Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts

The Violin but not the Human Voice is the Most Beautiful Timbre
--Manuscript Draft--

Manuscript Number: ACA-2022-1125

Article Type: Article

Full Title: The Violin but not the Human Voice is the Most Beautiful Timbre

Abstract: Beauty is central to aesthetic experiences of music and plays an important role in

music choice. Existing studies in empirical aesthetics have mainly focused on the
relations between musical features such as pitch and duration and beauty judgments.
However, little is known about the relation between musical timbre and beauty
judgments. Some 17th- and 18th-century thinkers have proposed that the most
beautiful timbre is the human voice, followed by the violin and the flute. To test these
views, here we asked 44 university music and 41 nonmusic majors to listen to 40
unfamiliar melodic excerpts with each sung by the voice (lu) and played on a violin and
a flute and to rate the degree of musical beauty using a 7-point Likert item (1 = not at
all beautiful to 7 = very beautiful). Bayes factors revealed strong evidence that both
music and nonmusic majors gave the highest beauty ratings for the violin version, the
lowest ratings for the singing voice version and intermediate ratings for the flute
version. These results provide the first experimental evidence against the view that the
human voice is the most beautiful, but for the view that the violin is more beautiful than
the flute. Our study has potentially significant implications for individuals who create or
feel beauty in music.

Manuscript Classifications: 40: Performing Arts; 80: experimental aesthetics

Keywords: aesthetic judgments; expertise; emotion; brightness; harshness

Manuscript Region of Origin: CHINA

Powered by Editorial Manager® and ProduXion Manager® from Aries Systems Corporation
Masked Manuscript without Author Information Click here to access/download;Masked Manuscript without
Author Information;Masked Manuscript.docx

VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 1

1 Abstract

2 Beauty is central to aesthetic experiences of music and plays an important role in music

3 choice. Existing studies in empirical aesthetics have mainly focused on the relations

4 between musical features such as pitch and duration and beauty judgments. However, little

5 is known about the relation between musical timbre and beauty judgments. Some 17th- and

6 18th-century thinkers have proposed that the most beautiful timbre is the human voice,

7 followed by the violin and the flute. To test these views, here we asked 44 university music

8 and 41 nonmusic majors to listen to 40 unfamiliar melodic excerpts with each sung by the

9 voice (lu) and played on a violin and a flute and to rate the degree of musical beauty using a

10 7-point Likert item (1 = not at all beautiful to 7 = very beautiful). Bayes factors revealed

11 strong evidence that both music and nonmusic majors gave the highest beauty ratings for

12 the violin version, the lowest ratings for the singing voice version and intermediate ratings

13 for the flute version. These results provide the first experimental evidence against the view

14 that the human voice is the most beautiful, but for the view that the violin is more beautiful

15 than the flute. Our study has potentially significant implications for individuals who create

16 or feel beauty in music.

17 Keywords: aesthetic judgments, expertise, emotion, brightness, harshness

18
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 2

19 Introduction

20 Art aims at Beauty.

21 — Schiller (1844, p. 137)

22

23 All art attempts to create beauty (Hanslick, 1986). Beauty is the core part of the

24 aesthetic experiences of music (Giannouli et al., 2022; Istók et al., 2009) and an important

25 criterion for music choice (Juslin & Isaksson, 2014). Although it is difficult to define

26 (Nieminen et al., 2011; Sisti et al., 2021), a Likert-type item has been widely used to

27 evaluate the perception of musical beauty (e.g., Anglada-Tort et al., 2019; Juslin et al.,

28 2022). So, what music is beautiful? Much of the prior work has focused on the influences of

29 musical tonality (Brattico et al., 2020; Hur, 2020; Nieminen et al., 2011; Suzuki et al., 2008),

30 harmony (Sarasso et al., 2019; Suzuki et al., 2008), rhythm (Brattico et al., 2020), tempo

31 (Brattico et al., 2020; de Jong et al., 1973; Hur, 2020), and complexity (Marin et al., 2016)

32 on perceived beauty, little is known about the influence of musical timbre on beauty ratings.

33 Timbre is a multidimensional property of auditory sensation enabling a listener to

34 distinguish two sounds that have the same pitch, duration, loudness, and spatial location

35 (American National Standards, 2013). It is considered the most important basic attribute of

36 music (Seashore, 1936; van Elferen, 2020). Thus, to search for beautiful music, we should

37 understand the relationship between timbre and beauty judgments. The present study

38 explores the impact of timbre on beauty perception.

39 It has been believed for a long time that timbre is a significant factor in our

40 appreciation of music’s beauty. In the 17th and 18th centuries, some thinkers such as Doni

41 (1640, as cited in Cypess, 2010), Ancelet (1757, as cited in Dolan, 2013), and Rousseau
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 3

42 (1765; as cited in Vélez, 2021) held the views that the human voice is the most beautiful

43 timbre, and the violin is the most beautiful of all instruments. In other words, these thinkers

44 argued that the human voice is considered to be the most beautiful timbre, followed by the

45 violin, and finally the other instruments such as flute. According to Rousseau (1765), the

46 violin is more beautiful than the flute because the former combines softness with brightness

47 of sound, whereas the latter lacks such brightness.

48 Although it has been assumed that timbre plays a role in the perception of beauty in

49 music, only two studies have investigated this relationship. To examine the effects of vocal

50 and instrumental timbres on musical beauty, Brattico et al. (2011) asked participants to

51 listen to their familiar happy and sad music excerpts with and without lyrics (18 s each) and

52 evaluate the perceived beauty of each excerpt on a 5-point Likert item ranging from 1 (ugly)

53 to 5 (beautiful). They found that instrumental music was rated as more beautiful than vocal

54 music, regardless of the emotional tone of the music. The acoustic feature analysis showed

55 that instrumental music had a lower spectral centroid than vocal music; however, there was

56 no difference in attack slope between the two musics. A study by Gotlieb and Konečni

57 (1985) investigated the effects of two different instrumental timbres on musical beauty. The

58 participants rated the beauty of a piano or harpsichord recording of the Goldberg Variations

59 by Bach. Results showed that the piano version of the piece received higher beauty ratings

60 than the harpsichord version. However, no study to date has directly assessed whether the

61 human voice is considered to be the most beautiful timbre, followed by the violin and the

62 flute.

