Tempos Research Articles

Philosophizing Time in Sinitic Opera

This article grapples with the question: how do huangmei opera and kua-a opera listeners experience formal coherence? Both opera traditions abound with changing phrase lengths that subvert the anticipatory listening strategies familiar to Anglo-American theorists. However, these temporal variabilities do not appear to disturb local listeners’ sense of formal coherence. Instead, ethnographic interviews and musical analyses suggest that the temporal sensibilities of huangmei opera and kua-a opera listeners anchor in the cadence of linguistic sounds and, more broadly, in “timeways”—ideas and practices relating to how a community experiences, measures, and expresses time—that stem from a Dao-centered paradigm of worldmaking. The latter yields a conception of musical time that embraces changeability and the pursuit of auspicious timings.

The effects of background music tempo on consumer variety-seeking behavior: the mediating role of arousal.

Diversified purchases of consumers can help companies balance sales and inventories, which is of great significance to company profits. While existing research has explored the internal factors and external factors that influence consumers' variety-seeking behavior, little is known about the impact of background music, an important environmental cue in retail establishments, on consumer variety-seeking behavior. The present research investigates the influence of background music tempo on consumer variety-seeking behavior, along with its underlying mechanism and boundary condition. Five experiments revealed that background music tempo affects consumers' variety-seeking behavior (Study 1a, 1b & 4). Specifically, fast-tempo background music increases consumers' variety-seeking behavior (Study 1b). Arousal mediates the main effect (Study 2), as fast-tempo background music increases consumers' variety-seeking behavior by enhancing consumers' arousal. Moreover, participants' familiarity with the background music moderates the impact of background music tempo on consumer variety-seeking behavior (Study 3). Only when consumers have a high degree of familiarity with the background music they listen to, the tempo of the background music will have a significant impact on their variety-seeking behavior. These findings provide important theoretical contributions and management implications.

Inter-subject correlations of EEG reflect subjective arousal and acoustic features of music.

Research on music-induced emotion and brain activity is constantly expanding. Although studies using inter-subject correlation (ISC), a collectively shared brain activity analysis method, have been conducted, whether ISC during music listening represents the music preferences of a large population remains uncertain; additionally, it remains unclear which factors influence ISC during music listening. Therefore, here, we aimed to investigate whether the ISCs of electroencephalography (EEG) during music listening represent a preference for music reflecting engagement or interest of a large population in music. First, we selected 21 pieces of music from the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart of 2017, which served as an indicator of preference reflecting the engagement and interest of a large population. To ensure even representation, we chose one piece for every fifth song on the chart, spanning from highly popular music to less popular ones. Next, we recorded EEG signals while the subjects listened to the selected music, and they were asked to evaluate four aspects (preference, enjoyment, frequency of listening, and arousal) for each song. Subsequently, we conducted ISC analysis by utilizing the first three principal components of EEG, which were highly correlated across subjects and extracted through correlated component analysis (CorrCA). We then explored whether music with high preferences that reflected the engagement and interest of large population had high ISC values. Additionally, we employed cluster analysis on all 21 pieces of music, utilizing the first three principal components of EEG, to investigate the impact of emotions and musical characteristics on EEG ISC during music listening. A significant distinction was noted between the mean ISC values of the 10 higher-ranked pieces of music compared to the 10 lower-ranked pieces of music [t(542) = -1.97, p = 0.0025]. This finding suggests that ISC values may correspond preferences reflecting engagement or interest of a large population. Furthermore, we found that significant variations were observed in the first three principal component values among the three clusters identified through cluster analysis, along with significant differences in arousal levels. Moreover, the characteristics of the music (tonality and tempo) differed among the three clusters. This indicates that the principal components, which exhibit high correlation among subjects and were employed in calculating ISC values, represent both subjects' arousal levels and specific characteristics of the music. Subjects' arousal values during music listening and music characteristics (tonality and tempo) affect ISC values, which represent the interest of a large population in music.

Early social communication through music: State of the art and future perspectives

A growing body of research shows that the universal capacity for music perception and production emerges early in development. Possibly building on this predisposition, caregivers around the world often communicate with infants using songs or speech entailing song-like characteristics. This suggests that music might be one of the earliest developing and most accessible forms of interpersonal communication, providing a platform for studying early communicative behavior. However, little research has examined music in truly communicative contexts. The current work aims to facilitate the development of experimental approaches that rely on dynamic and naturalistic social interactions. We first review two longstanding lines of research that examine musical interactions by focusing either on the caregiver or the infant. These include defining the acoustic and non-acoustic features that characterize infant-directed (ID) music, as well as behavioral and neurophysiological research examining infants’ processing of musical timing and pitch. Next, we review recent studies looking at early musical interactions holistically. This research focuses on how caregivers and infants interact using music to achieve co-regulation, mutual engagement, and increase affiliation and prosocial behavior. We conclude by discussing methodological, technological, and analytical advances that might empower a comprehensive study of musical communication in early childhood.

