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Hubbard, “Synesthesia-like mappings of light-
[1] N. Adams, Analytical Methods of Electroacoustic
Music. Routledge, 2006, ch. Visualization of Mu-
sical Signals, pp. 13–28.
[2] S. Barrass, “Auditory information design,” Ph.D.
dissertation, The Australian National University,
Canberra, Australia, 1997.
[3] J. L. Bentley, “Multidimensional binary search trees
used for associative searching,” Communications of
the ACM, vol. 18, no. 9, pp. 509–517, 1975.
[4] G. Coleman, “Mused: Navigating the personal
sample library,” in Proceedings of the Interna-
tional Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2007).
Copenhagen, Denmark: Ann Arbor, MI: Scholarly
Publishing Office, University of Michigan Library,
2007.
[5] S. Dupont, C. Frisson, X. Siebert, and D. Tardieu,
“Browsing sound and music libraries by similarity,”
in Proceedings of the 128th Convention of the Audio
Engineering Society, London, UK, May 2010.
[6] K. K. Evans and A. Treisman, “Natural cross-modal
mappings between visual and auditory features,”
Journal of Vision, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 6.1–12, January
2010.
[7] M. Ferreira de Oliveira and H. Levkowitz, “From vi-
sual data exploration to visual data mining: A sur-
vey,” IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Com-
puter Graphics, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 378–394, 2003.
[8] K. Giannakis, “Sound mosaics,” Ph.D. dissertation,
Middlesex University, London, UK, October 2001.
[9] ——, “A comparative evaluation of auditory-
visual mappings for sound visualisation,” Organised
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[10] L. Ginsberg, “A case of synaesthesia,” The American
Journal of Psychology, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 582–589,
October 1923.
[11] T. Grill, “Constructing high-level perceptual audio
descriptors for textural sounds,” in Proceedings of
the 9th Sound and Music Computing Conference
(SMC 2012), Copenhagen, Denmark, July 2012,
forthcoming.
[12] T. Grill, A. Flexer, and S. Cunningham, “Identifica-
tion of perceptual qualities in textural sounds using
the repertory grid method,” in Proceedings of the
6th Audio Mostly Conference, ser. AM ’11. New
York, NY, USA: ACM, 2011, pp. 67–74.
[13] S. Heise, M. Hlatky, and J. Loviscach, “SoundTorch:
Quick Browsing in Large Audio Collections,” in
Proceedings of the 125th Convention of the Audio
Engineering Society, San Francisco, CA, USA, Oc-
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[15] A. Hyvärinen, “Survey on independent component
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94–128, 1999.
[16] W. Köhler, Gestalt psychology. Oxford, England:
Liveright, 1929.
[17] L. E. Marks, “On cross-modal similarity: The per-
ceptual structure of pitch, loudness, and brightness,”
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Per-
ception and Performance, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 586–
602, August 1989.
[18] ——, “On perceptual metaphors,” Metaphor and
Symbolic Activity, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 39–66, 1996.
[19] D. Maurer, T. Pathman, and C. J. Mondloch, “The
shape of boubas: sound–shape correspondences in
toddlers and adults,” Developmental Science, vol. 9,
no. 3, pp. 316–322, 2006.
[20] E. Pampalk, A. Rauber, and D. Merkl, “Content-
based organization and visualization of music
archives,” in MULTIMEDIA ’02: Proceedings of the
tenth ACM international conference on Multimedia.
New York, NY, USA: ACM, 2002, pp. 570–579.
[21] N. Sagiv and J. Ward, “Crossmodal interactions:
lessons from synesthesia,” in Visual Perception
Fundamentals of Awareness: Multi-Sensory Inte-
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L. M. Martinez, J.-M. Alonso, and P. U. Tse, Eds.
Elsevier, 2006, vol. 155, pp. 259 – 271.
[22] D. Schwarz and N. Schnell, “Sound search by
content-based navigation in large databases,” in
Proceedings of the 6th Sound and Music Computing
Conference (SMC 2009), Porto, Portugal, July 2009,
pp. 253–258.
[23] G. Strobl, G. Eckel, and D. Rocchesso, “Sound tex-
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[24] L. van der Maaten and G. Hinton, “Visualizing data
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[25] C. Ware, Information Visualization: Perception for
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mann Publishers Inc., 2000.
THE YIN YANG THEORY IN SOUND AND MUSIC: A FIRST
EXPLORATION
Leonardo Gabrielli
Dept. Information Engineering,
Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
l.gabrielli@univpm.it
ABSTRACT
Today the Chinese theory of the Yin and Yang principles is
well known in western countries, often in its philosophical
aspects. However, in the far east it has been used for mil-
lenia to explain and solve pragmatic problems. Notwith-
standing its fuzzy and holistic nature, the Yin Yang theory
has already been successfully applied to the analysis of
physical and biological systems. In this paper, the the-
ory is extended to the field of acoustic signals and their
time-frequency representation, allowing for a simple yet
functional way to analyze, discuss and formalize various
aspects of sound, accessible to experts and non-experts.
The framework can also have application on synthesis al-
gorithms, generative music and music therapy. Two high-
level features for automatic analysis are proposed based
on MPEG-7 low-level descriptors and future scenarios to
assess sound properties and their effect on human subjects
are discussed.
1. INTRODUCTION
For millennia, the Yin Yang theory has been one of the pil-
lars of ancient Asian thoughts, used practically to describe
all aspects of life and properties of objects and living be-
ings. The theory is the pillar of several eastern philoso-
phies and beliefs, such as Taoism and Zen. The Bagua
(eight trigrams) and Five Element theory, on which Feng
Shui and I King are based, stem from Yin and Yang.
Western thinkers have been highly fascinated by such
eastern concepts. A remarkable example in contemporary
music is John Cage’s extensive use of the I King divina-
tion book for composition by chance [12]. It must be
noted, however, that the Yin Yang theory must not be re-
garded “as a religious belief or a principle of lifestyle“
[18] but a rather more practical knowledge. Not surpris-
ingly some western scientists have found connections be-
tween the Chinese theory and the results of contemporary
physics. An extensive review of the funding principle to
ancient eastern theories and the evidences of their validity
in modern physics is contained in F. Capra’s work “The
Tao of Physics” [3]. Holistic thinking is also highly re-
garded in contemporary theory of dynamical systems or
chaos theory, which exploits new theories drawn from bi-
ology and mathematics [4].