63 The aim of this study was to directly test the ideas that the most beautiful sound is

64 produced by the human voice, followed by the violin and the flute. To this end, we required
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 4

65 participants to rate the perceived beauty after being exposed to melodies in three different

66 timbres—singing voice, violin, and flute. To replicate previous findings related to music

67 expertise (Jaśkiewicz et al., 2016; Müller et al., 2009, 2010; Nieminen et al., 2011), we

68 included music and nonmusic majors. In order to avoid the influences of familiarity (Marin

69 et al., 2016; Vuoskoski et al., 2022) and music preference (Eerola & Vuoskoski, 2011;

70 Nieminen et al., 2011; Vuoskoski & Eerola, 2017; Vuoskoski et al., 2022) on musical

71 beauty, unfamiliar music was used. This was based on the large correlation between

72 familiarity and preference (North & Hargreaves, 1995; Rawlings & Leow, 2008; Yoo et al.,

73 2018). Given the lack of related research or theory, we were not able to make any specific

74 hypotheses or predictions.

75 Method

76 Subjects

77 Sample size was determined by a priori power analysis using MorePower 6.0

78 (Campbell & Thompson, 2012). To detect a moderate effect size of η2p = .0588 (Cohen,

79 1988) for the main effect of timbre (singing voice, violin and flute) or the interaction effect

80 of timbre and group (music and nonmusic) in a repeated measures analysis of variance

81 (ANOVA) with 80% power at the two-tailed 0.05 significance level, the suggested

82 minimum sample size was 80. Thus, 85 undergraduate or postgraduate students were

83 recruited from two universities. Local ethical committee approval was obtained, and all

84 subjects gave informed consent and were paid for their participation.

85 The sample consisted of 44 music students (22 male and 22 female) who received

86 formal music training and 41 nonmusic students (20 male and 21 female) who received little

87 or no formal music training (see Table 1 for demographic characteristics). All except two
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 5

88 ambidextrous subjects were healthy right-handed as evaluated by the Edinburgh

89 Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971) and reported normal hearing and vision. As shown

90 in Table 1, there was moderate evidence that the two groups were matched in terms of age,

91 handedness and education years. However, there was strong evidence that the music group

92 had more years of music playing and/or singing than the nonmusic group.

93 --------------------------------------------------------

94 Insert Table 1, about here.

95 --------------------------------------------------------

96 Materials

97 Stimuli were 40 melody excerpts (ranging in duration from 3 to 9 s) taken from

98 Zhang et al. (2019). The melodies were selected from unknown European operas in the

99 classical and romantic periods to rule out the mere exposure effect and music preference.

100 Half of the melodies expressed happiness and the other half sadness. Three renditions of

101 each melody were performed by a violinist, a flutist, or a vocalist with the syllable “lu” in

102 the bel canto style, resulting in 120 excerpts (see the supplemental materials). All

103 performers were female and had received 18 years of music training. They were asked to

104 perform the pieces in a roughly similar way. These melodies were recorded in mono with a

105 sampling rate of 22050 Hz, 16-bit resolution, and 353-kbps bit rate, and then were

106 normalized to −3 dB with a 1-s fade-out, and were saved in .wav format using Adobe

107 Audition (Version 5).

108 A pretest was conducted in additional 8 music students to test the similarities in

109 performance variations or levels among different timbre versions of each excerpt. The
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 6

110 students rated three timbre versions for their congruency on a 7-point Likert item (1 = very

111 incongruent, 4 = not sure, 7 = very congruent) as for rubato, intensity, phrasing, and the

112 overall performance level. The results showed that variations in timing (M = 5.08, SD =

113 0.22), dynamics (M = 5.14, SD = 0.36), phrasing (M = 5.76, SD = 0.46) and the

114 performance level (M = 5.29, SD = 0.37) were similar across the versions.

115 To derive participants’ beauty ratings from timbral features, we extracted several

116 timbre descriptors from each melody. On the basis of previous studies, we included a

117 brightness-related descriptor—spectral centroid (Saitis & Siedenburg, 2020; Schubert &

118 Wolfe, 2006; Springer et al., 2021) and harshness-related descriptors (Rozé et al., 2017)

119 such as harmonic spectral variation, MFCCratio, and attack slope (see Table 2). Spectral

120 centroid is the geometric center of the spectral frequency (Giannakopoulos & Pikrakis, 2014;

121 McAdams, 1999) and correlates positively with perceived brightness (Saitis & Siedenburg,

122 2020; Schubert & Wolfe, 2006; Springer et al., 2021). Harmonic spectral variation is the

123 average over the sound duration of the one’s complement of the normalized correlation

124 between harmonic peak amplitudes of two adjacent frames (Kim et al., 2006; Peeters et al.,

125 2000) and can positively predict perceived harshness (Rozé et al., 2017). MFCCratio is a

126 ratio between the first two mel-frequency cepstral (MFCC) coefficients (Rozé et al., 2017,

127 2020) and can positively predict perceived harshness (Rozé et al., 2017). Attack slope is the

128 averaged temporal slope of the energy envelope attack during the attack portion of the

129 sound (Eerola et al., 2012; McAdams et al., 2017) and can negatively predict perceived

130 harshness (Rozé et al., 2017). Harmonic spectral variation was extracted using MPEG-7

131 Audio Encoder (Kim et al., 2006); attack slope and other features were extracted using the

132 Timbre Toolbox R2021a (Peeters et al., 2011) and the MIRtoolbox 1.8.1 (Lartillot et al.,
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 7

133 2008) in MATLAB R2021a (Version 9.10), respectively.

134 --------------------------------------------------------

135 Insert Table 2, about here.

136 --------------------------------------------------------

137 Procedure

138 Subjects were tested individually in a quiet room. E-Prime (Version 1.1) running on

139 a laptop was used for stimulus presentation and response collection. First, the subjects were

140 given instructions about rating the musical excerpts. Next, subjects were provided with four

141 practice trials to familiarize them with the task and were asked to adjust the sound volume

142 to their most comfortable listening level. Then, the formal experiment began. Each trial

143 started with a 0.5 s presentation of a gray fixation cross in the center of the black screen.

