We combine perceptual research and acoustic analysis to probe the messy, pluralistic world of musical semantics, focusing on sound mass music. Composers and scholars describe sound mass with many semantic associations. We designed an experiment to evaluate to what extent these associations are experienced by other listeners. Thirty-eight participants heard 40 excerpts of sound mass music and related contemporary genres and rated them along batteries of semantic scales. Participants also described their rating strategies for some categories. A combination of qualitative stimulus analyses, Cronbach’s alpha tests, and principal component analyses suggest that cross-domain mappings between semantic categories and musical properties are statistically coherent between participants, implying non-arbitrary relations. Some aspects of participants’ descriptions of their rating strategies appear to be reflected in their numerical ratings. We sought quantitative bases for these associations in the acoustic signals. After attempts to correlate semantic ratings with classical audio descriptors failed, we pursued a neuromimetic representation called spectrotemporal modulations (STMs), which explains much more of the variance in semantic ratings. This result suggests that semantic interpretations of music may involve qualities or attributes that are objectively present in the music, since computer simulation can use sound signals to partially reconstruct human semantic ratings.

中文翻译：

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声音大众音乐的语义维度

我们结合感知研究和声学分析来探索音乐语义的混乱、多元世界，专注于声音大众音乐。作曲家和学者用许多语义关联来描述声音质量。我们设计了一个实验来评估其他听众对这些关联的体验程度。38 名参与者听到了 40 段有声大众音乐和相关当代流派的片段，并根据语义量表对它们进行了评分。参与者还描述了他们对某些类别的评分策略。定性刺激分析、Cronbach 的 alpha 测试和主成分分析的组合表明语义类别和音乐属性之间的跨域映射在参与者之间具有统计上的一致性，这意味着非任意关系。参与者对其评分策略的描述的某些方面似乎反映在他们的数字评分中。我们在声学信号中寻找这些关联的定量基础。在尝试将语义评级与经典音频描述符相关联失败后，我们寻求一种称为频谱时间调制 (STM) 的神经模拟表示，它解释了语义评级的更多差异。这一结果表明，音乐的语义解释可能涉及音乐中客观存在的品质或属性，因为计算机模拟可以使用声音信号来部分重建人类语义评级。在尝试将语义评级与经典音频描述符相关联失败后，我们寻求一种称为频谱时间调制 (STM) 的神经模拟表示，它解释了语义评级的更多差异。这一结果表明，音乐的语义解释可能涉及客观存在于音乐中的品质或属性，因为计算机模拟可以使用声音信号来部分重建人类语义评级。在尝试将语义评级与经典音频描述符相关联失败后，我们寻求一种称为频谱时间调制 (STM) 的神经模拟表示，它解释了语义评级的更多差异。这一结果表明，音乐的语义解释可能涉及音乐中客观存在的品质或属性，因为计算机模拟可以使用声音信号来部分重建人类语义评级。