Daniele Gabrielli
Università di Macerata,
Macerata, Italy
Although the seemingly dualist approach at the basis
of this theory may seem excessively reductionist, thus ap-
parently making the object of highly specialized techni-
cal knowledge a trivial matter, it is not. On the contrary,
by incorporating many aspects of the object under anal-
ysis, it achieves a holistic gaze, enabling to better deal
with complex phenomena such as those related to human
perception, emotion and health. Objections to holistic ap-
proaches are often made by scientists, especially in fields
like medicine and medical care where the health of people
is at stake. It must be stated, however, that modern medi-
cal science because of the drastically sectorial knowledge
(which helped fighting e.g. communicable diseases in the
past century), is now failing to provide effective therapies
and prevention to noncommunicable diseases such as car-
diovascular diseases, cancers, chronic respiratory diseases
and diabetes [2], which are found in both high-income and
low-income countries and can be prevented with a change
in lifestyle and dietary habits [31]. In fact, there have been
documented cases of successful applications of holistic
approaches to medicine. An excellent example is the mac-
robiotic diet [24, 20, 17], a well-defined dietary regimen
based on the Yin Yang principle and on the Five Elements
theory, which is proving capable of reducing risks and
greatly improve health conditions in individuals affected
by several chronic diseases [25, 13, 11].
The Yin Yang theory has also been applied in com-
putational sciences and logic, where it inspired the for-
malization of a bipolar fuzzy set [35], machine learning
techniques [34, 33, 16] and of a pattern classification sys-
tem for mental disorders [36]. We can probably say that
the ancient Yin Yang theory can be applied to most, if not
all, fields of human knowledge and practice, with good
chances of achieving benefits by gathering a broader un-
derstanding.
It is our belief, thus, that the Yin Yang theory can
be applied to music and sound by direct extension of the
physical properties of Yin and Yang, as has been done in
other fields of physics and biology. Henceforth, if this
theory is properly applied and it is correlated to emotional
states and human activities (the ancient theory does cate-
gorize these in terms of Yin and Yang), it can prove prof-
itable for different scenarios, e.g.:
• for composers or performers to drive high-level au-
tomatic composition or synthesis techniques in a
_597
 more holistic way, thus delegating all the problems
related to low-level control and the large dimension
of the parameters space to the machine;
• for artists of different backgrounds to communicate
in mixed media performances and installations with-
out the need for a highly specific common language
to be shared;
• for any kind of performance where there is a human-
computer feedback and a high-level control variable
needs to be controlled and balanced;
• for individuals with no formal music training to as-
sess and describe sound and music;
• for psychotherapist to understand the Yin or Yang
state of mind (and hence his general mental condi-
tion) of a person from his speech, observing general
properties such as prosody, pitch, and so on. Gener-
ally speaking, Yin is linked to relaxation and Yang
to strain;
• for patients under music therapy to share with their
therapist, and for the latter to deduct the effect of
music and sound on their patients avoiding troubles
in a more rigorous description;
• to possibly lead to a better understanding of the ef-
fect of acoustic pollution and environment acoustics
to psychological and physiological effects in human
subjects.
As the research is ongoing, the aim of this article is to lay
the foundations for the extension of the Yin Yang theory
to the fields of sound analysis and synthesis, music clas-
sification and composition, and hence to any possible ap-
plication in the field of musicology, music therapy, com-
position, arts and performance. This article focuses on the
basic physical properties of sound, acoustical signals and
time-frequency analysis and how they can be analyzed in
terms of Yin and Yang. Extension to music and compo-
sition and creation of software tools that can employ the
concepts of Yin and Yang in sound and music analysis is
still ongoing.
The paper outline follows: Section 2 introduces briefly
the Yin Yang theory as it has been defined and applied,
while Section 3 extends this to acoustic signals, and sound.
Section 4 discusses the characterization of sounds from a
signal analysis approach and from the assessment of phys-
iological parameters on human subjects. Section 5 finally
concludes the paper and remarks the issues open for future
work.
2. THE YIN YANG THEORY
For millennia, the Yin Yang theory has been one of the
foundations of Chinese philosophy. In China, it led to the
creation of philosophies such as the I King and the Five
Element theory. Yin and Yang have found practical ap-
plication in traditional Chinese medicine ([23]), martial
_598
arts [5] and Feng Shui (which has gained in popularity
also in western countries [7]), to name a few. In histori-
cal times, the theory has spread outside the boundaries of
China, such as in Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
The Yin Yang theory is based on the concept that all
sensible phenomena are manifestations of two opposite
forces, namely Yin and Yang. The earliest definition of
Yin and Yang is found in the I King, and is ”firm” and
”soft” [32]. Other attributes have been (respectively) dark
and light, cold and heat, full and empty, expansion and
contraction, transformation and conservation. These ex-
amples help understand the properties of these two ”el-
ements”, but the nature of Yin and Yang is much more
complex. What differentiates Yin and Yang from other
dualistic philosophies is its fuzziness and the set of laws
that rule the interplay between the elements. There is a
huge amount of literature describing the Yin Yang theory,
both ancient [28], [30] and modern [15]; in this paper,
however, we will focus on four basic points, that will be
used later on to demonstrate how Yin and Yang can be
applied to sound and music:
(1) Yin and Yang are opposite principles, but stemming
from the same source; in this paper we will define
Yin as the principle of expansion and Yang as the
principle of contraction (as in [17]).
(2) Yin and Yang continuously change one into another.
This does not happen in a random, chaotic way:
when Yang reaches its apex, it begins receding to
Yin, and vice versa (from Wang Chung, in [15]).