144 After that, a melody was played through the headphones while a green fixation cross

145 appeared at the middle of the black screen. After listening to the melody, subjects rated how

146 beautiful the music sounded on a 7-point Likert item (1 = not at all beautiful, 4 = neutral, 7

147 = very beautiful) by pressing one of the number keys 1–7 on the computer keyboard. Finally,

148 subjects were asked to press the space bar to initiate the next trial. The melodies were

149 presented pseudorandomly such that melodies with the same type of timbres or emotions

150 did not occur more than three times consecutively. The stimulus order was kept constant

151 across subjects. In order to determine the effectiveness of the musical stimuli, the subjects

152 were also required to rate perceived valence (1 = very unpleasant, 4 = neutral, 7 = very

153 pleasant), perceived arousal (1 = very calm, 4 = neutral, 7 = very exciting), and familiarity
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 8

154 (1 = very unfamiliar, 4 = neutral, 7 = very familiar) of the music excerpts. These ratings

155 were made prior to the beauty ratings.

156 Statistical Analyses

157 Frequentist Analyses

158 Parametric tests often assume normality, homoscedasticity or sphericity (Field, 2017;

159 Mair & Wilcox, 2020; Wilcox, 2017). Violations of these assumptions can result in high

160 probability of type I error, relatively poor power, or inaccurate confidence intervals (Wilcox,

161 2022; Wilcox et al., 2018; Wilcox & Serang, 2017). Thus, the data were first tested for

162 normality with the Shapiro-Wilk test, homoscedasticity with Levene’s test, or sphericity

163 with Mauchly’s test. If the assumptions of analysis of variance (ANOVA) were met, then

164 parametric tests were performed using JASP (Version 0.16.4); if any assumption was

165 violated, then nonparametric tests were conducted (Field, 2017). The aligned rank transform

166 (ART) can be used to perform nonparametric ANOVA (Elkin et al., 2021; Wobbrock et al.,

167 2011). In brief, the ART procedure first aligns the data separately for each effect and then

168 applies midranks to the aligned data. After that, a parametric ANOVA is run on the aligned

169 ranks for every effect (Feys, 2016; Wobbrock et al., 2011; Wobbrock & Kay, 2016). When

170 an interaction or a main effect emerges, nonparametric post hoc multiple comparisons with

171 the ART-C algorithm are followed up (Elkin et al., 2021). Specifically, the ARTool.exe

172 (Version 2.1.2), an open-source Windows application, was first used to produce the aligned-

173 and-ranked data (Wobbrock et al., 2011). JASP was then used to conduct all ANOVAs based

174 on Type III sums of squares and pairwise comparisons with Holm-corrected t tests.

175 To measure the magnitude of the effect, an effect size and its confidence interval (CI)

176 were reported: for the ANOVAs, we used the MOTE package (Version 1.0.2) in R (Version
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 9

177 4.2.1) and RStudio (Version 2022.07.2+576) to calculate ωp2 and 95% CI; for the t tests, we

178 used JASP to calculate Cohen’s d and 95% CI.

179 Bayesian Analyses

180 But even so, in the frequentist approach, a nonsignificant result cannot provide

181 evidence for the null hypothesis (Brydges & Bielak, 2020; Keysers et al., 2020; Lakens,

182 2017; Rouder et al., 2009) inasmuch as the experiment might have had relatively low power

183 to detect the true null effect (Cohen, 1994; Harms & Lakens, 2018; Lakens, 2017). One

184 method to evaluate the absence or presence of an effect is to calculate a Bayes factor

185 (Anderson & Maxwell, 2016; Lakens et al., 2020). The Bayes factor (BF) is the ratio of the

186 likelihood of one hypothesis over another and can measure the relative strength of evidence

187 for the alternative (H1) and null (H0) hypotheses (Love et al., 2019; Masson, 2011; Rouder

188 et al., 2012; Wagenmakers et al., 2018).

189 The summary statistics from the F and t tests were used to compute BFs. For the

190 ANOVAs, we used the R package anovaBFcalc (Version 0.1.0) to calculate exact BFs from

191 the values of F and df, with a default Pearson Type VI prior of α = −0.5 (Faulkenberry, 2019,

192 2021). For the subsequent paired t tests, we used the R package BayesFactor (Version

193 0.9.12-4.4) to calculate the BFs from the values of t and n, with a default Cauchy prior of

194 0.707. According to Jeffreys (1961) and Lee and Wagenmakers (2014), 1 < BF < 3 is

195 considered weak evidence for H1, 3 < BF < 10 moderate, and BF >10 strong; 0.33 < BF < 1

196 indicates weak evidence for H0, 0.10 < BF < 0.33 moderate, and BF < 0.10 strong. For

197 instance, a BF of 20 means that the data are 20 times more likely under H1 than under H0,

198 providing strong evidence for the presence of an effect. All raw data and code are available

199 in the supplemental materials.

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 10

200 Results

201 Manipulation Check

202 To verify the validity of music, a 3 (timbre) × 2 (emotion) repeated measures ANOVA

203 was conducted on valence, arousal, and familiarity ratings. Descriptive statistics are

204 presented in Table 3. Because of deviation from normality, Ws ≤ 0.99, ps ≤ .671, and

205 sphericity, Ws(2) ≤ 0.96, χ2s(2) ≥ 3.79, ps ≤ .151, the data were analyzed with

206 nonparametric ANOVAs. Results are provided in the Table 4. For valence ratings, there was

207 strong evidence for the absence of the main effect of timbre, but strong evidence for the

208 presence of the main effect of emotion and the interaction of timbre and emotion. Post hoc

209 tests showed strong evidence to support that happy music was rated as more pleasant than

210 sad music across the violin, t(84) = 21.44, p < .001, d = 3.03, 95% CI [2.22, 3.84], BF =

211 3.10 × 1032, flute, t(84) = 19.22, p < .001, d = 2.71, 95% CI [1.96, 3.46], BF = 1.69 × 1029,

212 and singing voice versions, t(84) = 16.78, p < .001, d = 2.37, 95% CI [1.68, 3.05], BF =

213 2.27 × 1025.

214 --------------------------------------------------------

215 Insert Table 3, about here.

216 --------------------------------------------------------

217

218 --------------------------------------------------------

219 Insert Table 4, about here.

220 --------------------------------------------------------
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 11

221 For arousal ratings, there was strong evidence for the main effects of timbre and

222 emotion and the interaction between timbre and emotion. Post hoc tests provided strong

223 evidence to support that happy music was rated as more exciting than sad music across the

224 violin, t(84) = 20.42, p < .001, d = 2.79, 95% CI [2.03, 3.54], BF = 1.05 × 1031, flute, t(84)

225 = 17.14, p < .001, d = 2.34, 95% CI [1.67, 3.01], BF = 8.85 × 1025, and singing voice

226 versions, t(84) = 15.75, p < .001, d = 2.15, 95% CI [1.51, 2.79], BF = 4.26 × 1023.