Smooth Talking and Fast Music: Understanding the Importance of Voice and Music in Travel and Tourism Ads via Acoustic Analytics

Travel and tourism advertising is critical in developing positive associations to attract visitor patronage and build sustainable post-pandemic tourism. An important part of an advertising message is delivered through voice and other aspects of audio, for example, music. However, how audio features impact viewers of travel and tourism advertisements remains unexplored in the research. This study implements advanced audio analytics to test how various features impact upon viewers. The results show that voice quality is important in developing positive affect; advertisement viewers prefer speakers with quieter voices (less mean intensity) that have a higher level of clarity (higher harmonics-to-noise ratio). This can be explained via the heuristic route of the heuristic-systematic model. Music tempo was found to be important in stimulating reactions from advertisements, with faster music being associated with a higher level of positive affect. The paper concludes with practical and theoretical implications, limitations, and suggestions for future research.

Capturing the Zeitgeist: Preserving American Music and Culture in the Mashups of DJ Earworm

AbstractThe discussion of narrative in mashups typically involves how a preexisting message is reinterpreted by the incorporation of new musical material. However, many scholars note how DJ Earworm's technique of creating new lyrics through the combination of samples from up to fifty different tracks conveys an original message that is distinct from its borrowed sources. In his various interviews, DJ Earworm elaborates that his mashups are original compositions that act as musical time capsules that capture the zeitgeist of the age. Nevertheless, DJ Earworm only provides brief commentary on the meaning of his mashups and there is no close examination of these narratives in the literature. This raises the question: To what degree do DJ Earworm's mashups reflect cultural issues in American society? By merging Zbikowski's concept of conceptual integration with Almén's theory of musical narrative, this paper will demonstrate how DJ Earworm's mashups show a consistent pattern of having complex narratives with cultural messages that resonate with contemporary issues in American society, including fossil fuel dependence, income inequality, and political and racial division.

Spatiotemporal Networks in Ryoji Ikeda’s Electronic Music: Loop, variation and re-contextualisation of sound

Ryoji Ikeda’s sonic composition has often been considered to prioritise a physical, immersive experience of space over temporal musical progression. This article challenges this commonly held view, arguing that the static nature of his work should be understood in terms of complex interactions between space and time rather than in dualistic terms. By analysing a large-scale sonic transformation within his 2005 album Dataplex, the article uncovers complex rhizomatic networks of materials that expand across multiple tracks. The links between the album tracks leads to an unconventional quality of musical time that contains a high degree of statis yet nevertheless presents a non-linear progression, which is created through repetition (loops), variation and re-contextualisation of sounds. The analysis suggests that experiencing the ordered series of tracks in the album means accumulating information and exploring memory within a non-interchangeable process of sonic flow and metamorphosis. Despite the fragmentary nature of these internal continuities, the resulting rhizomatic networks provide a means to understand and even to listen structurally to Ikeda’s sonic composition.

The effects of background music on English reading comprehension for English foreign language learners: evidence from an eye movement study.

Based on previous literature, the present study examines the effects of background music on English reading comprehension using eye tracking techniques. All the participants, whose first language was Chinese, were selected from a foreign language college and all of them were sophomores who majored in English. The experiment in this study was a 2 (music tempo: fast and slow) × 2 (text difficulty: difficult and easy) × 2 (background music preference: high and low) mixed design. Both musical tempo and English reading passage were within-subjects factors, and the level of music listening preference was a between-subjects factor. The results showed that the main effect of the music tempo was statistically significant, which indicated that participants read texts more quickly in the fast-tempo music condition than in the slow-tempo music condition. Furthermore, the main effect of the text difficulty was statistically significant. Additionally, the interaction between the text difficulty and music tempo was statistically significant. The music tempo had a greater effect on easy texts than on difficult texts. The results of this study reveal that it is beneficial for people who have a stronger preference for music listening to conduct English reading tasks with fast-tempo music. It is detrimental for people who have little preference for background music listening to complete difficult English reading tasks with slow-tempo music.

