Andrew Brian Horner horner@cse.ust.hk
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR
Popular version of 1aMU2 – The emotional characteristics of the violin with different pitches, dynamics, and vibrato levels
Presented at the 187th ASA Meeting
Read the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0034939
–The research described in this Acoustics Lay Language Paper may not have yet been peer reviewed–
Music has a unique way of moving us emotionally, but have you ever wondered how individual sounds shape these feelings?
In our study, we looked at how different features of violin notes—like pitch (the height of the notes), dynamics (the loudness of the sounds), and vibrato (how the note vibrates)—combine to create emotional responses. While previous research often focuses on each feature in isolation, we explored how they interact, revealing how the violin’s sounds evoke specific emotions.
To conduct this study, we used single-note recordings from the violin at different pitches, two levels of dynamics (loud and soft), and two vibrato settings (no vibrato and high vibrato). We invited participants to listen to these sounds and rate their emotional responses using a scale of emotional positivity (valence) and intensity (arousal). Participants also selected which emotions they felt from a list of 16 emotions, such as joyful, nervous, relaxed, or agitated.
Audio 1. The experiment used a violin single-note sample (middle C pitch + loud dynamics + no vibrato).
Audio 2. The experiment used a violin single-note sample (middle C pitch + soft dynamics + no vibrato).
Audio 3. The experiment used a violin single-note sample (middle C pitch + loud dynamics + high vibrato).
Audio 4. The experiment used a violin single-note sample (middle C pitch + loud dynamics + high vibrato).
Our findings reveal that each element plays a unique role in shaping emotions. As shown in Figure 1, higher pitches and strong vibrato generally raised emotional intensity, creating feelings of excitement or tension. Lower pitches were more likely to evoke sadness or calmness, while loud dynamics made emotions feel more intense. Surprisingly, sounds without vibrato were linked to calmer emotions, while vibrato added energy and excitement, especially for emotions like anger or fear. And Figure 2 illustrates how strong vibrato enhances emotions like anger and sadness, while the absence of vibrato correlates with calmer feelings.
Figure 1. Pitch, Dynamics, and Vibrato average ratings on valence-arousal with different levels. It shows that higher pitches and strong vibrato increase arousal, while soft dynamics and no vibrato are linked to higher valence, highlighting pitch as the most influential factor.
Figure 2. Pitch, Dynamics, and Vibrato average ratings on 16 emotions. It shows that strong vibrato enhances angry and sad emotions, while no vibrato supports calm emotions; higher pitches increase arousal for angry emotions, and brighter tones evoke calm and happy emotions.
Our research provides insights for musicians, composers, and even music therapists, helping them understand how to use the violin’s features to evoke specific emotions. With this knowledge, violinists can fine-tune their performance to match the emotional impact they aim to create, and composers can carefully select sounds that resonate with listeners’ emotional expectations.
Department of Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong SAR
Andrew Brian Horner horner@cse.ust.hk
Department of Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Hong Kong SAR
Popular version of 1aMU3 – Emotional characteristics of the erhu and violin: a comparative study of emotional intensity in musical excerpts
Presented at the 187th ASA Meeting
Read the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0034940
–The research described in this Acoustics Lay Language Paper may not have yet been peer reviewed–
Music speaks to us across cultures, but can the instruments we choose shape our emotions in different ways?
This study compares the emotional responses evoked by two similar yet culturally distinct string instruments: the Chinese erhu and the Western violin. Both are bowed string instruments, but they have distinct sounds and cultural roles that could lead listeners to experience different emotions. Our research focuses on whether these instruments, along with variations in performance and listener familiarity, influence emotional intensity in unique ways.
Western violin performance example: violinist Ray Chan playing ‘Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64’
Chinese erhu performance example: erhu player Guo Gan playing the Chinese piece ‘Horse Racing’ (feat. Pianist Lang Lang)
To explore these questions, we conducted three online listening experiments. Participants were asked to listen to a series of short musical pieces performed on both the erhu and violin. They then rated each piece using two emotional measures: specific emotion categories (such as happy, sad, calm, and agitated) and emotional positivity and intensity.
