Keywords: Scentics

Music, Mind, and Brain
Manfred Clynes (edt.) - Plenum Press
Expanded Proceedings from the 3rd Workshop on the Physical and Neurophysical
foundations of Music (1980, Ossiach, Austria)

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Chapter IV:
THE LIVING QUALITY OF MUSIC


1. THE MEANING AND FUNCTION OF ESSENTIC FORMS


* [p.47] The ability of an expressive sound to communicate its quality can be easily lost
by changing its dynamic character. (question: what characteristics have the biggest
influence on the quality/meaning?)
* [p.47] QUESTION: To what extend is this kind of enjoyment of ''livingness'' based on
biological programs? Are there dynamic forms that have an innate meaning, forms
that can act upon the nervous system not in arbitrary ways but like keys in a lock,
activating thereby specific brain processes to which we react in some sense
emotionally?
* [p.48] Example: In a superior performance tone color and dynamic form complement
one another, and subtle changes of timbre occur during the course of expression that
ehance the communicative power.


MUSICAL THOUGHT

* [p.49] Sounds/scores are only building blocks; they only have meaning when
complete. A fraction of an essentic form is empty of its meaning.


AMPLITUDE RELATIONSHIPS

* [p.50] Music scores only note the discrete frequency changes. In order to make a
good performance, small fluctuations in frequency are played. This is done by the
performer: ''Yet the performing musician independently does in fact estimate just this,
in shaping the sound envelope of tones and their relationship in musical phrases. He
does like a cyclist adjust the bicycle from moment to moment not by prescription, but
by 'feel', which represents feedback''


SUGGESTIVE POWER AND EMOTIONAL CONTAGION OF ESSENTIC
FORM

* [p.51] Dynamic expressive sounds that use essentic forms can have a more
innate/direct power that words with only a meaning given by language.
* [p.51] Essentic form by itself appears to act directly to communicate its quality - no
symbolic transformation is required, according to our theory.
* [p.52] Some biological principles of expressive communication:
1. Exclusivity: only one state can be expressed at a time (although this can be a
compound one)
2. Equivalence: state may be expressed by any number of different motor output
modalities
3. Chorence: there is an innate coherence between the essentic form and the
emotion state seeking expression.
4. Complementarity: a recognized form can generate a sentic state in the perceiver
5. Self-generation: the intensity of a sentic state is increased, by the repeated,
arrhythmic generation of essentic form.
6. Generalized emotion: sentic states can be eperienced and expressed without
specific references to real life situations / associations.
7. Communicative power as a form function: the power of essentic form in
communicating and generating a sentic state is greater the more closely the form
approaches the pure or ideal essentic form of that state.



2. EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE LANGUAGE OF
ESSENTIC FORM


* [p.53] Expressive forms used during the experiments: anger, hate, grief, love, sex,
joy, reverence


2.1 RECOGNITION OF MOTOR EXPRESSIONS OF ESSENTIC FORM

* [p.53] Research Question: Would a person who was specifically taught these
expressive finger pesssure patterns of particular emotions as motor skills only,
without being told that they had any relation to emotional expression, be able to
identify them?
* [p.53] Experiment (50 subjects): First, the subject learns to express the seven
essentic forms by finger movement from the experimenter. Afterwards, the subject
receives a list with the names of seven emotions and are asked to link emotions with
dynamic patterns and give a confidence rating.
* [p.56] The results are depicted in figure 2. (figure 3 shows the same results, only split
up by gender)


2.2 RECOGNITION OF VISUAL DYNAMIC ESSENTIC FORM

* [p.58] Research Question: How well can these finger pressure expressions be
recognized, just by visually observing the hand and forearm?
* [p.58] Experiment (232 subjects): The hand and forearm of the experimenter showing
dynamic expressions of specific emotions are recorded on video tape and shown to
the subject. Subjects were asked to identify and rate the emotions.
* [p.59] The results are depicted in figure 4. (figure 5 shows the same results, only split
up by gender). Results show an even higher degree of recoginition. This implies that
(1) the expressive forms on film were apparently quite well expressed and (2) a
common code prevails within this cultural group for their recognition.
* [p.60] The higher rate of recognition when compared to the previous experiment can
be explained by assuming that the movement executed by the subjects in the first
experiment represented the specific dynamic forms somewhat imperfectly, and this
would have contributed to a slightly higher degree of confusion (analogously, it is
easier to recognize a well shaped musical phrase than to play it!).