Tapping to drumbeats in an online experiment changes our perception of time and expressiveness

Bodily movements along with music, such as tapping, are not only very frequent, but may also have a profound impact on our perception of time and emotions. The current study adopted an online tapping paradigm to investigate participants’ time experiences and expressiveness judgements when they tapped and did not tap to a series of drumming performances that varied in tempo and rhythmic complexity. Participants were asked to judge durations, passage of time (PoT), and the expressiveness of the performances in two conditions: (1) Observing only, (2) Observing and tapping regularly to the perceived beats. Results show that tapping trials passed subjectively faster and were partially (in slow- and medium-tempo conditions) perceived shorter compared to the observing-only trials. Increases in musical tempo (in tapping trials) and in complexity led to faster PoT, potentially due to distracted attentional resources for the timing task. Participants’ musical training modulated the effects of complexity on the judgments of expressiveness. In addition, increases in tapping speed led to duration overestimation among the less musically trained participants. Taken together, tapping to music may have altered the internal clock speed, affecting the temporal units accumulated in the pacemaker-counter model.

Music as a trigger for specific memories

AbstractBackgroundThis study uses the expertise of an ethnomusicologist who uses preexisting music in the brain music as the cue to trigger the autobiographical memories of her own mother struggling with dementia.MethodBy adapting a methodology in Ethnomusicology involving the autobiography of one’s music history, I set up the experiment for another ethnomusicologist to conduct. Dividing the study into discrete music time periods (infancy, childhood, teenager, young adult, older adult), I delineated specific songs or pieces of music with powerful meanings to the patient in those time periods to be played. The responses of the patient on video was then recorded.ResultEach of those pieces of music had some level of recognition by the Alzheimer’s patient, some stronger than others. Other attendant contextual memories surfaced during the experiment, suggesting autobiographical recall, despite a weakened sense of time and space after the onset of Alzheimer’s.ConclusionThis single case study needs to be broadened into a larger scale experiment involving many participants to assess the efficacy of this ethnomusicological‐derived approach to improve autobiographical recall abilities among the Alzheimer’s patients. This approach also makes it possible for families to engage in the autobiographical recall process using the preexisting music in the patients’ neural pathways. This study also offers collaborative efforts between Ethnomusicology and Neurology in running clinical trials to develop autobiographical memory recall processes for therapy.

The Research on the Relationship between Music and Player Interaction in Video Games: A Case Study of the RPG Genre

With the arrival of the network information age in 2022, people choose more and more ways of entertainment, among which video games have become one of the entertainment ways for many young people. Nowadays, the combination of electronic games and music gives players a higher sense of experience and immersion in the game and also makes game promotion more diversified. Among them, RPG games have "vitality" in the game world, which can bring players different world experiences and give players creativity. Not only that, RPGs can provide players with a sense of visual and auditory impact on game stories, backgrounds and interactions. As the most immersive game type, RPG also requires higher interactivity of game scene music and sound effects. This paper takes video games as the research object, based on Jonathan Kramer's music enlightenment on the new theory of music time, and uses the literature research method to analyze the unique characteristics of music sound effects of RPG games, as well as the interaction between game music and players, including how players control the playing of game music and the difference of game music in different types of games and players' sense of experience. Through research, it is found that game music has the characteristics of variability, guidance and theme. Based on theoretical research, it is found that the most significant new feature of game music is nonlinear, which is also one of the essential properties in that players can freely control the playing of game music.

The Spacialization Revisited: Extensive Type’s Characterization and Contradictions in Theodor W. Adorno

As Adorno’s posthumous writings were released, a notable turn in his philosophy of music became noteworthy: by revealing an ambitious project on Beethoven, a quasi-axiomatic theory of musical time emerged, which seems to guide adornian thought at very significant works and texts, as Philosophy of New Music. Sketched in three configuration types of musical time, this theory surprises with the so-called “extensive type”. Adorno would then admit kinds of formal consistency (Stimmigkeit) that are not restricted to the ideal of development (Entwicklung) and assumes the possibility of a non-regressive spatialization, which contrasts with his own ontological definition of the medium. This paper discusses the contradictions of extensive type by presenting an analysis of the Archduke Trio op. 97, in the light of the well-known originary affinity between Beethoven and Hegel. At last, the text presents by which means and for what reasons the extensive type would lead Adorno to the last and most decisive modality of musical time’s configuration, the late style.

