Which raga is for sadness

To estimate the note density, the mireventdensity function was used which estimates the average frequency of events note onsets per second for an excerpt. Similarly, pulse clarity was estimated by using mirpulseclarity function in terms of the Shannon entropy of the fluctuation spectrum of a particular musical composition Pampalk et al.

Music with easily perceived beats has a distinct and regular fluctuation spectrum and consequently has a low fluctuation entropy and high pulse clarity. The third musical structure, namely tonality, is a central organizing principle in many different kinds of music and pitches are heard in relation to a tonic pitch Chordia and Rae, It was calculated by estimating the mean frequency of occurrence of different tonic intervals as described by Bowling et al.

Tonic interval is the difference in cents between the fundamental frequencies of the note being compared with the tonic. An important point for consideration here was bin size. Consequently, a smaller bin size would be considered more suitable to faithfully capture all the tonic intervals.

However, recent work by Koduri et al. It is therefore sufficient to use the tone classification in Equal temperament scale for evaluating the tonality of ragas.

Accordingly, to estimate tonality, the corresponding interval size data was collated in cent bins spanning three octaves labeled from to cents. The mean frequency of occurrence of tonic intervals was calculated for each bin. Three octaves were then folded into one by adding the mean frequency of occurrence of the notes in each of the corresponding bins across the three octaves. For instance, the mean frequency of occurrence of komal re would be the additive mean frequency of occurrence in , , and cent bins [refer to Supplementary Figure S1 Image 1 ].

To assess whether there were statistically significant differences in rhythmic regularity pulse clarity and tempo note density among the ragas with different experienced emotions one-way ANOVAs were conducted.

The values of pulse clarity and note density for both alaap and gat of ragas were taken as dependent variables and the emotions experienced were taken as the independent variable. To study the effect of tonality on emotional response, correlation analysis was conducted. Correlations were calculated between the average rating of an emotion and the mean frequency of occurrence of tonic intervals across the 12 ragas played in gat.

To characterize which of these tonic intervals were the best predictors of the emotional response stepwise linear regression analysis was conducted. In the regression analysis, the vector containing average ratings for an emotion across the 12 ragas was taken as the dependent variable and the mean frequency of occurrence of the 12 tonic intervals was taken as the independent variable. In order to assign an emotion label to a raga median ratings for each emotion were computed.

Shapiro—Wilk normality test were conducted to assess the normality of the data. Consequently, non-parametric statistical tests were used to compare the median ratings of emotions for each raga. To further assess the highest experienced emotion post hoc Wilcoxon tests were conducted.

For each raga , seven post-hoc Wilcoxon tests were conducted, wherein the median of the highest rated emotion was compared with other seven emotions. On this basis, the highest experienced emotion was determined and emotion label was assigned to each raga.

The median ratings of emotion are color coded where the intensity of color represents the strength of the emotional response. The response matrices represent the median ratings for ragas across the two presentation modes A alaap and B gat. The intensity of color in the color bar represents the valence of the ratings.

A paired sample t -test was conducted to compare the note density in alaap and gat of ragas. Tempo and Rhythmic regularity.

The figure shows the average value of note density estimate of tempo estimated as the number of note onsets per second A and pulse clarity estimate of rhythmic regularity estimated as the level of rhythmic periodicities B across alaap and gat of ragas.

Thus tempo measured in terms of note density and rhythmic regularity measured in terms of pulse clarity were both significantly higher for gat as compared to alaap of a raga. Two-tailed Mann—Whitney U -test was conducted to assess the statistical significance of the differences in the mean frequency of occurrence of major and minor intervals.

The results remained consistent for gat of ragas [see Supplementary Figure S2 Image 2 ]. The tonic intervals of ragas. The next analysis focused on investigating the relationship between emotional response and musical structure. In the first ANOVA, pulse clarity was taken as the dependent variable while the emotions experienced across ragas calm, happy, sad, and tensed were treated as the independent variable.

In the second ANOVA, note density was the dependent variable, while the emotions experienced was the independent variable.

Results of One way Analysis of Variance ANOVA conducted separately to investigate whether ragas with different experienced emotions differ in rhythmic regularity pulse clarity and tempo note density are listed below. In summary, both tempo and rhythmic regularity of a raga modulate emotional response and high arousal emotions happy and tensed are associated with faster rhythm.

