious and highly romanticized biography, or any biography, period.  You also should give the composer no name identifiable with faith, gender, race, nationality.  "Composer X" is what the name of the composer should be.

I am truly shocked that if you really are in a University, your training so far has not already provided you with the sense to set up this study properly in order to get some type of legitimate results, and / or that you haven't run this by one of your professors, who could have told you all of the above.

Best of luck, and with my commiserations, you are going to have to go back to zero and start all over again if you want a successful and legitimate survey and result.  As it now stands, you can -- and should -- expect the overwhelming number of respondents to have negative reactions to that little, harmless, piece. Then again, maybe that is what, consciously or unconsciously, you want.


Best regards.

[some guy]

Yeah, I think what I reacted most strongly to was the fictional bio preceding the excerpt, which basically dares you to respond in any other way than negatively.

And just the one clip, too. Not clips. Four minutes +/- of fiction, 3 minutes +/- of an innocuous little piece or portion of a piece that was probably not written during the second world war, though there wasn't enough of it to really date it accurately. And, as we all know, the twentieth century saw such an uptick in pastiche that it can be quite a task to tell when a piece was written from just a few minute excerpt. I would guess, going out on a wee bit of limb, that it was an imitation of Webern--which would be within the time-frame--written much later. I mean, if I cared, that is what I would guess.

Well, one clip was not really an adequate payoff for my curiosity. The survey consisted mostly of choosing from among few canned responses to a couple of lists of words, one of them presented twice. What fun!!

[Mahlerian]

Yeah, I think what I reacted most strongly to was the fictional bio preceding the excerpt, which basically dares you to respond in any other way than negatively.

And just the one clip, too. Not clips. Four minutes +/- of fiction, 3 minutes +/- of an innocuous little piece or portion of a piece that was probably not written during the second world war, though there wasn't enough of it to really date it accurately. And, as we all know, the twentieth century saw such an uptick in pastiche that it can be quite a task to tell when a piece was written from just a few minute excerpt. I would guess, going out on a wee bit of limb, that it was an imitation of Webern--which would be within the time-frame--written much later. I mean, if I cared, that is what I would guess.

Well, one clip was not really an adequate payoff for my curiosity. The survey consisted mostly of choosing from among few canned responses to a couple of lists of words, one of them presented twice. What fun!!

The thing that jarred with me, besides the obvious anachronistic style of the clip (more middle Babbitt than late Webern), was the supposed emotionality attributed to it by supposed critics.  Music in that style isn't meant to sound anguished.  It's not written for that purpose.  Schoenberg's Survivor from Warsaw, yes; Nono's Canto Sospeso, definitely; Milton Babbitt's Composition for Twelve Instruments?  Definitely not.  Shouldn't we be beyond this "chromatic harmony/melody=strong negative emotion" thing by now?

[some guy]

Hahahahahahaha!!!!!!

Should be, yes. Should be so past it, we can't even remember what the "it" is, yes.

One positive result of not being past it, though, I have to say, is the grin that reading your last line gave me, Mahlerian.

Indeed.

[Karl Henning]

The survey was highly flawed at best

A faint aroma of Start with the Conclusion and design a "test" to reach it . . . .

[Monsieur Croche]

A faint aroma of Start with the Conclusion and design a "test" to reach it . . . .

Faint?  Oh land o goshen, Karl, you are a caution!

[Karl Henning]

I may just be, at that 

[Cato]

Faint?  Oh land o goshen, Karl, you are a caution!

Allow me to be incautious and blunt: I saw this topic and became angry almost immediately, because I sensed where it would probably be going...and it did!

Cato's Rule of Academic Life #17,319:

PSYCHOLOGY is NOT a SCIENCE!!!  There are no true "experiments" possible in Psychology, because nothing can be mathematically described with 100% reproducible results.

And Rule #17, 319 1/2 - Psychologists who think they are involved with a science need to be horse-whipped, and preferably by using a Clydesdale!

My 7th-Grade students have designed better "experiments," which have reproducible results, AND CAN BE DESCRIBED MATHEMATICALLY! 

The word "experiment" needs to be eliminated from the vocabulary of Psychology: "situations" would be the better term.  A survey is NOT an experiment!