Effect of music tempo on duration of stay in exhibition spaces

Investigations have been made into the effect of music tempo on the duration of stay in commercial spaces, but not in exhibition spaces. Previous research has frequently used the duration of stay as an indicator of exhibition learning. To understand how music tempo may influence this learning, this study investigated the effect of music tempo on the duration of stay in exhibition spaces. Because the density of visitors, exhibit elements, or music or exhibit element preferences may affect the duration of stay in exhibition spaces, further investigation was conducted to determine which factors had an impact on the duration of stay in exhibition spaces and which factors had the greatest impact. An online experiment was conducted with a virtual representation of the famous White Cube Gallery in London. To investigate the influence of three factors on the duration of stay in exhibition spaces, 36 scenarios were generated for objective evaluation: music tempo (fast, medium, slow, none), exhibit element density (high, medium, low), and visitor density (single, crowded, uncrowded). Then subjective evaluation was used to investigate whether music preference or exhibit element preference influenced the duration of stay during the above 36 scenarios. Additionally, through subjectively and objectively exploring all the factors affecting participants’ duration of stay (music tempo, exhibit element density, visitor density, music preference, exhibit element preference), this study sought to determine which factors exerted the greatest impact. The objective results revealed that participants stayed longer (by approximately 30 s) with slow-tempo music than with fast-tempo music. Moreover, when the influence of music tempo (fast, medium, slow, none), exhibit element density (high, medium, low), and visitor density (single, crowded, uncrowded) were considered, the results showed that when the visitor density reaches crowded conditions, fast- or slow-tempo music will exert an impact on the duration of stay. The subjective results revealed that, when the effect of exhibit element density or visitor density were considered alongside the effect of music tempo on participants’ duration of stay, exhibit element preferences will also exert an impact on the duration of stay. The subjective and objective results revealed that of all the factors that influence participants’ duration of stay, music tempo (fast or slow) exerted the greatest impact.

Narrative or non-narrative? The effects of short video content structure on mental simulation and resort brand attitude

ABSTRACT Short videos have gradually become a new channel for resorts to promote their brands on social media. This study aims to determine the effect of content structure types and background music tempos of short videos on potential tourists’ mental simulation and resort brand attitude via two studies. Study 1 used a between-group one-way (short video content structure type: narrative vs. non-narrative) experiment to test the psychological mechanism of the short video content structure type on potential tourists’ resort brand attitude through mental simulation. Study 2 was a 2 (short video content structure type: narrative vs. non-narrative) × 2 (background music tempo: fast vs. slow) between-group experiment to test the impact of short video content structure and background music. The results show that potential tourists induce stronger mental simulation and higher resort brand attitude when the structure of the resort short video is narrative. Especially when the background music of narrative short videos is slow, the effect is greater. This study discusses the theoretical and practical implications of this effect for the hospitality industry.

Focal Impulse Theory: Musical Expression, Meter, and the BodyEnacting Musical Time: The Bodily Experience of New Music

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Caressed by music: Related preferences for velocity of touch and tempo of music?

Given that both hearing and touch are 'mechanical senses' that respond to physical pressure or mechanical energy and that individuals appear to have a characteristic internal or spontaneous tempo, individual preferences in musical and touch rhythms might be related. We explored this in two experiments probing individual preferences for tempo in the tactile and auditory modalities. Study 1 collected ratings of received stroking on the forearm and measured the velocity the participants used for stroking a fur. Music tempo preferences were assessed as mean beats per minute of individually selected music pieces and via the adjustment of experimenter-selected music to a preferred tempo. Heart rate was recorded to measure levels of physiological arousal. We found that the preferred tempo of favorite (self-selected) music correlated positively with the velocity with which each individual liked to be touched. In Study 2, participants rated videos of repeated touch on someone else's arm and videos of a drummer playing with brushes on a snare drum, both at a variety of tempos. We found that participants with similar rating patterns for the different stroking speeds did not show similar rating patterns for the different music beats. The results suggest that there may be a correspondence between preferences for favorite music and felt touch, but this is either weak or it cannot be evoked effectively with vicarious touch and/or mere drum beats. Thus, if preferences for touch and music are related, this is likely to be dependent on the specific type of stimulation.

Role of music tempo in choosing from large and small choice sets: insights from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Role of music tempo in choosing from large and small choice sets: insights from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Slower tempo makes worse performance? The effect of musical tempo on cognitive processing speed.

