Measuring emotional responses to music within a classroom setting

Abstract

Investigating the emotional impact of music listening has a long history. Indeed, reactions to subtle as well as obvious changes in music, whether inadvertent or deliberate, occupy a good deal of interest for the music researcher as well as the music educator. Regardless of the extremely subtle acoustic changes that are perceptible within almost all studies from an electronic digital perspective, it is the total overall effect that most occupies the attention of the individual listener/student. While newer listening devices offer a plethora of music selections that can be presented and studied, often the educator does not have access to the advanced equipment used by researchers and has very limited resources other than their own performance and/or using various recording/playback units. The study investigated a `paper and pencil' drawing compared with the much more advanced Continuous Response Digital Interface (CDRI) using high-school students. Results indicated that subjects approximate the same emotional responses with a drawing when compared to the sophisticated graphic analysis of the CRDI. These findings indicate that a teacher using only a simple paper and pencil representation might be able to elicit and document an `overall emotional effect' that provides as much musical information as using more sophisticated measuring devices.