(3) Yin and Yang are opposite poles; there is an infinite
number of ”stages” between the two opposites. Tra-
ditionally, there has never been a numerical scale of
values to define how much Yin or Yang a given en-
tity is. This concept may be well clear to an artist
or a musician: there is no need to exactly quantify,
e.g. how much passionate a piece is. Furthermore,
quantification in terms of Yin and Yang is usually
performed in relative terms as it becomes senseless
in absolute terms; it must always relate to a similar
entity.
(4) It is impossible in the real world to experience a
phenomena that is completely Yin or completely
Yang (just as, for example, the absolute zero is a
theoretical temperature and cannot be achieved). The
two opposites need one another. Yang cannot be
known or explained without the Yin and vice versa,
just like the concept of cold cannot be understood
without knowing warmth. Lao Tzu [28] expresses
this as ”The ten thousand things1 carry yin and em-
brace yang. They achieve harmony by combining
these forces.” A visual explanation of this concept
is the Taijitu, often incorrectly referred to as ”Tao”.
In this symbol, the Yin (black) contains a spot of
Yang (white) and vice versa.
1 Lao Tzu employs a metaphorical language. Here ”ten thousand
things” means everything.
3. EXTENSION OF THE YIN YANG THEORY TO
SOUND
In this paper we demonstrate how the rules on the inter-
play between Yin and Yang can be applied also to sound.
Sound is a continuous time-domain signal, physically rep-
resenting the pressure variation from its local atmospheric
value P0
s(t) = p(t) − P0
with p(t) being the instantaneous pressure level. Inci-
dentally, in the fluctuation generating any audible phe-
nomenon, the pressure p(t) expands and contracts, thus
varying between two opposite polarities. The more the
energetic this variation is, the more the loud a sound is
perceived. Highly energetic sounds are regarded as Yang
(Yang is generally associated with Energy), as opposed to
weak sounds (silence is regarded as Yin).
As explained before, Yin is here regarded as the prin-
ciple of expansion and Yang as the principle of contrac-
tion. Therefore, it can be assumed that a signal s(t) that is
compact in time can be seen as a Yang sound, while one
that is extended in time is more Yin. In the field of sig-
nal processing and analysis, the time localization[6] of a
signal and the choice of a compact yet optimal[27] basis
function used for the analysis is a classical topic2 . Fol-
lowing what has been stated, it can be said that a perfect
Yin sound cannot exist in reality, as it would extend indef-
initely in time, spanning the whole universe history. The
same stands for a perfect Yang sound, which would be a
perfect Dirac impulse, which is impossible to have due
to the natural low-pass nature of physical systems, whose
convolution brings to a “smeared” version of any perfect
pulse. Although mathematical abstractions such as the in-
definitely extended in time or frequency are conceivable
and useful to gather a first discrimination of Yin and Yang,
they are of no use in reality just as the Fourier transform
as a mathematical operator3 As will be discussed in more
detailed below, the perfect Yin or perfect Yang are non-
cochlear entities and cannot be experienced.
To further clarify this first step in extending the Yin
Yang theory to acoustics, the spectrogram in Figure 1 de-
picts two different (orthogonal) signals such as a long sine
wave (extremely compact in frequency) and a Dirac pulse
(extremely compact in time) and a possible transition be-
tween the two.
2 It must be noted that the first work in this field is probably by Dennis
Gabor, well known to the computer music community for the inspira-
tional effect of Gabor atoms described in his Nature article [10]. These
are said to have inspired early formulation of granular synthesis, but they
are almost unknown to other fields such as communication theory or dig-
ital signal processing because of the infinitely extended support of their
Gaussian basis functions that makes their use unpractical. In practical
signal processing compact basis functions (or more simply, windows)
are needed, as the ones used in the Wavelet Transform [6].
3 Gabor himself criticized the direct use of the Fourier operator on
real-life signals “Though mathematically this theorem is beyond re-
proach, even experts could not at times conceal an uneasy feeling when
it came to the physical interpretation of results obtained by the Fourier
method.”[9].
(1)
Figure 1: Spectrogram of two opposite signals: a sine
wave and a dirac pulse and the transition between the two.
Together from the time localization of a sound, also
periodicity, pitch and spectral properties must be carefully
analyzed. Periodic sounds can be characterized by their
(instantaneous) pitch, or inversely, their wavelength: a
high-pitched tone has shorter wavelength, or a more com-
pact periodicity, hence is more Yang than a low-frequency
tone. The nature of high frequency tones is Yang with re-
spect to lower frequency tones. This finds support also
in the quantum theory for waves and light: e.g. high fre-
quency photons bring a high energetic content.
Aperiodic signals can be analyzed in terms of their
spectrum: compactness vs. expansion, localization of their
centre of mass towards low or high frequencies. The more
their spectra are wide the more they are Yang. The more
their centre of mass is localized towards low frequencies,
the more their nature is Yin.
Sounds are also characterized by the repetition of micro-
scale events, such as bouncing or rumbling [26]. When
the periodicity of these events is low enough not to af-
fect the pitch or harmonic content of a sound, it can be
used anyway to categorize the sound with a more Yang
nature when they happen faster and closer. This can be
used fruitfully when discussing the properties of experi-
mental or EDM4 glitch music and the likes, which usually
show very fast repetition of very compact sound fragments
or sonic events.
A fast variation or attack time is a sign of Yang. An
example of this can be a thunderstruck or a snare sound,
which usually leads a listener to a more active state. On
the other hand monotony and repetition lead to a more
Yin signal. As an empirical example a continuous tone,
such as a drone, or a sustained “Om” mantra can lead to a
relaxed (Yin) state of mind.
Finally, as the Yang of the ancient theory represents
Energy and Activity, signals with a higher energy are of
a more Yang nature than lower energy signals. As an ex-
ample, the same piano sonata, played at a steadier tempo,
with fortissimo results in a more Yang performance than a
slower tempo, feeble piano performance.
