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Influence of Vocals on the
Emotional Response to a Rock Song
Abstract
This project aims at understand the importance of vocals on the emotional to a rock song. Vocals are what usually sticks to our mind after listening to a song and the singer's voice is generally the main feature we use to recognise an artist or a band.
So, are really vocals the most important part in a song? Are the vocals qualities what really determine if we like or not a song? Does the whole band revolve around the singer and is their voice the main source of emotional response? Do we need the X-factor to sing great songs?
Analysing the emotional responses to 5 rock songs, each in 3 versions (complete song, vocals only, instruments only), we tried to understand a bit more about the contribution of voice to the final perception.
Method
Stimuli
After evaluating the suitability of multitrack recording from the Queen Mary Open Multitrack Testbed and the Cambridge Music Technology databases songs from reknowned artists have been selected as they have been recognised to be better for eliciting emotional response with respect to completely unknown songs.
Songs:
1. Spoon - Sister Jack - (excerpt used as preparatory song to familiarise with the test)
2. Arcade Fire - Black Mirror
3. Incubus - Dig
4. Nine Inche Nails - March of the Pigs
5. Pavement - Cut Your Hair
6. TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
For each song Adobe Audition and Audacity have been used to prepare 3 different mixes:
1) Complete song
2) Instruments only
3) Vocals only. After a brief evaluation I decided to keep the drums track, at very low volume, since the prolonged silence was going to determine distraction of the subject from the test with the risk of invalidate the responses.
The songs have been updated on Google Drive and access given to the subjects.
Google's "Random Signal Generator" has been used to randomly select the tracks.
Emotional Response
To record the emotional responses of each subject in real-time I used a mood tracking app (NOMIE PRO). Instructions were given to each subject on how to install and setup the app. The instructions also showed and explained what is the Valence-Arousal and how to use the four trackers (Angry/Stressed, Happy/Excited, Sad/Bored, Calm/Relaxed) as a simplified representation of the each quarter of the plane.
Start and End trackers were used at the beginning and end of each song to allow for synchronisation during the analisys phase.
At the end of the test the subjects exported a csv file with all the responses.
Analisys
The responses have been imported and formatted in Microsoft Excel.
A numerical value has been given to each tracker:
Happy/Excited = 2
Calm/Relaxed = 1
Sad/Bored = -1
Angry/Stressed = -2
The response time has been rounded to the nearest second.
The data has than been imported in MatLab. For each subject I defined a matrix (300 seconds x 15 tracks) containing all the responses. A smothing (median) flter has been applied to each column and the final results obtained as the mean.
Results
Arcade Fire - Black Mirror
Strong interaction between Instruments and Vocals. Both Instrumental and Vocals tracks are generally considered Sad/Boring when in isolation.
Complete song gives the opposite result, generally perceived as Calm/Relaxing but with several peaks in the Happy/Exciting area (mainly Bridge and Chorus). Alternation of phrases between vocals and instruments seems to have a strong influence.
Incubus - Dig
Intro seems to be very engaging but the arousal is lost as soon as the vocals start. Then the response remains neutral for the whole song.
Vocals: verse is generally considered boring. Only a couple of significant peaks at the beginning of Choruses. Backing vocals in the 2nd Verse 2 (Vrs2) and Pre-Chorus (PrCh) are perceived as Annoying, same thing for the last Bridge (Brg).
The song seems to not keep the pace with positive response to the Intro.
Nine Inch Nails - March of the Pigs
Vocals by themselves are considered Sad/Boring or Annoying/Stressing. Instruments by themselves seem fairly neutral but the average in this case is the result of subjects judging it Exciting or Annoying. Also, only 3 responses have been given for this track. The two together seem to work quite well eliciting contrast between stressing and exciting moments. It’s interesting how, in the 1st bridge, the release of tension is triggering positive/exciting responses. It doesn’t happen the same with the 2nd bridge, maybe because it is expected. The contrast in response is interesting for the last chorus as well.
Pavement - Cut Your Hair
Vocals: backing vocals in the 3 repetitions of the Intro elicit positive responses. During verses and choruses the response decreases with negative peaks as the singer screams.
Instr: most of the song is on the positive valence half of the plane.
For the complete song the positive response to the instrumental part seems to sum with the negative response to the vocal part resulting in an overall neutral response with exception of the first Intro and the last Bridge.
TV on the Radio - Wolf Like Me
Vocals don’t seem to elicit any strong response.
In the instrumental tracks 4 moments trigger excitement: 1st, 2nd and 4th peaks correspond to the guitar changing riff while the 3rd peak corresponds to an instrumental part with a release of tension.
The complete song doesn’t show a unanimous response with a symmetrical distribution around the valence axis.
Limitations
This results are influenced by several limitations:
• Number of subjects – only 3 to 6 responses for each track not enough
• Discrete mood tracking – limited precision in reflecting subjectiveness
• Limited availability of multitrack recordings
Conclusions
• The results suggest that vocals in rock music are “just another instrument”, and, as such, their importance in the response to a song reside in the contribution they give to the song as a whole.
• The interaction (contrasts or similarities) with the other instruments seem more important than voice quality and singer ability themselves.
• If you can’t sing… Go for alternative rock !!!
• Arcade Fire are magic...but that’s personal opinion :-)
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