Understanding the psychology of the interplay between simplicity and complexity in popular song
Lead Research Organisation:
Plymouth University
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Judy Edworthy (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Judy Edworthy (Author)
(2012)
Form appears irrelevant when listening to popular song
Rolison J
(2012)
The Role of Formal Structure in Liking for Popular Music
in Music Perception
Rolison J
(2013)
The whole song is greater than the sum of its parts: Local and structural features in music listening.
in Psychomusicology: Music, Mind, and Brain
| Description | When we listen to music we are listening both the the sequence of notes and lyrics as they occur (in the moment), and also to the overall structure of the song. We believe that both of these elements contribute to our overall enjoyment of the song. In our studies we tested this idea by rearranging some popular songs so that the individual sections (such as the introduction, the chorus, the verse and so on) were heard in orders different to those intended by the original writer. We found, to our surprise, that rearranging the order of the sections did not affect people's enjoyment of the songs. However, the rearranging did affect people's rating of the complexity of the resultant song. We also found that on the first hearing people tended to prefer the original versions of the song, but with repeated exposure actually started to prefer the rearranged versions. Similar findings have been found for classical music, but this is the first time this has been demonstrated for popular music. In psychological terms, these findings help us to understand the relationship between local (the 'in the moment') and global processing of auditory material, of which little is currently known. |
| Exploitation Route | They inform both the psychological literature on local versus global processing, and can give insight into the writing of popular song |
| Sectors | Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software),Other |