Yin and Yang (and the transition from one to another)
are attributes that can be applied to different properties of
a sound (or in general any phenomenon). However it often
happens that different properties are related one another
4 Electronic Dance Music
_599
 more holistic way, thus delegating all the problems
related to low-level control and the large dimension
of the parameters space to the machine;
• for artists of different backgrounds to communicate
in mixed media performances and installations with-
out the need for a highly specific common language
to be shared;
• for any kind of performance where there is a human-
computer feedback and a high-level control variable
needs to be controlled and balanced;
• for individuals with no formal music training to as-
sess and describe sound and music;
• for psychotherapist to understand the Yin or Yang
state of mind (and hence his general mental condi-
tion) of a person from his speech, observing general
properties such as prosody, pitch, and so on. Gener-
ally speaking, Yin is linked to relaxation and Yang
to strain;
• for patients under music therapy to share with their
therapist, and for the latter to deduct the effect of
music and sound on their patients avoiding troubles
in a more rigorous description;
• to possibly lead to a better understanding of the ef-
fect of acoustic pollution and environment acoustics
to psychological and physiological effects in human
subjects.
As the research is ongoing, the aim of this article is to lay
the foundations for the extension of the Yin Yang theory
to the fields of sound analysis and synthesis, music clas-
sification and composition, and hence to any possible ap-
plication in the field of musicology, music therapy, com-
position, arts and performance. This article focuses on the
basic physical properties of sound, acoustical signals and
time-frequency analysis and how they can be analyzed in
terms of Yin and Yang. Extension to music and compo-
sition and creation of software tools that can employ the
concepts of Yin and Yang in sound and music analysis is
still ongoing.
The paper outline follows: Section 2 introduces briefly
the Yin Yang theory as it has been defined and applied,
while Section 3 extends this to acoustic signals, and sound.
Section 4 discusses the characterization of sounds from a
signal analysis approach and from the assessment of phys-
iological parameters on human subjects. Section 5 finally
concludes the paper and remarks the issues open for future
work.
2. THE YIN YANG THEORY
For millennia, the Yin Yang theory has been one of the
foundations of Chinese philosophy. In China, it led to the
creation of philosophies such as the I King and the Five
Element theory. Yin and Yang have found practical ap-
plication in traditional Chinese medicine ([23]), martial
_598
arts [5] and Feng Shui (which has gained in popularity
also in western countries [7]), to name a few. In histori-
cal times, the theory has spread outside the boundaries of
China, such as in Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
The Yin Yang theory is based on the concept that all
sensible phenomena are manifestations of two opposite
forces, namely Yin and Yang. The earliest definition of
Yin and Yang is found in the I King, and is ”firm” and
”soft” [32]. Other attributes have been (respectively) dark
and light, cold and heat, full and empty, expansion and
contraction, transformation and conservation. These ex-
amples help understand the properties of these two ”el-
ements”, but the nature of Yin and Yang is much more
complex. What differentiates Yin and Yang from other
dualistic philosophies is its fuzziness and the set of laws
that rule the interplay between the elements. There is a
huge amount of literature describing the Yin Yang theory,
both ancient [28], [30] and modern [15]; in this paper,
however, we will focus on four basic points, that will be
used later on to demonstrate how Yin and Yang can be
applied to sound and music:
(1) Yin and Yang are opposite principles, but stemming
from the same source; in this paper we will define
Yin as the principle of expansion and Yang as the
principle of contraction (as in [17]).
(2) Yin and Yang continuously change one into another.
This does not happen in a random, chaotic way:
when Yang reaches its apex, it begins receding to
Yin, and vice versa (from Wang Chung, in [15]).
(3) Yin and Yang are opposite poles; there is an infinite
number of ”stages” between the two opposites. Tra-
ditionally, there has never been a numerical scale of
values to define how much Yin or Yang a given en-
tity is. This concept may be well clear to an artist
or a musician: there is no need to exactly quantify,
e.g. how much passionate a piece is. Furthermore,
quantification in terms of Yin and Yang is usually
performed in relative terms as it becomes senseless
in absolute terms; it must always relate to a similar
entity.
(4) It is impossible in the real world to experience a
phenomena that is completely Yin or completely
Yang (just as, for example, the absolute zero is a
theoretical temperature and cannot be achieved). The
two opposites need one another. Yang cannot be
known or explained without the Yin and vice versa,
just like the concept of cold cannot be understood
without knowing warmth. Lao Tzu [28] expresses
this as ”The ten thousand things1 carry yin and em-
brace yang. They achieve harmony by combining
these forces.” A visual explanation of this concept
is the Taijitu, often incorrectly referred to as ”Tao”.
In this symbol, the Yin (black) contains a spot of
Yang (white) and vice versa.
1 Lao Tzu employs a metaphorical language. Here ”ten thousand
things” means everything.
3. EXTENSION OF THE YIN YANG THEORY TO
SOUND
In this paper we demonstrate how the rules on the inter-
play between Yin and Yang can be applied also to sound.
Sound is a continuous time-domain signal, physically rep-
resenting the pressure variation from its local atmospheric
value P0
s(t) = p(t) − P0
with p(t) being the instantaneous pressure level. Inci-
dentally, in the fluctuation generating any audible phe-
nomenon, the pressure p(t) expands and contracts, thus
varying between two opposite polarities. The more the
energetic this variation is, the more the loud a sound is
perceived. Highly energetic sounds are regarded as Yang
(Yang is generally associated with Energy), as opposed to
weak sounds (silence is regarded as Yin).
As explained before, Yin is here regarded as the prin-
ciple of expansion and Yang as the principle of contrac-
tion. Therefore, it can be assumed that a signal s(t) that is
compact in time can be seen as a Yang sound, while one
that is extended in time is more Yin. In the field of sig-
nal processing and analysis, the time localization[6] of a
signal and the choice of a compact yet optimal[27] basis
function used for the analysis is a classical topic2 . Fol-
lowing what has been stated, it can be said that a perfect
Yin sound cannot exist in reality, as it would extend indef-
initely in time, spanning the whole universe history. The
same stands for a perfect Yang sound, which would be a
perfect Dirac impulse, which is impossible to have due
to the natural low-pass nature of physical systems, whose
convolution brings to a “smeared” version of any perfect
pulse. Although mathematical abstractions such as the in-
definitely extended in time or frequency are conceivable
and useful to gather a first discrimination of Yin and Yang,
they are of no use in reality just as the Fourier transform
as a mathematical operator3 As will be discussed in more
detailed below, the perfect Yin or perfect Yang are non-
cochlear entities and cannot be experienced.