The effects of musical tempo on cognitive processing speed were investigated, and the mediating effect of arousal was empirically tested. In an experiment, participants were divided into fast tempo, slow tempo, and no-music groups and completed three cognitive processing speed tests measuring motor speed, visuospatial processing speed, and linguistic processing speed. The results indicated a significant effect of musical tempo on processing speed and task performance in all three tasks. The slow-tempo group exhibited slower processing speed and worse performance than the no-music group in all three tasks. The fast tempo group displayed no significant difference in processing speed or performance compared with the no-music group. In the linguistic processing task, those who listened to slow-tempo music had better accuracy than those in the other conditions. Arousal did not mediate the relationship between musical tempo and cognitive processing speed.

Fast Tempo Increases Attention: The Effect of Music Tempo on Attention

Music is an inseparable part of daily activities, one of which is student activities. Attention is an effort in mental processes to focus and pay attention to a particular object effectively and selectively. This study aims to see how fast and slow music tempos can affect students' attention, especially during this pandemic. This study used a between-subject design with three groups; One control group and two experimental groups. A total of 36 participants are students. The Concentration Grid Test is used as the measuring instrument. The results of the Kruskal-Wallis test showed a value of p = 0.040, p <0.05. The post-hoc analysis results showed that participants who listened to pop instrumental music with a fast tempo had a significantly higher score than those without music (p=0.042, MD=-1.083) and with a slow tempo (p=0.007, MD=1.583). There was no significant difference between no music with a slow tempo (p=0,229, MD=0,500). This result shows that the music tempo is not distracting and can increase students' attention.Musik menjadi bagian yang tak terpisahkan dari aktivitas sehari-hari, salah satunya dalam kegiatan yang dilakukan mahasiswa. Atensi merupakan usaha dalam proses mental yang dilakukan untuk memfokuskan dan memperhatikan suatu objek tertentu secara efektif dan selektif. Penelitian ini bertujuan melihat bagaimana musik dengan tempo cepat dan lambat mampu memengaruhi atensi mahasiswa, terutama selama masa pandemik. Penelitian ini menggunakan desain between subject dengan tiga kelompok, satu kelompok kontrol dan dua kelompok eksperimen. Partisipan pada penelitian ini sebanyak 36 mahasiswa dan alat ukur yang digunakan adalah Concentration Grid Test. Hasil uji beda pada perhitungan Kruskal-Wallis menunjukkan nilai p = 0,040, p < 0,05. Hasil analisis post-hoc menunjukkan bahwa partisipan yang mendengarkan musik pop instrumental dengan tempo cepat memiliki skor yang secara signifikan lebih tinggi daripada tanpa musik (p=0,042, MD=-1.083) dan tempo lambat (p=0.007, MD=1,583), tetapi antara tanpa musik dengan tempo lambat tidak terdapat perbedaan yang signifikan (p=0,229, MD=0,500). Hasil ini menunjukkan bahwa tempo musik tidak menjadi sebuah distraksi, melainkan mampu meningkatkan atensi mahasiswa saat melakukan kegiatan kognitif.

The effect of background music tempo on eating speed and food intake volume within in healthy women.

The effects of the different tempos of background music (BGM) on food intake and eating speed have not been fully studied. The study aimed to investigate the influence of changing the tempo of BGM during meals on food intake and to explore strategies to support appropriate eating behavior. Twenty-six healthy young adult women participated in this study. In the experimental phase, each participant ate a meal under three separate conditions: fast (120% speed), moderate (original, 100% speed), and slow (80% speed) BGM. The same music was used for each condition, and appetite before and after eating, the amount of food consumed, and eating speed were recorded. The results showed that food intake (g, mean ± standard error (SE)) was slow: 317.9 ± 22.2, moderate: 400.7 ± 16.0, and fast: 342.9 ± 22.0. Eating speed (g/s, mean ± SE) was slow: 28.1 ± 2.8, moderate: 34.2 ± 2.7, and fast: 27.2 ± 2.4. The analysis showed that the moderate condition showed greater speed than the fast and slow conditions (slow-fast: p = .008; moderate-slow: p = .012; moderate-fast: p = .004). Moreover, the food intake in the moderate condition was significantly higher than that in the slow and fast conditions (moderate-slow: p < .001; moderate-fast: p < .001), and there was no significant difference between the slow and fast conditions in this regard (p = .077). These results suggest that original tempo BGM led to higher food intake compared to the faster and slower tempo conditions. These findings suggest that listening to music at an original tempo during meals may support appropriate eating behavior.