Auditory roughness profiles and musical tension/release patterns in a Bosnian ganga song.

Abstract

Within western musical tradition, auditory roughness constitutes one of the perceptual correlates of dissonance. In a previous study [P. N. Vassilakis (2006), “The worlds of music: Culture-dependent emotional reactions to an improvisation on the mijwiz,” Proceedings of the 51stSEM:, University of Hawaii, Manoa, HI, pp. 197– (2006) an application that calculates roughness profiles of musical pieces [P. N. Vassilakis, “SRA: An online tool for spectral and roughness analysis of sound signals,” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 120, 3677 (2006)], based on a previously published roughness calculation model [P. N. Vassilakis, “Auditory roughness as means of musical expression,” Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology 12, 119–144 (2005)], was used to examine if and how tension/release patterns within a stylized improvisation on the Middle Eastern mijwiz relate to auditory roughness changes. An extension of that study, the present experiment, examines the relationship between roughness and tension/release patterns in a Bosnian ganga song. Patterns were obtained by a Bosnian ganga singer/scholar and by American-raised musicians in a perceptual experiment. Similarly to the mijwiz study, cultural background differences were associated with tension/release judgment differences as well as with differences between tension/release patterns and auditory roughness time profiles. The results provide further evidence that the concepts of musical tension and release and their relationship to auditory roughness are culture-specific.