Groove and catchiness in popular music: an interview study with music experts
Creators: name: Bechtold, Toni Amadeus
name: Witek, Maria
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021
Subjects: Groove
Catchiness
Emotions
Popular Music

description: Background Groove and catchiness are fundamental goals of western popular music: many songs are geared towards encouraging dance and to stick in the minds of the audience. Music psychology defines groove as "that aspect of the music that induces a pleasant sense of wanting to move along with the music."1 Musical catchiness is "long-term musical salience, the degree to which a musical fragment remains memorable after a period of time."2 Both phenomena have been examined individually in various listening experiments. In contrast, detailed qualitative views on the concepts are rare, and how they interact or relate is unclear. Aims This study aims to explore the views and experience of music creators through expert interviews to find out how they understand groove and catchiness, and how important these phenomena are for popular music. Furthermore, we examine whether groove and catchiness are related, and if so, in what way. Method We designed semi-structured interviews of approximately 1.5h length according to guidelines for theory-generating expert 3interviews. They consisted of two parts: general questions on the topic, and the discussion of 7 short stimuli. We conducted interviews with 5 experts that have technical, processual, and interpretative knowledge of how to perform, compose and produce music, and have a high reputation among musicians. These experts were between 36 and 69 years old, are part of the swiss or german music scene, and their skills cover a diverse set of instruments and genres. The interviews were analyzed in a 4-step procedure of coding, thematic comparison, conceptualization, and theoretic generalization. Results The insights on groove were largely congruent with established theories4 but offered some refinements. The experts described the emotional element of groove as more diverse than just pleasure. They saw similarities to flow and stated that groove is not learned or understood intellectually, but solely embodied. Participation is a key factor, and groove often a group effort. Catchy music needs to touch or captivate the listener, which leads to its memorization. Catchiness has different forms: either textual (e.g., melody or rhythm) or non-textual (timbres or effects), and it can also arise from changes in the fabric; hence the musical context plays a role. Catchiness is not entirely intrinsic to music but depends on a listener's musical background. The experts described groove and catchiness as central to popular music, as often-used quality criteria, and major means of communication between musicians and audience. Both are seminal during composition and production, and groove also during performance. There is overlap between the phenomena: an emotional experience, "being moved," is a shared core element, and respective music shows similar characteristics, as it stimulates affect, grabs attention, invites participation, is distinctive, accessible, and fits the listener's taste and musical background. Groove and catchiness interact in three different ways in polyphonic music: positively through mutual support or even fusion of the phenomena, and negatively when they are deliberately independent. Conclusions The detailed investigation of musician's views on groove and catchiness enriched the music psychological understandings of the concepts and underpinned their fundamental importance for popular music. The perspective highlighted the intentions of musicians and thus showed that frequent cooccurrences of groove and catchiness are intended. The two are related, as "being moved" and several promoting factors overlap, but they also interact, except if intended otherwise. This interaction and overlap can stretch into a fusion the phenomena. Our next step is to examine the strategies that promote groove and catchiness and further explore the nature and causes of catchiness. The relationship will be investigated experimentally. References 1 Janata, P., Tomic, S. T., &amp; Haberman, J. M. (2012). Sensorimotor coupling in music and the psychology of the groove. Journal of Experimental Psychology. General, 141(1), 54–75. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024208 2 Burgoyne, J. A., Bountouridis, D., van Balen, J. M. H., &amp; Honing, H. (2013). Hooked: A game for discovering what makes music catchy. Proceedings of the 14th Society of Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR). 3 Bogner, A., Littig, B., &amp; Menz, W. (2014). Interviews mit Experten. Eine praxisorientierte Einführung. Springer VS. 4 Senn, O., Rose, D., Bechtold, T., Kilchenmann, L., Hoesl, F., Jerjen, R., Baldassarre, A., &amp; Alessandri, E. (2019). Preliminaries to a Psychological Model of Musical Groove. Frontiers in Psychology, 10(1228), 1–5. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01228
description: + ID der Publikation: hslu_84655 + Art des Beitrages: Poster-Präsentation + Sprache: Englisch + Letzte Aktualisierung: 2021-10-26 15:29:13