Our results show clear emotional differences between the instruments. The violin often evokes positive, energetic emotions, which may be due to its bright tone and dynamic range. By contrast, the erhu tends to evoke sadness, possibly because of its softer timbre and its traditional association with melancholy in Chinese music.
Interestingly, familiarity with the instrument played a significant role in listeners’ emotional responses. Those who were more familiar with the violin rated the pieces as more emotionally intense, suggesting that cultural background and previous exposure shape how we emotionally connect with music. However, our analysis also found that different performances of the same piece generally did not change emotional ratings, emphasizing that the instrument itself is a major factor in shaping our emotional experience.
These findings open new paths for understanding how cultural context and personal experiences influence our emotional reactions to music. The distinct emotional qualities of the erhu and violin reveal how musical instruments can evoke different emotional responses, even when playing the same piece.
Central Washington University, Department of Physics, Ellensburg, WA, 98926, United States
Seth Lowery
Ph.D. candidate, University of Texas
Dept. of Mechanical Engineering
Austin, TX
Popular version of 4pMU3 – An experiment to measure changes in violin instrument response due to playing-in
Presented at the 185th ASA Meeting
Read the abstract at https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0023547
Please keep in mind that the research described in this Lay Language Paper may not have yet been peer reviewed.
How is a violin like a pair of hiking boots? Many violinists would respond “They both improve with use.” Just as boots need to be “broken in” by being worn several times to make them more supple, many musicians believe that a new violin, cello, or guitar, needs to be “played in” for a period of time, typically months, in order to fully develop its acoustic properties. There is even a commercial product, the Tone-Rite, that is marketed as a way to accelerate the playing-in process, with the claim of dramatically increasing “resonance, balance, and range,” and some builders of stringed instruments, known as luthiers, provide a service of pre-playing-in their instruments, using their own methods of mechanical stimulus, prior to selling them. But do we know if violins actually improve with use?
We tested the hypothesis that putting vibrational energy into a violin will, over time, change how the violin body responds to the vibration of the strings, which is measured as the frequency response. We used three violins in our experiment: one was left alone, serving as a control, while the two test violins were “played” by applying mechanical vibrations directly to the bridge. One of the mechanical sources was the Tone Rite, the other was a shaker driven with a signal created from a Vivaldi violin concerto as shown in the video below. The total time of vibration exceeded 1600 hours, equivalent to ten months of being played six hours per day.
Approximately once per week, we measured the frequency response of all three violins using two standard methods: bridge admittance, which characterizes the vibration of the violin body, and acoustic radiativity, which is based on the sound radiated by the violin. The measurement set up is illustrated in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Measuring the frequency response of a violin in an anechoic chamber.
Having a control violin allowed us to account for factors not associated with playing-in, such as fluctuating environmental conditions or simple aging, that might affect the frequency response. If mechanical vibrations had the hypothesized effect of physically altering the violin body, such as creating microcracks in the wood, glue, or varnish, and if the result were an increase in “resonance, balance, and range”, then we would expect a noticeable and cumulative change in the frequency response of the test violins compared to the control violin.
We did not observe any changes in the frequency responses of the violins that correlate with the amount of vibration. In Figure 2a, we plot a normalized difference in the bridge admittance between the two test violins and the control violin; Figure 2b shows a similar plot for the acoustic radiativity.
In both plots, we see no evidence that the difference between the test violins and the control violin increases with more vibration; instead we see random fluctuations that can be attributed to the slightly different experimental conditions of each measurement. This applies to both the Tone-Rite, which vibrates primarily with the 60 Hz frequency of the electric power it is plugged into, and the shaker, which provided the same frequencies that a violinist practicing her instrument would create.
Our conclusion is that long term vibrational stimulus of a violin, whether achieved mechanically or by actual playing, does not produce a physical change in the violin body that could affect its tonal characteristics.
Why is the sound quality of some violins preferred over others? In this episode, we talk to Carlo Andrea Rozzi (National Research Council of Italy) and Massimo Grassi (University of Padova) about the myth surrounding Stradivari violins as well as their research into the aspects of violin timbre that cause listeners to prefer one instrument to another.