227 For familiarity ratings, there was also strong evidence for the main effects of timbre

228 and emotion and the interaction between them. Post hoc tests provided strong evidence to

229 support that happy music was rated as more familiar than sad music across the violin, t(84)

230 = 9.94, p < .001, d = 0.58, 95% CI [0.36, 0.80], BF = 8.42 × 1012, flute, t(84) = 6.70, p

231 < .001, d = 0.39, 95% CI [0.19, 0.59], BF = 4.81 × 106, and singing voice versions, t(84) =

232 4.74, p < .001, d = 0.28, 95% CI [0.09, 0.46], BF = 1.91 × 103. But even so, all the mean

233 ratings except one were below four, indicating the melodies were unfamiliar.

234 In sum, these results confirmed that the experimental manipulation of emotion was

235 successful, and the subjects were not familiar with the music.

236 Timbral Characteristics

237 To examine whether beauty ratings are related to brightness and harshness, a one-way

238 repeated measures ANOVA with timbre as a within-subject factor was conducted on the

239 relevant timbre parameters.

240 Brightness. The data on spectral centroid met the assumption of normality, Ws ≥ 0.97,

241 ps ≥ .282, but violated the assumption of sphericity, W(2) = 0.42, χ2(2) = 32.86, p < .001.

242 Thus, we conducted the nonparametric ANOVA. The result provided strong evidence for the

243 effect of timbre, F(2, 78) = 57.31, p < .001, ωp2 = .48, 95% CI [.30, .62], BF = 1.67 × 1013.
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 12

244 Post hoc comparisons (see Table 5) showed that spectral centroid was highest for the violin

245 version, followed by the singing voice version, and then the flute version.

246 --------------------------------------------------------

247 Insert Table 5, about here.

248 --------------------------------------------------------

249 Harshness. For harmonic spectral variation, the assumptions of normality, Ws ≤ 0.98,

250 ps ≤ .635, and sphericity, W(2) = 0.85, χ2(2) = 6.30, p = .043, were violated. The data

251 provided strong evidence for the effect of timbre, F(2, 78) = 86.86, p < .001, ωp2 = .46, 95%

252 CI [.28, .60], BF = 4.98 × 1017. Post hoc comparisons showed that harmonic spectral

253 variation was higher for the violin version than for the singing voice and flute versions.

254 However, there was no difference between the singing voice and flute versions. For

255 MFCCratio, the assumptions of normality, Ws ≤ 0.96, ps ≤ .135, and sphericity, W(2) = 0.51,

256 χ2(2) = 25.24, p < .001, were violated. The data also provided strong evidence for the effect

257 of timbre, F(2, 78) = 71.71, p < .001, ωp2 = .49, 95% CI [.31, .63], BF = 3.58 × 1015. Post

258 hoc comparisons showed that the MFCCratio was highest for the violin version, followed

259 by the flute version, and then the singing voice version. For attack slope, the assumptions of

260 normality, Ws ≤ 0.59, ps < .001, and sphericity, W(2) = 0.71, χ2(2) = 13.09, p = .001, were

261 violated. The data provided strong evidence against the effect of timbre, F(2, 78) = 1.18, p

262 = .313, ωp2 < .01, 95% CI [.00, .04], BF = 0.04.

263 Together, these results suggest that the violin was the brightest and the harshest timbre.
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 13

264 Main Outcome

265 Figure 1 illustrates the ratings of musical beauty for three timbre versions by music

266 and nonmusic groups. Although sphericity was met, W(2) = 0.99, χ2(2) = 0.87, p = .647,

267 normality, Ws ≥ 0.93, ps ≥ .012, and homoscedasticity, Fs(1, 83) ≥ 4.26, ps ≤ .042, were

268 violated. Therefore, the nonparametric 3 (timbre) × 2 (group) mixed ANOVA was run. The

269 ANOVA revealed strong evidence for the presence of the main effect of timbre, F(2, 166) =

270 51.83, p < .001, ωp2 = .11, 95% CI [.03, .20], BF = 1.46 × 1015, moderate evidence for the

271 absence of the effect of group, F(1, 83) = 0.42, p = .518, ωp2 = −.01, 95% CI [.00, 1.00], BF

272 = 0.11, and strong evidence for the absence of the interaction of timbre and group, F(2, 166)

273 = 0.46, p = .632, ωp2 < .01, 95% CI [.00, 1.00], BF = 0.01.

274 --------------------------------------------------------

275 Insert Figure 1, about here.

276 --------------------------------------------------------

277 Following the main effect of timbre, post hoc analyses were conducted. There was

278 strong evidence to support that beauty ratings for the violin version were higher than for the

279 flute, t(83) = 6.15, p < .001, d = 0.52, 95% CI [0.29, 0.74], BF = 4.75 × 105, and singing

280 voice versions, t(83) = 10.10, p < .001, d = 0.85, 95% CI [0.59, 1.11], BF = 1.72 × 1013.

281 There was also strong evidence to support that beauty ratings for the flute version were

282 higher than for the singing voice version, t(83) = 3.95, p < .001, d = 0.33, 95% CI [0.12,

283 0.54], BF = 124.76.

284 In short, these findings indicate that both music and nonmusic students rated the violin

285 as the most beautiful timbre and rated the singing voice as the least beautiful timbre.
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 14

286 Discussion

287 In this study, to test those historical views of musical aesthetics—the human voice is

288 the most beautiful, followed by the violin, and finally the flute—we compared music and

289 nonmusic students’ ratings of perceived beauty for melodies presented in singing voice,

290 violin, and flute timbres. We found that both groups of subjects rated the violin as the most

291 beautiful, followed by the flute, and finally the singing voice.

292 The first result shows that the singing voice is the least beautiful. In other words,

293 instrumental music is more beautiful than vocal music. This result is consistent with a prior

294 study suggesting that familiar instrumental music is more beautiful than vocal music

295 (Brattico et al., 2011). However, our result goes beyond this study by showing that

296 unfamiliar instrumental music is more beautiful than vocal music without lyrics, possibly

297 due to the higher harshness of instrumental timbres. Taken together, these results suggest

298 that instrumental music is more beautiful than vocal music regardless of whether or not the

299 individual is familiar with the music and whether or not the vocal music has clear semantic

300 information, thus arguing against the idea that the human voice is the most beautiful or that

301 the human voice is more beautiful than instrumental timbre (Doni, 1640, as cited in Cypess,

302 2010; Ancelet, 1757, as cited in Dolan, 2013; Rousseau, 1765, as cited in Vélez, 2021).

