The Emotional Characteristics of Western Orchestral Instruments with Different Pitch and Dynamics

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Department of Computer Science and Engineering


PhD Thesis Defence


Title: "The Emotional Characteristics of Western Orchestral Instruments
with Different Pitch and Dynamics"

By

Miss Hiu Ting CHAN


Abstract:

Recent research has shown that different musical instrument sounds have 
strong emotional characteristics. It has also shown how these emotional 
characteristics change with different pitch and dynamics for the piano and 
bowed strings. This work investigates how pitch and dynamics influence the 
distinctive emotional characters of the western orchestral instruments. We 
conducted listening tests where listeners gave absolute judgments or 
compared the instrument sounds pairwise over ten emotional categories on 
the section string, solo string, brass, woodwind, piano, celeste, and harp 
sounds. For the sustaining instruments, regarding pitch, Happy and Heroic 
had an arched shape that peaked at C6. Romantic, Calm, and Shy increased 
until C4 and decreased afterward. Comic and Mysterious did not show a 
clear common trend with Pitch. Angry and Scary had a U-shape that was 
slightly stronger at the highest pitch. Sad decreased with pitch. 
Regarding dynamics, Happy, Heroic, Comic, Angry were stronger for loud 
notes. Romantic, Calm, Mysterious, Shy, and Sad were stronger for soft 
notes. For Scary, loud and soft notes were about the same. For the 
non-sustaining instruments, regarding pitch, Happy, Romantic, Comic, Calm, 
and Shy had an arched shape that peaked around C6. Heroic, Angry, and Sad 
decreased with Pitch. Mysterious did not show a clear trend with pitch. 
Scary had an asymmetric U-shape that was especially strong at the lowest 
pitch. Regarding dynamics, Happy, Heroic, Comic, and Angry were stronger 
for loud notes. Romantic, Calm, Mysterious, Shy, and Sad were stronger for 
soft notes. For Scary, loud and soft notes were about the same. Overall, 
pitch and dynamics had about an equally important effect on the musical 
instruments; some characteristics such as Happy were affected more by 
pitch and others such as Shy were affected more by dynamics. Besides, the 
particular instrument was more of a secondary factor though still 
important.


Date:                   Thursday, 21 May 2020

Time:                   2:00pm - 4:00pm

Zoom Meeting:           https://hkust.zoom.us/j/98019470008

Chairman:               Prof. Zhihong GUO (CHEM)

Committee Members:      Prof. Andrew HORNER (Supervisor)
                        Prof. Shing Chi CHEUNG
                        Prof. Raymond WONG
                        Prof. Matthew MCKAY (ECE)
                        Prof. Xiao HU (HKU)


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