TRANSFORMATION OF TOUCH EXPRESSION TO SOUND THAT
EXPRESSES THE SAME QUALITIES

* [p.61] The first two experiments showed a high degree of confidence for touch forms.
We may now investigate whether expressive forms for touch and sound share a
common dynamic form.
* [p.61] If the manner of using the motor outputs were programmed by a particular brain
algorithm for a specific emotion, one might expect a degree of correspondence
between these various outputs, and possibly in the representation by visual artist of
dynamic form as well.
* [p.61] If we are able to investigate the touch-to-sound transform, we can ask, what is
the simplest representation in sound of the touch expressive form?
* [p.61] Method of finding the transforms:
A. Frequency Envelope: no change requires in the touch form, only scaling.
B. Amplitude Envelope: constraint: a sound must begin and end in zero amplitude, to
allow for that, the touch form was passed through an imperfect differentation.
[p.62] For the frequency envelope one needs to choose, (1) the initial frequency, (2)
the polarity of modulation (e.g. does an increasing pressure cause the frequency to
go up or down), (3) the depth of scaling. The scaling parameters are shown in table 1.


2.3 RECOGNITION OF EMOTIONALLY EXPRESSIVE SOUNDS
TRANSFORMED FROM TOUCH

* [p.66] The experiment (189 subjects) is similar to experiment 2 (visual dynamic
forms).
* [p.67] The results are depicted in figure 7. The sound expressions for anger, hate,
grief , sex and joy were well recognized, while the sound for love was largely
confused with that from reverence.


2.4 RECOGNITION OF EMOTIONALLY EXPRESSIVE SOUNDS
GENERATED FROM WHITE URBAN TOUCH BY CENTRAL AUSTRALIAN
ABORIGINES

* [p.69] Research Question: Is the ability to recognize the sounds from experiment 3
largely cultural or based on biological foundations?
* [p.69] Experiment (40 subjects): repeat experiment 3 with a group of Central
Australian Aborigines. To simplify the procedure no confidence ratings were taken.
* [p.70] Figure 8 depicts the result.
* [p.71] The results show not only a statistical significant recognition but the relative
percentages of errors (compared: group of white students from experiment 3, and
aborigines from experiment 4) are generally similar for the five best recognized
emotions.


2.5 RECOGNITION OF COMBINED VISUAL AND AUDITORY ESSENTIC
FORM: AUDITORY FORMS DERIVED FROM TOUCH ARE
SUPERIMPOSED ON THE

* [p.71] In order to test the relative contributions to [perceived quality by the
transformed sound as compared with the touch expressions form which they were
made, we superimposed transformed sound expression on the original film of touch
expressions, so that they occurred together with the touch expressions.
* [p.71] Experiment (75 subjects)
* [p.72] The results are depicted in figure 9. When two good expressions are
superimposed the result improves.


3. APPLICATIONS TO MUSIC

* [p.73] All the expressive sounds we have considered so far display a continuously
varying frequency. Melodies however largely use stepwise changing frequencies.
How are these two related?
Although the frequency moves in discrete steps in a melody the same in not generally
required of the amplitude envelope.


THE ACTION OF ESSENTIC FORM ON THE FROMATION OF MELODIES

SENTIC ANALYSIS OF MUSICAL COMPOSITIONS

IMPROVISATION AND SENTOGRAPHIC RECORDING


APPLICATIONS TO MUSIC PERFORMANCE

* [p.79] In musical performances essentic forms are used. The performer can
experiment with the duration of the form, the enchainment of form and expression of
form (eg. Exaggerating the pure form).


COMPOSING WITH ESSENTIC FORMS


* [p.79] A computer program that generates music with essentic forms has been
created.



SUMMARY


* [p.80] Common brain programs of biological time forms of expression called 'essentic
forms' underlie specific dynamic expressive communication in various sensory
modes, it is suggested, both in production and recognition of these elements of
language. Experiments in tactile (motoric), sound and visual modes bearing on this
are described. A transform that converts a dynamic touch expression form to a sound
form of the same expressive quality has been found.