303 The second result shows that the violin is the most beautiful. This result supports the

304 view that the violin is more beautiful than the flute (Doni, 1640, as cited in Cypess, 2010;

305 Ancelet, 1757, as cited in Dolan, 2013; Rousseau, 1765, as cited in Vélez, 2021). Rousseau

306 (1765) believes that the reason why the violin is more beautiful than the flute is that the

307 violin is bright and soft. Nevertheless, the present results contradict this view and suggest

308 that the reason is that the violin is brighter and harsher than the flute.
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 15

309 Another result shows that there is no modulatory effect of musical training. This

310 result is in line with previous findings that the relationship between tonality (Nieminen et al.,

311 2011) or harmony (Jaśkiewicz et al., 2016; Müller et al., 2009, 2010) and perceived beauty

312 was not modulated by musical training. Nonetheless, our finding extends prior findings to

313 show that the relationship between timbre and perceived beauty is also not modulated by

314 musical training.

315 There are two potential limitations of this study. One limitation relates to sample

316 representation. Although 8-year-old children have the ability to perceive beauty in music

317 (Nieminen et al., 2011), only young adult subjects (i.e., college students) were used in this

318 study, and children, adolescents, and middle-aged and older adults were not included.

319 Another limitation is related to the number of timbre types. We only used the female voice

320 and two instruments, but did not use the male voice and other instruments such as trumpet

321 from brass instruments and piano from keyboard instruments. Therefore, it is still unclear

322 whether the current results will generalize to other age groups, instruments or the singing

323 voice. Future studies need to use more age groups or timbres to increase the external

324 validity of the results. With the flourishing of neuroaesthetics (e.g., Brattico, 2019;

325 Chatterjee & Vartanian, 2014; Pearce et al., 2016; Skov & Nadal, 2022), future research on

326 experimental neuroaesthetics will reveal the nature of how timbre affects judgments of

327 beauty.

328 In conclusion, we tested the ideas that “beauty ratings for the human voice are the

329 highest, followed by the violin, and finally the flute” by asking subjects to rate the same

330 music sung or played by the human voice, violin and flute. We provide the first

331 experimental evidence that the violin is the most beautiful and the human voice the least
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 16

332 beautiful. These findings have important practical implications: if composers and

333 performers want to produce the most beautiful music, they should give priority to the violin;

334 if audiences want to experience the most beautiful music, they should listen to the version

335 played by the violin. Timbre is the basic element of music. Future research examining the

336 role of timbre on musical beauty will enable us to have a more comprehensive

337 understanding of beautiful music.

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 17

338 References

339 American National Standards. (2013). Acoustical terminology, ANSI/ASA S1.1-2013.

340 Acoustical Society of America.

341 Anderson, S. F., & Maxwell, S. E. (2016). There’s more than one way to conduct a

342 replication study: Beyond statistical significance. Psychological Methods, 21(1), 1-

343 12. https://doi.org/10.1037/met0000051

344 Anglada-Tort, M., Steffens, J., & Müllensiefen, D. (2019). Names and titles matter: The

345 impact of linguistic fluency and the affect heuristic on aesthetic and value

346 judgements of music. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 13(3), 277-

347 292. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000172

348 Brattico, E. (2019). The neuroaesthetics of music: A research agenda coming of age. In M.

349 H. Thaut & D. A. Hodges (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of music and the brain (pp.

350 364-390). Oxford University Press.

351 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198804123.013.15

352 Brattico, E., Alluri, V., Bogert, B., Jacobsen, T., Vartiainen, N., Nieminen, S., &

353 Tervaniemi, M. (2011). A functional MRI study of happy and sad emotions in music

354 with and without lyrics. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, Article 308.

355 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00308

356 Brattico, E., Brusa, A., Dietz, M. J., .Jacobsen, T., Fernandes, H. M., Gaggero, G.,

357 Toiviainen, P., Vuust, P., & Proverbio, A. M. (2020). Beauty and the brain:

358 Investigating the neural and musical attributes of beauty during a naturalistic music

359 listening experience. bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.10.31.363283

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 18

360 Brydges, C. R., & Bielak, A. A. M. (2020). A Bayesian analysis of evidence in support of

361 the null hypothesis in gerontological psychology (or lack thereof). The Journals of

362 Gerontology: Series B, 75(1), 58-66. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbz033

363 Campbell, J. I. D., & Thompson, V. A. (2012). MorePower 6.0 for ANOVA with relational

364 confidence intervals and Bayesian analysis. Behavior Research Methods, 44(4),

365 1255-1265. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-012-0186-0

366 Chatterjee, A., & Vartanian, O. (2014). Neuroaesthetics. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,

367 18(7), 370-375. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2014.03.003

368 Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Erlbaum.

369 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203771587

370 Cohen, J. (1994). The earth is round (p < .05). American Psychologist, 49(12), 997-1003.

371 https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.49.12.997

372 Cypess, R. (2010). "Esprimere la voce humana": Connections between vocal and

373 instrumental music by Italian composers of the early seventeenth century. Journal of

374 Musicology, 27(2), 181-223. https://doi.org/10.1525/jm.2010.27.2.181

375 de Jong, M. A., van Mourik, K. R., & Schellekens, H. M. C. (1973). A physiological

376 approach to aesthetic preference. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 22(1), 46-51.

377 https://doi.org/10.1159/000286468

378 Dolan, E. I. (2013). The orchestral revolution: Haydn and the technologies of timbre.

379 Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139235976

380 Eerola, T., Ferrer, R., & Alluri, V. (2012). Timbre and affect dimensions: Evidence from

381 affect and similarity ratings and acoustic correlates of isolated instrument sounds.

382 Music Perception, 30(1), 49-70. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2012.30.1.49

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 19

383 Eerola, T., & Vuoskoski, J. K. (2011). A comparison of the discrete and dimensional

384 models of emotion in music. Psychology of Music, 39(1), 18-49.

385 https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735610362821

386 Elkin, L. A., Kay, M., Higgins, J. J., & Wobbrock, J. O. (2021). An aligned rank transform

387 procedure for multifactor contrast tests. In The 34th Annual ACM Symposium on

388 User Interface Software and Technology (pp. 754‐ 768). Association for Computing

389 Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/3472749.3474784

390 Faulkenberry, T. J. (2019). Estimating evidential value from analysis of variance summaries:

391 A comment on Ly et al. (2018). Advances in Methods and Practices in

392 Psychological Science, 2(4), 406-409. https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245919872960

393 Faulkenberry, T. J. (2021). The Pearson Bayes factor: An analytic formula for computing

394 evidential value from minimal summary statistics. Biometrical Letters, 58(1), 1-26.