And using statistics from a survey does NOT mean that you are describing human behavior in any reproducible, mathematical fashion.  Describing general human behavior and making cautious generalizations are the best that Psychology will ever be able to do.  People will give you different answers on the same thing just a few hours later, especially something like the perception of music, because all sorts of intervening factors will have an influence on the perception!

What then is the point?!

Allow me to be generous: perhaps the "associate professor" is actually wondering whether classical music experts can spot the biases in his quasi-experiment.

As Monsieur Croche has pointed out above very nicely, the professor should go back to zero and start over, if he is in fact really wondering about musical perceptions and understandings.  But do not call anything in Psychology an "experiment."  Leave that for the Physicists and Chemists!

[Gurn Blanston]

Perhaps he is much more subtle than y'all think, and the real 'experiment' here was to see how people would react to his pseudo-experiment.  I researched him, unless he did a hell of a lot of setup work, he is a real person who does what he says he does, and so I can only think there is more here than meets the eye. Babbitt, eh?

[Cato]

Perhaps he is much more subtle than y'all think, and the real 'experiment' here was to see how people would react to his pseudo-experiment.  I researched him, unless he did a hell of a lot of setup work, he is a real person who does what he says he does, and so I can only think there is more here than meets the eye. Babbitt, eh?

That was my generous assumption above: maybe we will discover later what is happening!

[Monsieur Croche]

Perhaps he is much more subtle than y'all think, and the real 'experiment' here was to see how people would react to his pseudo-experiment.  I researched him, unless he did a hell of a lot of setup work, he is a real person who does what he says he does, and so I can only think there is more here than meets the eye. Babbitt, eh?

The thoughts that this survey is biased, and the author blind to it or that it is set up to see if its subjects would call the B.S. of it is being biased, occurred to me on my initial read through of the questionnaire.

Maybe it is from a sagacity / canniness that accompanies having lived so long, but I would not call anything about the questionnaire, including its possible alternate intent, 'subtle.' lol.

[Gurn Blanston]

The thoughts that this survey is biased, and the author blind to it or that it is set up to see if its subjects would call the B.S. of it is being biased, occurred to me on my initial read through of the questionnaire.

Maybe it is from a sagacity / canniness that accompanies having lived so long, but I would not call anything about the questionnaire, including its possible alternate intent 'subtle.' lol.

I was being nice...

[James]

I am also someone who has spent a fair amount of time in academia and with academics, so have done a fair amount of thinking about the musics I enjoy.

Sure doesn't seem like it. Just sayin'

[Ken B]

I did the survey only because I was quite ravished by the utter inanity and obtuseness of most of the comments here (not James's or Gurn's).

FWIW I found the piece mildly pleasant, and agree with the Babbit observation ( who cares if you fill out the survey?) I think it's naive to assume the questionnaire is designed to test your reaction to music. You didn't even hear music: you heard a story mostly, with a fragment of music at the end, already characterized.

[James]

I did the survey only because I was quite ravished by the utter inanity and obtuseness of most of the comments here (not James's or Gurn's).

FWIW I found the piece mildly pleasant, and agree with the Babbit observation ( who cares if you fill out the survey?) I think it's naive to assume the questionnaire is designed to test your reaction to music. You didn't even hear music: you heard a story mostly, with a fragment of music at the end, already characterized.

Some folks minds have been totally indoctrinated with poop (to put it bluntly/directly), and to such an extent that they have lost sight of what music is and means. They are trapped in this quagmire of half-baked wrongheaded ideologies - which are equally as obscure, obtuse and inane.

Most people react to a music on a purely visceral level.

[BasilValentine]

The tacit premise that music of all periods is supposed to be strongly tied up with emotion is silly. The only emotion in the menu I felt in the present after the experiment was hostility. I would have gone for boredom had it been there. Come to think of it, it might have been there but considering that I was not particularly alert by that time, I might have missed it. Ugh. That's twenty minutes I won't get back. But anything for the advancement of pseudo-science.

[Monsieur Croche]

The tacit premise that music of all periods is supposed to be strongly tied up with emotion is silly.

Amen to that, Brothers and Sisters, Amen!

[Cato]

. Ugh. That's twenty minutes I won't get back. But anything for the advancement of pseudo-science.

As I mentioned above, pseudo-science is the only possibility with such a set-up.