To further clarify this first step in extending the Yin
Yang theory to acoustics, the spectrogram in Figure 1 de-
picts two different (orthogonal) signals such as a long sine
wave (extremely compact in frequency) and a Dirac pulse
(extremely compact in time) and a possible transition be-
tween the two.
2 It must be noted that the first work in this field is probably by Dennis
Gabor, well known to the computer music community for the inspira-
tional effect of Gabor atoms described in his Nature article [10]. These
are said to have inspired early formulation of granular synthesis, but they
are almost unknown to other fields such as communication theory or dig-
ital signal processing because of the infinitely extended support of their
Gaussian basis functions that makes their use unpractical. In practical
signal processing compact basis functions (or more simply, windows)
are needed, as the ones used in the Wavelet Transform [6].
3 Gabor himself criticized the direct use of the Fourier operator on
real-life signals “Though mathematically this theorem is beyond re-
proach, even experts could not at times conceal an uneasy feeling when
it came to the physical interpretation of results obtained by the Fourier
method.”[9].
(1)
Figure 1: Spectrogram of two opposite signals: a sine
wave and a dirac pulse and the transition between the two.
Together from the time localization of a sound, also
periodicity, pitch and spectral properties must be carefully
analyzed. Periodic sounds can be characterized by their
(instantaneous) pitch, or inversely, their wavelength: a
high-pitched tone has shorter wavelength, or a more com-
pact periodicity, hence is more Yang than a low-frequency
tone. The nature of high frequency tones is Yang with re-
spect to lower frequency tones. This finds support also
in the quantum theory for waves and light: e.g. high fre-
quency photons bring a high energetic content.
Aperiodic signals can be analyzed in terms of their
spectrum: compactness vs. expansion, localization of their
centre of mass towards low or high frequencies. The more
their spectra are wide the more they are Yang. The more
their centre of mass is localized towards low frequencies,
the more their nature is Yin.
Sounds are also characterized by the repetition of micro-
scale events, such as bouncing or rumbling [26]. When
the periodicity of these events is low enough not to af-
fect the pitch or harmonic content of a sound, it can be
used anyway to categorize the sound with a more Yang
nature when they happen faster and closer. This can be
used fruitfully when discussing the properties of experi-
mental or EDM4 glitch music and the likes, which usually
show very fast repetition of very compact sound fragments
or sonic events.
A fast variation or attack time is a sign of Yang. An
example of this can be a thunderstruck or a snare sound,
which usually leads a listener to a more active state. On
the other hand monotony and repetition lead to a more
Yin signal. As an empirical example a continuous tone,
such as a drone, or a sustained “Om” mantra can lead to a
relaxed (Yin) state of mind.
Finally, as the Yang of the ancient theory represents
Energy and Activity, signals with a higher energy are of
a more Yang nature than lower energy signals. As an ex-
ample, the same piano sonata, played at a steadier tempo,
with fortissimo results in a more Yang performance than a
slower tempo, feeble piano performance.
Yin and Yang (and the transition from one to another)
are attributes that can be applied to different properties of
a sound (or in general any phenomenon). However it often
happens that different properties are related one another
4 Electronic Dance Music
_599
and carry similar polarity. By combining all the different
properties it is possible to better understand the nature of
a sound, compared to other sounds taken as reference. It
must be noted however that a reference sound, i.e. a per-
fectly balanced sound does not exist: can an intermediate
time compactness or an intermediate frequency localiza-
tion between 0 and infinite be found? Can the bounds
given by human hearing (in both time resolution and fre-
quency response thresholds) or by digital sampling (in
both time resolution and the Nyquist frequency limit) be
used to find an intermediate sound? This is questionable
as other variables also appear related to human percep-
tion (should the intermediate frequency be found as the
arithmetic mean of the 20 Hz - 20 kHz audibility range,
in a linear scale or in an octave-spaced scale?). Although
finding a “standard reference sound” in scientific terms is
difficult, perhaps impossible, the human mind seems ca-
pable of assessing the absolute value of a sound (its pitch
or loudness, for example) with ease. Any non-impaired
listener, when presented with a pitched sound, will be
able to define it as either “high” or “low”, according to
a personal scale. ”To some extent tonal relations are com-
puted even when only a single tone is higher or lower, or
longer or shorter, than a conceptual average tone encoun-
tered across the course of a lifetime” [14]. The same can
be said about a listener who is familiar with the Yin Yang
theory, assessing a presented sound in terms of Yin and
Yang. This clearly relates to what stated in Section 2, (3).
When dealing with acoustic signals, several proper-
ties can be analyzed in terms of compactness, energy and
transformation. Table 1 reports some of these properties
and their assessment in terms of Yin and Yang follow-
ing the criteria introduced hitherto for analysis of acoustic
signals.
Table 1: Description of sound properties in terms of Yin
() and Yang ().
 sharp
Envelope shape (attack, decay)
 smooth
 compact
Envelope
 wide
 aperiodic
Periodicity
 periodic
 rich
Spectral content
 poor
 high
Pitch
 low
 high
Sound Pressure Level
 low
After having briefly discussed general properties of
sound, the four basic principles (1)-(4) reported at Section
2 will be discussed again but directly applied to sound.
(1) Yin and Yang stem from the same source: a fluc-
tuation of a physical quantity, which bears both the
two opposites at the same time in a specific ratio.
_600
(2) A sound is always generated by transformation and
a fluctuation between opposite polarities, in the same
way as Yin and Yang continuously change one into
the other. In Chinese theories this turnover is de-
picted similarly to what we know as a harmonic sys-
tem, as illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The turnover between Yin and Yang as an os-
cillating harmonic system.
Concepts like chaos and randomness were not known
at the time5 . Fluctuations between the two oppo-
sites are found also when looking at the evolution of
a sound at a higher level: any sound will raise (birth
is regarded as Yang in the theory) and fade (aging
and death of living beings is regarded as Yin), its
spectral content may change with time, etc.