395 https://doi.org/10.2478/bile-2021-0001

396 Feys, J. (2016). New nonparametric rank tests for interactions in factorial designs with

397 repeated measures. Journal of Modern Applied Statistical Methods, 15(1), 78-99.

398 https://doi.org/10.22237/jmasm/1462075500

399 Field, A. (2017). Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (5th ed.). SAGE

400 Publications.

401 Giannakopoulos, T., & Pikrakis, A. (2014). Audio features. In T. Giannakopoulos & A.

402 Pikrakis (Eds.), Introduction to audio analysis: A MATLAB approach (pp. 59-103).

403 Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-099388-1.00004-2

404 Giannouli, V., Yordanova, J., & Kolev, V. (2022). The primacy of beauty in music, visual

405 arts and literature: Not just a replication study in the Greek language exploring the
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 20

406 effects of verbal fluency, age and gender. Psychological Reports, 125(5), 2636-2663.

407 https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941211026836

408 Gotlieb, H., & Konečni, V. J. (1985). The effects of instrumentation, playing style, and

409 structure in the Goldberg Variations by Johann Sebastian Bach. Music Perception,

410 3(1), 87-101. https://doi.org/10.2307/40285323

411 Hanslick, E. (1986). On the musically beautiful: A contribution towards the revision of the

412 aesthetics of music (G. Payzant, Trans.). Hackett Publishing. (Original work

413 published 1854)

414 Harms, C., & Lakens, D. (2018). Making 'null effects' informative: Statistical techniques

415 and inferential frameworks. Journal of Clinical and Translational Research, 3(2),

416 382-393. https://doi.org/10.18053/jctres.03.2017S2.007

417 Hur, Y.-J. (2020). An empirical aesthetics of the sublime and beautiful [Doctoral

418 dissertation, University College London]. UCL Discovery.

419 https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091352/18/Hur_10091352_thesis_redacted.pd

420 f

421 Istók, E., Brattico, E., Jacobsen, T., Krohn, K., Müller, M., & Tervaniemi, M. (2009).

422 Aesthetic responses to music: A questionnaire study. Musicae Scientiae, 13(2), 183-

423 206. https://doi.org/10.1177/102986490901300201

424 Jaśkiewicz, M., Francuz, P., Zabielska-Mendyk, E., Zapała, D., & Augustynowicz, P.

425 (2016). Effects of harmonics on aesthetic judgments of music: an ERP study

426 involving laypersons and experts. Acta Neurobiologiae Experimentalis, 76(2), 142-

427 151. https://doi.org/10.21307/ane-2017-013

428 Jeffreys, H. (1961). Theory of probability (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press.
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 21

429 Juslin, P. N., Ingmar, E., & Danielsson, J. (2022). Aesthetic judgments of music: Reliability,

430 consistency, criteria, self-insight, and expertise. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity,

431 and the Arts. https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000403

432 Juslin, P. N., & Isaksson, S. (2014). Subjective criteria for choice and aesthetic judgment of

433 music: A comparison of psychology and music students. Research Studies in Music

434 Education, 36(2), 179-198. https://doi.org/10.1177/1321103x14540259

435 Keysers, C., Gazzola, V., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2020). Using Bayes factor hypothesis

436 testing in neuroscience to establish evidence of absence. Nature Neuroscience, 23(7),

437 788-799. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41593-020-0660-4

438 Kim, H.-G., Moreau, N., & Sikora, T. (2006). MPEG-7 audio and beyond: Audio content

439 indexing and retrieval. John Wiley & Sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/0470093366

440 Lakens, D. (2017). Equivalence tests: A practical primer for t tests, correlations, and meta-

441 analyses. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(4), 355-362.

442 https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617697177

443 Lakens, D., McLatchie, N., Isager, P. M., Scheel, A. M., & Dienes, Z. (2020). Improving

444 inferences about null effects with Bayes factors and equivalence tests. The Journals

445 of Gerontology: Series B, 75(1), 45-57. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gby065

446 Lartillot, O., Toiviainen, P., & Eerola, T. (2008). A matlab toolbox for music information

447 retrieval. In C. Preisach, H. Burkhardt, L. Schmidt-Thieme, & R. Decker (Eds.),

448 Data analysis, machine learning and applications (pp. 261-268). Springer.

449 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78246-9_31

450 Lee, M. D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2014). Bayesian cognitive modeling: A practical course.

451 Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139087759

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 22

452 Love, J., Selker, R., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Dropmann, D., Verhagen, J., Ly, A., Gronau,

453 Q. F., Šmíra, M., Epskamp, S., Matzke, D., Wild, A., Knight, P., Rouder, J. N.,

454 Morey, R. D., & Wagenmakers, E.-J. (2019). JASP: Graphical statistical software

455 for common statistical designs. Journal of Statistical Software, 88(2).

456 https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v088.i02

457 Mair, P., & Wilcox, R. (2020). Robust statistical methods in R using the WRS2 package.

458 Behavior Research Methods, 52(2), 464-488. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-019-

459 01246-w

460 Marin, M. M., Lampatz, A., Wandl, M., & Leder, H. (2016). Berlyne revisited: Evidence

461 for the multifaceted nature of hedonic tone in the appreciation of paintings and

462 music. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 10, Article 536.

463 https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00536

464 Masson, M. E. J. (2011). A tutorial on a practical Bayesian alternative to null-hypothesis

465 significance testing. Behavior Research Methods, 43(3), 679-690.

