DOI: 10.25666/dataosu-2022-02-28
title: Perception of expressive vocal cues in musical sounds
title: Perception des indices émotionnels vocaux dans des sons musicaux

description: This dataset contains 340 audio stimuli (speech, singing voice, music) designed to contain emotional cues (e.g. smiles, tremor, etc.), as well as experimental data collected on 60 listeners rating the emotional content of these sounds. This dataset corresponds to the work reported in: Bedoya et al. (2021) Even violins can cry: specifically vocal emotional behaviours also drive the perception of emotions in non-vocal music. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1840).
description: Set de 340 stimuli sonores (voix, chant, musique) construits pour contenir des indices émotionnels (sourire, tremblement), et données expérimentales collectées sur 60 participants jugeant des émotions à l'écoute de ces stimuli. Données correspondant à l'article : Bedoya et al. (2021) Even violins can cry: specifically vocal emotional behaviours also drive the perception of emotions in non-vocal music. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1840).
description: Audience: University: master, Research, Informal Education
description: UpdatePeriodicity: no update
description: AdditionnalInformation: All participants were tested at the Sorbonne-INSEAD Center for Behavioural Science. The experiment was approved by the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires (INSEAD) IRB. All participants gave their informed consent and were debriefed about the purpose of the research immediately after the experiment.
description: Project: REFLETS - Rétroaction Émotionnelle Faciale et Linguistique, et États de stress post-Traumatiques, Projet-ANR-17-CE19-0020 (French National Agency for Research)
description: Project: SEPIA - Processus sensoriels et émotionnels dans les troubles du spectre de l'autisme, Projet-ANR-19-CE37-0022 (French National Agency for Research)
description: Project: CREAM - Cracking the emotional code of music, ERC Starting Grant 335536 (European project)
description: Project: Fondation pour l'audition, Fondation pour l'audition FPA-RD-2018-2 (Another national)
description: Experimental data: We asked two groups of N = 29 musician and N = 31 non-musician listeners to compare pairs composed of the manipulated and non-manipulated variants of each sound using two Likert scales for expressed emotional valence and arousal, and examined whether the manipulations led to similar emotional interpretations when they occurred in speech and music.
description: Simulation or computational data: We selected 14 excerpts from songs of various popular music genres (pop, jazz, rock), available as unmixed, multi-track recordings from the free online resource 'Mixing Secrets For the Small Studio'. For each recording, we selected one full musical phrase (singing + accompaniment) of average duration M = 7 sec.

For each excerpt, we then used the available multi-tracks to create variants in 4 conditions: singing (the lead vocal track, without instrumental accompaniment), singing + accompaniment (the original song, composed of lead vocal track and instrumental accompaniment), violin + accompaniment (the original song in which the lead vocal track was replaced by a violin instrumental track matching the main melody) and speech (a recording of a transcription of the lyrics of the lead vocal track, performed as non-musical speech). None of the accompaniment tracks in conditions 'singing + accompaniment' and 'violin + accompaniment' contained additional background vocals.

The instrumental track in the 'violin + accompaniment' condition was recorded on the violin by a semi-professional musician Choeurs et Orchestres des Grandes Écoles) in overdubbing conditions matching the pitch and phrasing of the original vocal track. Speech tracks in the 'speech' condition were recorded by two native English speakers (one male, one female, matching the gender of the original singer), who performed a spoken, neutral-tone rendition of the lyrics, without knowing nor hearing that these were originally singing material. All recordings were performed in music production studios in IRCAM (Paris, France) by a professional sound engineer (D.B.). In addition, we also selected 12 'scream' stimuli from a previous study (Liuni et al. Behavioral Processes, 2020), which consisted of short, isolated shouts of phoneme /a/, recorded by 6 male and 6 female actors. These resulted in 68 sets of multi-track stimuli, matched in 5 different conditions (Speech: 14; singing: 14; singing + accompaniment: 14; violin + accompaniment: 14; and an unmatched set of 12 screams).

Before mixing, the lead track (vocal in conditions 'speech', 'screams', 'singing', 'singing + accompaniment'; violin in condition 'violin + accompaniment') in each of the multi-track stimuli was then processed with three acoustic manipulations simulating specifically-vocal behaviours: smiling (two levels: smile and unsmile), vocal tremor (one level: tremor) and vocal effort (one level: tension). Finally, the tracks of each stimulus were mixed by a professional sound engineer (DB), resulting in 68 non-manipulated and 272 manipulated stereo stimuli.