(3) No sound can be measured in terms of Yin or Yang
as it would be with a physical quantity, as the true
nature of Yin and Yang cannot be known by pure
rational thought. We can however discern and learn
discriminating sounds by applying some general prin-
ciples and construct tools for the assessment, such
as the time compactness, the spectral center of mass,
and so on. An absolute measure is not feasible, nor
of particular practical use within this framework:
it is the change or the difference between differ-
ent sounds that are of interest, e.g.: is a change
of dynamic in a piece useful to gather the atten-
tion of the audience? Is a noisy glitch better for
an alarm clock tone than an ascending sound tex-
ture? By collecting assessment in the time domain
(at different scales) and in the frequency domain,
these measures can provide a relative assessment.
Unfortunately, a perfect intermediate sound to use
as a reference cannot be found a priori. Reference
sounds can, however, be chosen depending on the
context. Also, the evolution of a sound or a group
of sounds can be evaluated, as generally speaking
it is of higher human interest to know how sound
evolves rather than how it is in a specific instant.
(4) Yin and Yang cannot be tore apart or exist as sepa-
rate entities: a sound that is perfectly Yin or Yang
cannot exist in reality as it would have infinite ex-
tension in time or in frequency. This is also re-
flected in the analysis of any signal: analyzing the
5 However it can be argued that a perfectly uncorrelated sound is im-
possible to find in nature as even when digitally designed to be so in
propagating through a physical systems it gains a slight correlation.
two opposite aspects of sound, i.e. time and fre-
quency, cannot be arbitrarily perfect. The resolution
of one dimension in a space-phase representation of
the signal, such as the spectrogram, cannot be arbi-
trarily high without affecting the resolution of the
other dimension. This is formalized in the indeter-
minacy principle exposed by Gabor in [9], which in
turn relies on the similar principle by Heisenberg in
quantum physics.
4. ASSESSING YIN AND YANG
4.1. By audio analysis techniques
Discrimination of a sound’s character can be done by ear,
provided that the listener knows well enough the Yin Yang
theory. However, to enable human-machine interaction,
automatic analysis and classification, some algorithms can
be designed in order to extract information in terms of
Yin and Yang. To do so, several low-level descriptors
(LLDs) are combined to obtain two high-level features
that analyze the sound in time and frequency. In this work,
the proposed LLDs are taken from the well documented
MPEG-7 standard [1].
Feature 1: this feature highlights temporal character-
istics of signals by adopting the LogAttackTime (LAT)
and TemporalCentroid (TC) features. The former pro-
vides a measure of the rise time of a signal attack time
(the faster, the more Yang), while the second provides the
localization of a signal (the closer to the attack or decay
time, the more Yang). The resulting feature sums the two
LLDs with weight w to be evaluated empirically, provid-
ing sounds that are more Yang in their nature with higher
indexes:
1 td
F1 = w· LAT + (1 − w)· |TC − |. (2)
td 2
where td is the decay time and the attack time is supposed
to be at t = 0.
Feature 2: this feature highlights spectral character-
istics of signals by adopting the AudioSpectrumCentroid
(ASC) and the AudioSpectrumSpread (ASS). In addition
it evaluates the spectral change between consecutive frames
by difference between two subsequent AudioSpectrumEn-
velope (ASE) vectors ASE(k)−ASE(k−1). This accounts
for spectral changes that do not cause noticeable energy
changes in time.
1 Fs
F2 = a |ASC− |+bASS+c(ASE(k)−ASE(k −1)
Fs /2 4 depending on the tonal system in use. Also, interplay be-
(3)
with a, b, c, being weights to tune the performance of the
feature.
The performances of the two features should be max-
imized by finding the best parameters for their algorithms
against a set of human-annotated sounds to obtain the high-
est possible accuracy. This is left as a future work.
4.2. By assessment of human psychological and phys-
iological parameters
Another concept arising from direct comparison with mac-
robiotics and similar disciplines is that the nature of a
sound can be determined by its effect on human subjects.
For instance a Yin sound (e.g. a prolonged pad texture
with slow attack) is expected to have a Yin effect on the
mood or the physiology of a listening subject that can be
qualified by questionnaires or quantified by measuring its
heartbeat rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, EEG and
other parameters. Similar test involving music have been
used in a wide variety of works spanning from evalua-
tion of chord progressions [8] and variation of physiolog-
ical parameters under exposure to musical stimuli [29], or
involving other acoustic stimuli in psychology [21] and
pedagogy [19] to human and animal environmental health
[22]. The methodology employed in these works can be
extended to the evaluation of sounds and music of Yin or
Yang character. Once a scenario is designed, including
description of the desired subjects, methodology of the
trial and the expected effects to be monitored, tests can be
conducted and sounds can be classified by the effect they
induce on psychological or physiological parameters. A
pattern must be then extracted to find acoustic or musical
features that are correlated with the obtained effect. The
preparation of the test procedure and the administration of
the stimuli must be carefully planned. The Yin Yang the-
ory does not rely on absolute concepts, e.g. the effect of
a certain stimulus depends on the current condition of the
subject, the length of the stimulus administration (which
on the long term may cause the opposite effect), etc.
Our research on this topic is very promising though
at its early stages. In future works, case studies will be
reported in order to show the accuracy of the ancient Yin
Yang theory in predicting effects of auditory stimuli on
subjects.
5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
This work provides a first extension of the ancient Yin
Yang theory to the case of acoustic signals and sound
perception. Motivation for such a task are provided for
several fields of application. Extension of the theory to
musical structure is still to be documented as more com-
plex aspects are involved. However, it can be regarded as
a particular case of the time-frequency conceptualization
discussed in this paper, in which (i) the temporal scale is
more relaxed (the shortest event being the shortest possi-
ble note), (ii) events are (ideally) quantized and (iii) pitched
events are (ideally) locked to discrete steps in frequency
tween events affects the quality of a musical verse (clus-
tering vs. sparseness, dissonance vs. consonance, etc.).
