Controlling Music Affective Content:

A Symbolic Approach

António Pedro OliveiraAmílcar CardosoUniversity of Coimbra, Portugal03/07/2008

Music Affective Content

Valence represents the degree of happiness expressed in the music. A value of 10 corresponds to a very happy music and 0 to a very sad music.

Arousal represents the degree of activation expressed in the music. A value of 10 corresponds to a very activate music and 0 to a very relaxing music.

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Objective

Implement and assess a computer system to control the affective content of pre-composed music, in such a way that produced music expresses an intended emotion.

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Method Control affective content:

Knowledge base with weighted mappings between music features and affective dimensions.

Knowledge Base: Experiments with ≈110 musical pieces and ≈130

listeners. Algorithms of feature selection to define features and

linear regression to define weights.

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Simplified architecture

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5 labelled musical pieces: Valence – 5.65 Arousal – 3.59 Valence – 8.50 Arousal – 6.36 Valence – 7.94 Arousal – 6.10 Valence – 5.30 Arousal – 3.37 Valence – 4.83 Arousal – 3.03

Example

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Simplified architecture

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Original: Valence – 4.83 Arousal – 3.03

Transformation Increase tempo Add instrument

Transformed Valence – 6.83 Arousal – 3.71

Musical example

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