Ms. Kourtney Adkisson – kourtney.adkisson@cwu.edu Dr. Andy Piacsek – andrew.piacsek@cwu.edu
Department of Physics Central Washington University 400 E University Way Ellensburg, WA 98926
Popular version of paper 3pMUb3 Presented Wednesday afternoon, December 9, 2020 179th ASA Meeting, Acoustics Virtually Everywhere
Among many violinists and luthiers, it is believed that violins need to be played (or vibrated) for some time in order for the tone to develop, a process known as “playing in.” Although it is not uncommon for makers and sellers of violins to mechanically vibrate instruments continuously for several weeks before selling them, there is no scientific consensus on how, or to what extent, the instrument is altered in this process.
The work that we are presenting is the first stage of a long-term project that seeks to answer the question, “Does the act of ‘playing’ a violin measurably change any of its acoustic properties?”
Because many factors contribute to the sound that violins produce, it is challenging to identify changes in tonal characteristics that are due specifically to the cumulative effects of being played. To address this challenge, we are conducting a systematic study utilizing three new sibling violins (Andre Tellis model 200, made in 2018): two of these will be mechanically vibrated to simulate playing for several months, while the third will be a control – kept in the same environment, but not played. During this time, we will periodically measure the vibrational and acoustic response of all three violins.
Before we begin artificially playing the violins, however, we need to understand how much variability we can expect in our measurements of the vibration response, which is essential for identifying subtle systemic changes in violin response that correlate with being vibrated over time. Therefore, minimizing and quantifying measurement uncertainty is the objective of the initial phase of our project, which is reported here.
The measurement setup we evaluated consists of a violin that is suspended with rubber bands and excited by a mechanical shaker that exerts a lateral force on the bridge at many different frequencies, similar to forces exerted by vibrating strings. A Laser Scanning Doppler Vibrometer (LSDV) is used to measure the vibrational response, or the amplitude of motion plotted as a function of frequency, at several locations on the top plate of each violin. Information from all the scan points can be combined to construct an image of how the top plate is actually moving at each frequency.
The LSDV set-up is shown including the acoustical table, laser head, computer, and mechanical shaker.
A violin is ready to be measured, the body suspended with rubber bands and a mechanical shaker attached.
Seven different modes are shown, in which the violin displays a dramatic response to a specific frequency.
We compared the vibration response of the three sibling violins. With the caveat that our measurement locations varied slightly among the instruments, our results show that the differences in response among sibling violins are comparable to the differences between the siblings and a ten year old Yamaha violin of comparable quality.
A comparison between the vibration response of three sibling Andre Tellis violins.
The vibration response of two sibling Andre Tellis violins and an older Yamaha violin.
To assess the uncertainty associated with our measurement method, we measured the vibrational response of the same violin on different dates. Our measured response curves for the same violin are quite similar, but they are not identical. These preliminary results indicate inherent variability in our system caused by small differences in the testing set-up or by minute changes to the violins themselves.
The vibration response for one of the sibling violins is shown for two different measurements in May 2019 and March 2019.
The vibration response for the Yamaha is shown for two different measurements in May 2019 and March 2019.
Additional measurements are needed to determine ways to reduce and quantify this uncertainty before we proceed with the next phase of the project.
Figure 1. Pitch, Dynamics, and Vibrato average ratings on valence-arousal with different levels. It shows that higher pitches and strong vibrato increase arousal, while soft dynamics and no vibrato are linked to higher valence, highlighting pitch as the most influential factor.
Figure 1. Pitch, Dynamics, and Vibrato average ratings on valence-arousal with different levels. It shows that higher pitches and strong vibrato increase arousal, while soft dynamics and no vibrato are linked to higher valence, highlighting pitch as the most influential factor.
Figure 2. Pitch, Dynamics, and Vibrato average ratings on 16 emotions. It shows that strong vibrato enhances angry and sad emotions, while no vibrato supports calm emotions; higher pitches increase arousal for angry emotions, and brighter tones evoke calm and happy emotions.
Figure 2. Pitch, Dynamics, and Vibrato average ratings on 16 emotions. It shows that strong vibrato enhances angry and sad emotions, while no vibrato supports calm emotions; higher pitches increase arousal for angry emotions, and brighter tones evoke calm and happy emotions.
Figure 1: Measuring the frequency response of a violin in an anechoic chamber.