Characterizing music will require more complex analysis
techniques than those introduced in the present paper as
cognitive aspects are also involved in the perception of
music. A framework involving information theory, en-
tropy and their relations to the Yin and Yang principles
_601
and carry similar polarity. By combining all the different
properties it is possible to better understand the nature of
a sound, compared to other sounds taken as reference. It
must be noted however that a reference sound, i.e. a per-
fectly balanced sound does not exist: can an intermediate
time compactness or an intermediate frequency localiza-
tion between 0 and infinite be found? Can the bounds
given by human hearing (in both time resolution and fre-
quency response thresholds) or by digital sampling (in
both time resolution and the Nyquist frequency limit) be
used to find an intermediate sound? This is questionable
as other variables also appear related to human percep-
tion (should the intermediate frequency be found as the
arithmetic mean of the 20 Hz - 20 kHz audibility range,
in a linear scale or in an octave-spaced scale?). Although
finding a “standard reference sound” in scientific terms is
difficult, perhaps impossible, the human mind seems ca-
pable of assessing the absolute value of a sound (its pitch
or loudness, for example) with ease. Any non-impaired
listener, when presented with a pitched sound, will be
able to define it as either “high” or “low”, according to
a personal scale. ”To some extent tonal relations are com-
puted even when only a single tone is higher or lower, or
longer or shorter, than a conceptual average tone encoun-
tered across the course of a lifetime” [14]. The same can
be said about a listener who is familiar with the Yin Yang
theory, assessing a presented sound in terms of Yin and
Yang. This clearly relates to what stated in Section 2, (3).
When dealing with acoustic signals, several proper-
ties can be analyzed in terms of compactness, energy and
transformation. Table 1 reports some of these properties
and their assessment in terms of Yin and Yang follow-
ing the criteria introduced hitherto for analysis of acoustic
signals.
Table 1: Description of sound properties in terms of Yin
() and Yang ().
 sharp
Envelope shape (attack, decay)
 smooth
 compact
Envelope
 wide
 aperiodic
Periodicity
 periodic
 rich
Spectral content
 poor
 high
Pitch
 low
 high
Sound Pressure Level
 low
After having briefly discussed general properties of
sound, the four basic principles (1)-(4) reported at Section
2 will be discussed again but directly applied to sound.
(1) Yin and Yang stem from the same source: a fluc-
tuation of a physical quantity, which bears both the
two opposites at the same time in a specific ratio.
_600
(2) A sound is always generated by transformation and
a fluctuation between opposite polarities, in the same
way as Yin and Yang continuously change one into
the other. In Chinese theories this turnover is de-
picted similarly to what we know as a harmonic sys-
tem, as illustrated in Figure 2.
Figure 2: The turnover between Yin and Yang as an os-
cillating harmonic system.
Concepts like chaos and randomness were not known
at the time5 . Fluctuations between the two oppo-
sites are found also when looking at the evolution of
a sound at a higher level: any sound will raise (birth
is regarded as Yang in the theory) and fade (aging
and death of living beings is regarded as Yin), its
spectral content may change with time, etc.
(3) No sound can be measured in terms of Yin or Yang
as it would be with a physical quantity, as the true
nature of Yin and Yang cannot be known by pure
rational thought. We can however discern and learn
discriminating sounds by applying some general prin-
ciples and construct tools for the assessment, such
as the time compactness, the spectral center of mass,
and so on. An absolute measure is not feasible, nor
of particular practical use within this framework:
it is the change or the difference between differ-
ent sounds that are of interest, e.g.: is a change
of dynamic in a piece useful to gather the atten-
tion of the audience? Is a noisy glitch better for
an alarm clock tone than an ascending sound tex-
ture? By collecting assessment in the time domain
(at different scales) and in the frequency domain,
these measures can provide a relative assessment.
Unfortunately, a perfect intermediate sound to use
as a reference cannot be found a priori. Reference
sounds can, however, be chosen depending on the
context. Also, the evolution of a sound or a group
of sounds can be evaluated, as generally speaking
it is of higher human interest to know how sound
evolves rather than how it is in a specific instant.
(4) Yin and Yang cannot be tore apart or exist as sepa-
rate entities: a sound that is perfectly Yin or Yang
cannot exist in reality as it would have infinite ex-
tension in time or in frequency. This is also re-
flected in the analysis of any signal: analyzing the
5 However it can be argued that a perfectly uncorrelated sound is im-
possible to find in nature as even when digitally designed to be so in
propagating through a physical systems it gains a slight correlation.
two opposite aspects of sound, i.e. time and fre-
quency, cannot be arbitrarily perfect. The resolution
of one dimension in a space-phase representation of
the signal, such as the spectrogram, cannot be arbi-
trarily high without affecting the resolution of the
other dimension. This is formalized in the indeter-
minacy principle exposed by Gabor in [9], which in
turn relies on the similar principle by Heisenberg in
quantum physics.
4. ASSESSING YIN AND YANG
4.1. By audio analysis techniques
Discrimination of a sound’s character can be done by ear,
provided that the listener knows well enough the Yin Yang
theory. However, to enable human-machine interaction,
automatic analysis and classification, some algorithms can
be designed in order to extract information in terms of
Yin and Yang. To do so, several low-level descriptors
(LLDs) are combined to obtain two high-level features
that analyze the sound in time and frequency. In this work,
the proposed LLDs are taken from the well documented
MPEG-7 standard [1].
Feature 1: this feature highlights temporal character-
istics of signals by adopting the LogAttackTime (LAT)
and TemporalCentroid (TC) features. The former pro-
vides a measure of the rise time of a signal attack time
(the faster, the more Yang), while the second provides the
localization of a signal (the closer to the attack or decay
time, the more Yang). The resulting feature sums the two
LLDs with weight w to be evaluated empirically, provid-
ing sounds that are more Yang in their nature with higher
indexes:
1 td
F1 = w· LAT + (1 − w)· |TC − |. (2)
td 2
where td is the decay time and the attack time is supposed
to be at t = 0.