To study the effect of tonality on emotional response, correlation and stepwise linear regression analysis was conducted. Since, listeners of gat of ragas experienced high arousal emotions; analysis was conducted only for gat. This indicates that an increase in mean frequency of occurrence of minor intervals is associated with tense emotion, whereas an increase in mean frequency of occurrence of major intervals is associated with happy emotion.

Correlation plot between the ratio of mean frequency of occurrence of minor to major tonic intervals and average happy and tensed ratings across gat of ragas.

The results of the correlation analysis indicate that the mean frequency of occurrence komal re, shuddh Re, and komal dha have significant correlations. To characterize which of these tonic intervals are the best subset for predicting the emotional response stepwise linear regression analysis was conducted. In the regression analysis, the vector containing average ratings for an emotion across the 12 ragas was taken as the dependent variable and the mean frequency of occurrence of the 12 tonic intervals were taken as the independent variables.

The assumptions of linearity, independence of errors, homoscedasticity and normality of residuals were met. The table lists the correlation coefficients of correlations between the average emotion ratings and mean frequency of occurrence of each tonic interval across the 12 ragas.

Results of Stepwise multiple linear regressions performed in order to determine the variance of the emotional responses explained by the tonic intervals in gat of ragas. This study reports for the first time emotional responses of North Indian Classical ragas when rendered in two distinct presentation modes, namely, alaap and gat.

Specifically, we found that 1 distinct emotional responses are associated with alaap and gat of a raga. We discuss below the implications of these results. The key finding of our study was the experimental verification of the hypothesis that distinct emotional responses would be associated with alaap and gat of a raga. During the arrhythmic phase alaap , an artist introduces the notes of the raga and the exposition is focused on setting the scale and the key structure of the melody.

The rhythmic phase gat on the other hand, is faster and rhythmic and a percussionist accompanies the artist. As a consequence, the alaap of raga is believed to set the mood of raga, while gat enhances perception of emotion for that raga Chib, ; Juslin and Sloboda, An interesting feature was the fact that all ragas universally generated a calming effect and anger remained the lowest rated emotion category. This is in consensus with research on Western music which shows that negative emotions like anger which are regularly experienced in everyday life are only rarely experienced in response to music Juslin and Laukka, ; Laukka, However, anger relates to irritation, which is most likely to arise when people are exposed to music they fail to understand, dislike, or even abhor Zentner et al.

Thus, our results indicated that the tonal distribution patterns determine the underlying mood rasa of a raga and the presence of rhythm changes the level of arousal of emotions experienced. These results appear to be universal across musical genres. For instance, in a study conducted by Husain et al. They found that the music manipulations were associated with changes in arousal and mood. By contrast, the mode of the piece was associated with listeners moods.

Those who heard the major mode became more positive in mood, whereas the minor mode caused negative shifts in mood. Thus, tempo and mode were relatively separable in this regard. Another study by Laukka and Gabrielsson showed that rhythm alone can convey emotions.

This tested the idea that drumbeats could express emotions by playing clips of drum performances and found that listeners could accurately indicate which emotions the drummers were attempting to express even though the drummers were limited in the instruments and rhythms they could utilize. While our results clearly support the idea that rhythm plays a significant role in emotional response to music, with the existing design we are unable to separate the specific roles played by tempo and rhythmic regularity and merit further research.

Tonality analysis of ragas revealed that ragas with positive valence for e. By definition, for a consonant interval, the interval between two notes is a simple numerical ratio of frequencies in terms of the harmonic overtone series Plomp and Levelt, Based on structure and composition, all ragas are tonal and the tonic is the reference point. The results of this study encourage us to hypothesize that minor second in NICM plays an important role in conveying tension and further studies should attempt to investigate its role in detail.

At the same time, the present study is characterized by certain limitations which restrict the generalizability of these findings. The first of these is with regard to the concept of sruti in NICM. The tone semitone system of western music is clearly at odds with the 22 sruti system since some semitones are composed of one sruti while others of two or more.

However, the sruti system still cannot account for the minute deviations from the norm, many of which are unconsciously presented by the artist. Thus for the purposes of this study, we were obliged to use the twelve semitone system, while making allowances for minor variations which is a limitation of this study.

Secondly, to arrive at an emotion label for a raga , we should ideally have multiple excerpts of the same raga , played on different instruments by different performers in alaap or gat and then rated by listeners. When responses across different performers and different intruments all emerge with the same label, we would then have truly assigned an emotion label to a raga.

Hopefully, further studies conducted on a large scale can address this question. Finally, we used self-reports to assess participants emotional responses. It can therefore not be ruled out that at least some of the participants rated expressed emotion instead of experienced emotion.