466 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-010-0049-5

467 McAdams, S. (1999). Perspectives on the contribution of timbre to musical structure.

468 Computer Music Journal, 23(3), 85-102. https://doi.org/10.1162/014892699559797

469 McAdams, S., Douglas, C., & Vempala, N. N. (2017). Perception and modeling of affective

470 qualities of musical instrument sounds across pitch registers. Frontiers in

471 Psychology, 8, Article 153. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00153

472 Müller, M., Höfel, L., Brattico, E., & Jacobsen, T. (2009). Electrophysiological correlates of

473 aesthetic music processing. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1),

474 355-358. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04846.x

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 23

475 Müller, M., Höfel, L., Brattico, E., & Jacobsen, T. (2010). Aesthetic judgments of music in

476 experts and laypersons — An ERP study. International Journal of Psychophysiology,

477 76(1), 40-51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.02.002

478 Nieminen, S., Istók, E., Brattico, E., & Tervaniemi, M. (2011). The development of the

479 aesthetic experience of music: Preference, emotions, and beauty. Musicae Scientiae,

480 16(3), 372-391. https://doi.org/10.1177/1029864912450454

481 North, A. C., & Hargreaves, D. J. (1995). Subjective complexity, familiarity, and liking for

482 popular music. Psychomusicology, 14, 77-93. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0094090

483 Oldfield, R. C. (1971). The assessment and analysis of handedness: The Edinburgh

484 inventory. Neuropsychologia, 9(1), 97-113. https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-

485 3932(71)90067-4

486 Pearce, M. T., Zaidel, D. W., Vartanian, O., Skov, M., Leder, H., Chatterjee, A., & Nadal,

487 M. (2016). Neuroaesthetics: The cognitive neuroscience of aesthetic experience.

488 Perspectives on Psychological Science, 11(2), 265-279.

489 https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691615621274

490 Peeters, G., Giordano, B. L., Susini, P., Misdariis, N., & McAdams, S. (2011). The Timbre

491 Toolbox: Extracting audio descriptors from musical signals. The Journal of the

492 Acoustical Society of America, 130(5), 2902-2916.

493 https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3642604

494 Peeters, G., McAdams, S., & Herrera, P. (2000, August 27-September 1). Instrument sound

495 description in the context of MPEG-7. International Computer Music Conference,

496 Berlin, Germany. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01161319

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 24

497 Rawlings, D., & Leow, S. H. (2008). Investigating the role of psychoticism and sensation

498 seeking in predicting emotional reactions to music. Psychology of Music, 36(3), 269-

499 287. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735607086042

500 Rouder, J. N., Morey, R. D., Speckman, P. L., & Province, J. M. (2012). Default Bayes

501 factors for ANOVA designs. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 56(5), 356-374.

502 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmp.2012.08.001

503 Rouder, J. N., Speckman, P. L., Sun, D., Morey, R. D., & Iverson, G. (2009). Bayesian t

504 tests for accepting and rejecting the null hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review,

505 16(2), 225-237. https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.16.2.225

506 Rousseau, J.-J. (1765). Tymbre. In D. Diderot & J. l. R. d'Alembert (Eds.), Encyclopédie

507 (Vol. 16, pp. 775). Chez Samuel Faulche & Companie. http://enccre.academie-

508 sciences.fr/encyclopedie/article/v16-2453-0/

509 Rozé, J., Aramaki, M., Kronland-Martinet, R., & Ystad, S. (2017). Exploring the perceived

510 harshness of cello sounds by morphing and synthesis techniques. The Journal of the

511 Acoustical Society of America, 141(3), 2121-2136.

512 https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4978522

513 Rozé, J., Aramaki, M., Kronland-Martinet, R., & Ystad, S. (2020). Cellists’ sound quality is

514 shaped by their primary postural behavior. Scientific Reports, 10(1), Article 13882.

515 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-70705-8

516 Saitis, C., & Siedenburg, K. (2020). Brightness perception for musical instrument sounds:

517 Relation to timbre dissimilarity and source-cause categories. The Journal of the

518 Acoustical Society of America, 148(4), 2256-2266.

519 https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0002275
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 25

520 Sarasso, P., Ronga, I., Pistis, A., Forte, E., Garbarini, F., Ricci, R., & Neppi-Modona, M.

521 (2019). Aesthetic appreciation of musical intervals enhances behavioural and

522 neurophysiological indexes of attentional engagement and motor inhibition.

523 Scientific Reports, 9(1), Article 18550. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-55131-9

524 Schiller, F. (1844). The poems and ballads of Schiller (E. B. Lytton, Trans.; Vol. 1).

525 Bernhard Tauchnitz.

526 Schubert, E., & Wolfe, J. (2006). Does timbral brightness scale with frequency and spectral

527 centroid? Acta Acustica United with Acustica, 92(5), 820-825.

528 Seashore, C. E. (1936). The Psychology of Music. Music Educators Journal, 23(1), 24-26.

529 https://doi.org/10.2307/3384948

530 Sisti, A., Aryan, N., & Sadeghi, P. (2021). What is beauty? Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 45(5),

531 2163-2176. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00266-021-02288-2

532 Skov, M., & Nadal, M. (2022). The Routledge international handbook of neuroaesthetics.

533 Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003008675

534 Springer, D. G., Schlegel, A. L., & Lewis, A. J. (2021). Effects of dark and bright timbral

535 instructions on the production of pitch and timbre. Journal of Research in Music

536 Education, 68(4), 482-498. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022429420944347

537 Suzuki, M., Okamura, N., Kawachi, Y., Tashiro, M., Arao, H., Hoshishiba, T., Gyoba, J., &

538 Yanai, K. (2008). Discrete cortical regions associated with the musical beauty of

539 major and minor chords. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 8(2),

540 126-131. https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.8.2.126

541 van Elferen, I. (2020). Timbre: Paradox, materialism, vibrational aesthetics. Bloomsbury

542 Publishing. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501365843

 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 26

543 Vélez, D. V. (2021). The matter of timbre: Listening, genealogy, sound. In E. I. Dolan & A.

544 Rehding (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of timbre (pp. 22–51). Oxford University

545 Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190637224.013.20

546 Vuoskoski, J. K., & Eerola, T. (2017). The pleasure evoked by sad music is mediated by

547 feelings of being moved. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, Article 439.

548 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00439

549 Vuoskoski, J. K., Zickfeld, J. H., Alluri, V., Moorthigari, V., & Seibt, B. (2022). Feeling

550 moved by music: Investigating continuous ratings and acoustic correlates. PLOS

551 ONE, 17(1), Article e0261151. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261151

552 Wagenmakers, E.-J., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Ly, A., Verhagen, J., Love, J., Selker, R.,

553 Gronau, Q. F., Šmíra, M., Epskamp, S., Matzke, D., Rouder, J. N., & Morey, R. D.

554 (2018). Bayesian inference for psychology. Part I: Theoretical advantages and

555 practical ramifications. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 25(1), 35-57.