Feature 2: this feature highlights spectral character-
istics of signals by adopting the AudioSpectrumCentroid
(ASC) and the AudioSpectrumSpread (ASS). In addition
it evaluates the spectral change between consecutive frames
by difference between two subsequent AudioSpectrumEn-
velope (ASE) vectors ASE(k)−ASE(k−1). This accounts
for spectral changes that do not cause noticeable energy
changes in time.
1 Fs
F2 = a |ASC− |+bASS+c(ASE(k)−ASE(k −1)
Fs /2 4 depending on the tonal system in use. Also, interplay be-
(3)
with a, b, c, being weights to tune the performance of the
feature.
The performances of the two features should be max-
imized by finding the best parameters for their algorithms
against a set of human-annotated sounds to obtain the high-
est possible accuracy. This is left as a future work.
4.2. By assessment of human psychological and phys-
iological parameters
Another concept arising from direct comparison with mac-
robiotics and similar disciplines is that the nature of a
sound can be determined by its effect on human subjects.
For instance a Yin sound (e.g. a prolonged pad texture
with slow attack) is expected to have a Yin effect on the
mood or the physiology of a listening subject that can be
qualified by questionnaires or quantified by measuring its
heartbeat rate, blood pressure, respiration rate, EEG and
other parameters. Similar test involving music have been
used in a wide variety of works spanning from evalua-
tion of chord progressions [8] and variation of physiolog-
ical parameters under exposure to musical stimuli [29], or
involving other acoustic stimuli in psychology [21] and
pedagogy [19] to human and animal environmental health
[22]. The methodology employed in these works can be
extended to the evaluation of sounds and music of Yin or
Yang character. Once a scenario is designed, including
description of the desired subjects, methodology of the
trial and the expected effects to be monitored, tests can be
conducted and sounds can be classified by the effect they
induce on psychological or physiological parameters. A
pattern must be then extracted to find acoustic or musical
features that are correlated with the obtained effect. The
preparation of the test procedure and the administration of
the stimuli must be carefully planned. The Yin Yang the-
ory does not rely on absolute concepts, e.g. the effect of
a certain stimulus depends on the current condition of the
subject, the length of the stimulus administration (which
on the long term may cause the opposite effect), etc.
Our research on this topic is very promising though
at its early stages. In future works, case studies will be
reported in order to show the accuracy of the ancient Yin
Yang theory in predicting effects of auditory stimuli on
subjects.
5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
This work provides a first extension of the ancient Yin
Yang theory to the case of acoustic signals and sound
perception. Motivation for such a task are provided for
several fields of application. Extension of the theory to
musical structure is still to be documented as more com-
plex aspects are involved. However, it can be regarded as
a particular case of the time-frequency conceptualization
discussed in this paper, in which (i) the temporal scale is
more relaxed (the shortest event being the shortest possi-
ble note), (ii) events are (ideally) quantized and (iii) pitched
events are (ideally) locked to discrete steps in frequency
tween events affects the quality of a musical verse (clus-
tering vs. sparseness, dissonance vs. consonance, etc.).
Characterizing music will require more complex analysis
techniques than those introduced in the present paper as
cognitive aspects are also involved in the perception of
music. A framework involving information theory, en-
tropy and their relations to the Yin and Yang principles
_601
will be proposed. The use of the Five Elements theory
can prove helpful to connect this knowledge to moods and
emotional states.
The concepts adopted for acoustic signals can be fur-
ther extended to other kind of signals by using the same
principles. Electromagnetism can easily relate to this du-
alistic theory as it has a innate dualism also from a physics
standpoint. Physiological signals are of particular inter-
est as they can be correlated with other aspects of human
health considered in the Yin Yang theory and the Five El-
ements theory.
As Yin or Yang do not represent any physical quantity,
their assessment is no easy task. Two simple algorithms
are proposed as a high-level features for a Yin Yang sound
analysis. Their accuracy in describing sounds is still to be
quantified. Assessing the effects of sounds on subjects’
physiological parameters is also regarded as another way
of understanding the nature of their properties and their
relation to human health, psyche and physiology. Study-
ing the effect of sounds on physical and mental states will
gather further insight on their nature and will help pro-
viding the best analytical tools for their selection and ma-
nipulation. The subtle, relative and fuzzy nature of this
theory makes its use, however, delicate. The mastering
of these concept is nor easy nor fast to obtain and surely
always perfectable. Much work must be conducted in all
the areas reported above; the effort, however, is motivated
by the ability to construct a new framework enabling for a
more holistic approach to the use of music and sound and,
ultimately, to the realization of Fritjof Capra’s dream: that
is the renewal of western sciences by their harmonization
with ancient wisdom.
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_603
will be proposed. The use of the Five Elements theory
can prove helpful to connect this knowledge to moods and
emotional states.
The concepts adopted for acoustic signals can be fur-
ther extended to other kind of signals by using the same
principles. Electromagnetism can easily relate to this du-
alistic theory as it has a innate dualism also from a physics
standpoint. Physiological signals are of particular inter-
est as they can be correlated with other aspects of human
health considered in the Yin Yang theory and the Five El-
ements theory.
As Yin or Yang do not represent any physical quantity,
their assessment is no easy task. Two simple algorithms
are proposed as a high-level features for a Yin Yang sound
analysis. Their accuracy in describing sounds is still to be
quantified. Assessing the effects of sounds on subjects’
physiological parameters is also regarded as another way
of understanding the nature of their properties and their
relation to human health, psyche and physiology. Study-
ing the effect of sounds on physical and mental states will
gather further insight on their nature and will help pro-
viding the best analytical tools for their selection and ma-
nipulation. The subtle, relative and fuzzy nature of this
theory makes its use, however, delicate. The mastering
of these concept is nor easy nor fast to obtain and surely
always perfectable. Much work must be conducted in all
the areas reported above; the effort, however, is motivated
by the ability to construct a new framework enabling for a
more holistic approach to the use of music and sound and,
ultimately, to the realization of Fritjof Capra’s dream: that
is the renewal of western sciences by their harmonization
with ancient wisdom.
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