Nevertheless, our study provides new evidence that ragas evoke distinct emotional responses across distinct presentation modes alaap and gat. This opens up the possibility of using different ragas as robust mood-inducing stimuli, which is relevant for studies on emotion. We also found that rhythmic regularity and tempo influence emotion experienced. This is distinct from past work in Western classical music that has shown an association for the minor third with sadness in Western music Curtis and Bharucha, Future work will attempt to extend these findings to larger population in order to delineate influences of culture, familiarity and musical training on emotion experienced.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. We thank Pt. Mukesh Sharma for playing the ragas for the study. We thank Mahesh Prasad, Chaitra Rao, and Arkoprovo Paul for helpful discussions and assistance in experimental design. We also acknowledge the volunteers for their participation in the survey.

Finally, we acknowledge three anonymous reviewers for their insightful critiques of the manuscript. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Journal List Front Psychol v. Front Psychol.

Published online Apr Avantika Mathur , 1 Suhas H. Vijayakumar , 1 Bhismadev Chakrabarti , 2 and Nandini C. Suhas H. Nandini C. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. This article was submitted to Emotion Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Received Sep 24; Accepted Apr The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author s or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. DOCX 42K. WAV 10M. TIF K. TIF 27K. Abstract In Indian classical music, ragas constitute specific combinations of tonic intervals potentially capable of evoking distinct emotions. Keywords: music, emotion, ragas , rhythmic regularity, tempo, tonality. Introduction While music has long been associated with emotions Miller and Williams, ; Patel, , it has also been a subject of interesting debate among philosophers.

Table 1 Music intervals in Hindustani classical music. Open in a separate window. Each interval is a tone defined by the ratio of its fundamental frequency to the tonic Sa. Interval names, abbreviations used, frequency ratios and sizes in cents in Just intonation and TET tunings are given in table. The corresponding interval name in the Western chromatic scale is also given.

In the notation used the seven Shuddha swaras are denoted by capital letters Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni , four komal swaras, and one tivra swara are denoted by small letters re, ga, ma, dha, ni.

Materials and Methods Three minute instrumental renditions of 12 ragas were played by a professional musician on sarod a stringed instrument and digitally recorded in both alaap and gat. Table 2 The table lists the ragas used in the study and the scale used by the artist to play the raga.

Participant Details Participants were recruited through word of mouth and social media platforms. Data Analysis Analysis was conducted at three levels 1 behavioral analysis of emotional response, 2 extraction of musical features of ragas and 3 correlation and regression analysis to investigate the relationship between musical features and emotional response.

Behavioral Analysis Median ratings for each emotion were computed to assign an emotion label to a raga. Assessment of Musical Structure Tempo, Rhythmic Regularity and Tonality As per the objectives of this study, the effect of three musical structures namely tempo, rhythm and tonality on emotional response were assessed.

Relationship Between Musical Structure and Emotional Response To assess whether there were statistically significant differences in rhythmic regularity pulse clarity and tempo note density among the ragas with different experienced emotions one-way ANOVAs were conducted. Results Behavior In order to assign an emotion label to a raga median ratings for each emotion were computed.

Relationship Between Musical Structure and Emotional Response Effect of Rhythmic Regularity and Tempo The next analysis focused on investigating the relationship between emotional response and musical structure. Table 3 Results of One way Analysis of Variance ANOVA conducted separately to investigate whether ragas with different experienced emotions differ in rhythmic regularity pulse clarity and tempo note density are listed below.

The average values of note density and pulse clarity SD in brackets for the ragas with calm, happy, sad and tensed experienced emotions are listed in the table.

Effect of Tonality To study the effect of tonality on emotional response, correlation and stepwise linear regression analysis was conducted.

Table 4 The table lists the correlation coefficients of correlations between the average emotion ratings and mean frequency of occurrence of each tonic interval across the 12 ragas. The scientists found that emotions changed as the tempo picked up from alaap to gat. Chatterjee Singh says specific tonic intervals also emerged as robust predictors of emotional response. Chatterjee Singh says the mood-defining qualities of Hindustani ragas have been documented in ancient Indian performing arts treatise such as the 'Natya Shastra' by Sage Bharat.

Mathur, who wants to conduct the study on a bigger scale with musically untrained and trained people, adds that their future research will try to look at the neural networks underlying emotion perception using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Mathur, A. Emotional responses to Hindustani raga music: the role of musical structure.

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