556 https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-017-1343-3

557 Wilcox, R. R. (2017). Modern statistics for the social and behavioral sciences: A practical

558 introduction (2nd ed.). Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315154480

559 Wilcox, R. R. (2022). Introduction to robust estimation and hypothesis testing (5th ed.).

560 Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/C2019-0-01225-3

561 Wilcox, R. R., Peterson, T. J., & McNitt-Gray, J. L. (2018). Data analyses when sample

562 sizes are small: Modern advances for dealing with outliers, skewed distributions,

563 and heteroscedasticity. Journal of Applied Biomechanics, 34(4), 258-261.

564 https://doi.org/10.1123/jab.2017-0269
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 27

565 Wilcox, R. R., & Serang, S. (2017). Hypothesis testing, p values, confidence intervals,

566 measures of effect size, and Bayesian methods in light of modern robust techniques.

567 Educational and Psychological Measurement, 77(4), 673-689.

568 https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164416667983

569 Wobbrock, J. O., Findlater, L., Gergle, D., & Higgins, J. J. (2011). The aligned rank

570 transform for nonparametric factorial analyses using only anova procedures. In

571 Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp.

572 143–146). Association for Computing Machinery.

573 https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1978963

574 Wobbrock, J. O., & Kay, M. (2016). Nonparametric statistics in human–computer

575 interaction. In J. Robertson & M. Kaptein (Eds.), Modern statistical methods for

576 HCI (pp. 135-170). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26633-6_7

577 Yoo, H., Kang, S., & Fung, V. (2018). Personality and world music preference of

578 undergraduate non-music majors in South Korea and the United States. Psychology

579 of Music, 46(5), 611-625. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735617716757

580 Zhang, W., Liu, F., Zhou, L., Wang, W., Jiang, H., & Jiang, C. (2019). The effects of timbre

581 on neural responses to musical emotion. Music Perception, 37(2), 134-146.

582 https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2019.37.2.134

583
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 28

584 Table 1

585 Subject Characteristics and Results of Mann-Whitney Tests

Characteristic Music Nonmusic W p rb 95% CI BF

Mdn IQR Mdn IQR

Age (years) 22.00 1.00 21.00 3.00 978.50 .495 .08 [−.16, .32] 0.23

Handedness 85.16 26.67 85.71 28.57 903.00 .996 < .01 [−.24, .24] 0.23

Years of education 15.00 2.00 15.00 2.00 1000.50 .379 .11 [−.14, .34] 0.24

Years of music training 10.00 8.00 0.00 0.00 1804.00 < .001 1.00 [1.00, 1.00] 4.54 × 104

586 Note. Mann-Whitney tests and its Bayesian equivalents were run with JASP.

587
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 29

588 Table 2

589 Timbral Features of the Music Stimuli

Violin Flute Singing voice

Timbre descriptor
M SD M SD M SD

Spectral centroid 1863.48 184.29 1274.18 113.77 1585.92 390.31

Harmonic spectral variation 0.09 0.03 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.03

MFCCratio 0.52 0.29 0.36 0.13 0.14 0.10

Attack slope 6266.69 12141.20 5202.58 9600.62 1868.45 3108.56

590 Note. Values are based on the original data.

591
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 30

592 Table 3

593 Mean Ratings on Three Measures as a Function of Timbre and Emotion

Violin Flute Singing voice

Measure
Happy Sad Happy Sad Happy Sad

Valence 5.37 ± 0.45 3.26 ± 0.77 5.28 ± 0.41 3.38 ± 0.71 5.08 ± 0.67 3.45 ± 0.73

Arousal 5.12 ± 0.54 3.18 ± 0.79 4.84 ± 0.58 3.19 ± 0.70 4.94 ± 0.75 3.44 ± 0.74

Familiarity 4.17 ± 1.19 3.55 ± 1.19 3.99 ± 1.22 3.38 ± 0.71 3.79 ± 1.19 3.49 ± 1.18

594 Note. Values are M ± SD based on the original data.

595
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 31

596 Table 4

597 ANOVA Results and BF Values for the Effects of Timbre and Emotion on Three Measures

Measure and source F df p ωp2 95% CI BF

Valence

Timbre 0.17 2, 168 .845 < .01 [.00, 1.00] 0.01

Emotion 441.92 1, 84 < .001 .69 [.56, .79] 1.00 × 1032

Timbre × Emotion 18.23 2, 168 < .001 .03 [.00, .09] 7.89 × 104

Arousal

Timbre 13.49 2, 168 < .001 .03 [.00, .08] 1.50 × 103

Emotion 369.66 1, 84 < .001 .63 [.49, .74] 2.18 × 1029

Timbre × Emotion 24.88 2, 168 < .001 .03 [.00, .09] 1.52 × 107

Familiarity

Timbre 17.21 2, 168 < .001 .01 [.00, .05] 3.42 × 104

Emotion 85.43 1, 84 < .001 .04 [.00, .16] 3.86 × 1011

Timbre × Emotion 11.20 2, 168 < .001 < .01 [.00, .03] 205.85

598 Note. ANOVA and BF Values are based on the aligned-and-ranked data.

599
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 32

600 Table 5

601 Post Hoc Comparisons for Three Timbre Descriptors

Timbre descriptor Comparison t(39) p d 95% CI BF

Spectral centroid Violin vs. Singing voice 5.44 < .001 1.20 [0.57, 1.84] 5.94 × 103

Violin vs. Flute 10.71 < .001 2.37 [1.52, 3.21] 2.24 × 1010

Singing voice vs. Flute 5.26 < .001 1.17 [0.54, 1.79] 3.49 × 103

Harmonic spectral variation Violin vs. Singing voice 11.39 < .001 1.96 [1.28, 2.65] 1.30 × 1011

Violin vs. Flute 11.44 < .001 1.97 [1.28, 2.66] 1.48 × 1011

Singing voice vs. Flute 0.06 .955 0.01 [−0.41, 0.43] 0.17

MFCCratio Violin vs. Singing voice 11.53 < .001 2.33 [1.52, 3.14] 1.86 × 1011

Violin vs. Flute 2.97 .004 0.60 [0.08, 1.12] 7.31

Singing voice vs. Flute −8.56 < .001 −1.73 [−2.42, −1.05] 6.05 × 107

602
 VIOLIN IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL 33

603 Figure 1

604 Beauty Ratings by Timbre and Group

605

606 Note. Each circle represents an individual subject; filled circles and error bars represent the

607 mean and standard deviation, respectively.

Supplemental Material

Click here to access/download

Supplemental Material
Supplemental Material.zip