Authors : Ahyeon Choi(chah0623@snu.ac.kr), Woojae Cho, and Kyogu Lee
Keywords : musical keys, sharp and flat, sensory perception, enharmonic, brightness, warmth, and sharpness
Background
A wide spectrum of elements in music such as pitch contours, rhythm, harmony, tempo, and dynamics affect emotions or senses that the music evokes. In particular, the musical key has been considered a crucial attribute in determining the overall atmosphere of music. Previous studies have shown that the major key is related to brightness and happiness, while the minor key is related to darkness and sadness. However, keys also can be subdivided into sharp (#) keys and flat (b) keys. Sharp and flat keys are constructed in opposite directions in the Circle of Fifth, which is known to be musically associated with tension and relaxation. Thus, sharp and flat keys are likely to cause opposing sensory perceptions in music.
Aims
Based on these hypotheses, we investigated whether sharp and flat keys of music indeed have different effects on the perception of three senses: brightness, warmth, and sharpness.
Methods
A total of 35 musicians (Mage= 22, Mtrainingyears = 8.4) responded to their perceived senses after listening to Mozart’s piano sonatas where the key is established in eight bars.
In session 1, K.545 and K.310 were transposed into 24 different keys, and in session 2, K.279, K.309, and K.330 were transposed into only the enharmonic keys. All stimuli were randomly presented as a score-recording pair in each session, and then participants responded with a 7-point scale for brightness, warmth, and sharpness at the end of each stimulus.
Results
To analyze the results of session 1, we perform linear regression between the keys(X) and the perceived sensory scores(Y) from the key. Consistent with previous studies showing that pitch height affects the perception of brightness, warmth, and sharpness, X and Y show linearity along with the height of key’s pitch in all senses (mean of r² = 0.839, sd = 0.099). However, the scatter plot allows us to see that sharp and flat keys are perceived as opposite senses. Sharp keys are perceived much brighter, cooler, and sharper, and flat keys are perceived much darker, warmer, and flatter.
These tendencies are better demonstrated in session 2, which consists only of enharmonic keys with the same actual pitches but different sharp and flat key signatures. The paired t-test shows that perceived sensory scores for sharp and flat keys are significantly different in all three senses (p < 0.05), with the same aspect as the result of session 1.
Conclusion and Implication
These results suggest that even with the same music, we might perceive different senses depending on whether the key is sharp or flat.
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