Emotional Responses to the Perceptual

Dimensions of Timbre:
A Pilot Study Using Physically Informed Sound
Synthesis.

Sylvain Le Groux1 and Paul F.M.J. Verschure1,2

1
The Laboratory for Synthetic, Perceptive, Emotive and Cognitive Systems
(SPECS).
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Roc Boronat, 138 08018 Barcelona, Spain
2
Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats (ICREA)
Barcelona, Spain
{sylvain.legroux,paul.verschure}@upf.edu

Abstract. Music is well known for affecting human emotional states,

and most people enjoy music because of the emotions it evokes. Yet,
the relationship between specific musical parameters and emotional re-
sponses is not clear. A key question is how musical parameters can be
mapped to emotional states of valence, arousal and dominance. Whereas
many studies have focused on emotional responses to performance or
structural musical parameters [6–8], little is know about the role of tim-
bre on emotions. Here, we propose a sound synthesis-based approach to
the study of sonic emotion using physically-inspired sound models, and
investigate the emotional effects of three perceptually salient timbre de-
scriptors, namely log-attack time, spectral centroid and spectral flux. Our
results show that an increase in spectral centroid and spectral flux pa-
rameters produces an increased emotional response on the arousal scale.
Moreover we could observe interaction effects between log-attack time
and spectral flux on the dominance scale. This study suggests a rational
approach to the design of emotion-driven music systems for multimedia
installations, live performance and music therapy.

Key words: Timbre, Perception, Emotion, Physically Inspired Sound

Synthesis

1 Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre

Sounds can be described by five main perceptual components, namely pitch,
loudness, duration, timbre, and spatialization [25]. To a first degree of approxi-
mation, pitch, loudness and duration are unidimensional parameters which relate
to fundamental frequency, sound level, and time respectively. On the other hand,
timbre is notoriously difficult to define [28]. The American Standards Association
(ASA) proposes the following definition [32]: timbre is the perceptual attribute
2 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

of sound that allows a listener to distinguish among sounds that are otherwise
equivalent in pitch, loudness and subjective duration.
Over the years, several approaches to the study of timbre have been investi-
gated, leading to disparate but related results. One possible approach is to search
for a reduced semantic field that would describe sounds accurately. Following this
approach, [4] asked subjects to rate sounds on 30 verbal attributes. Based on
a multidimensional scaling analysis of the semantic-differential data, he found
four statistically significant axes, namely the dull-sharp, compact-scattered, full-
empty and colorful-colorless pairs.
Other type of studies have tried to relate the perceptual dimensions of sounds
to acoustics descriptors. Those descriptors can be spectral, temporal or spectro-
temporal [22], and generate a “timbre space” [35].
The timbre space is determined using multidimensional analysis of data de-
rived from experiments where a listener estimates the dissimilarity between pairs
of sounds with different timbral characteristics. Multidimensional analysis tech-
niques allow to extract a set of “principal axes” or dimensions that are commonly
assumed to model the criteria used by participants to estimate the dissimilarity.
It is then possible to find acoustical descriptors that correlate with the dimen-
sions derived from multidimensional analysis. The three descriptors consistently
reported by dissimilarity studies on instrumental sounds are the spectral cen-
troid, the log-attack time and the spectral flux [21, 9, 10].
In this study we propose to investigate the relationship between the timbre of
a musical note and the emotional response of the listener. To this aim, we use a
physically informed synthesizer that can produce realistic sounds efficiently and
intuitively from a three-dimensional timbre space model mapped to a reduced
set of physical parameters.

2 Sound Generation: Modal Synthesis

In modal synthesis, a sound is modeled as a combination of modes which oscillate

independently (Figure 1). While this kind of modeling is in theory only accu-
rate for sounds produced by linear phenomena, it allows for efficient real-time
implementations [5, 1, 33].

2.1 Modal Synthesis

The dynamics of a simple unidimensional mass-spring-damper system (our model

of a mode) is given by the second order differential equation:

mẍ + µẋ + kx = 0 (1)

where m is the mass, µ the damping factor, k the tension and x the displacement.
The solution is an exponentially decaying oscillator:

x = e−αt Acos(ω0 t + φ) (2)

 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 3
q
µ k µ 2
where α = 2m , ω0 = ( m − ( 2m ) , A is the amplitude and φ the phase.
The modal approximation consists in modeling the time-varying sound s(t)
by a linear combination of damped oscillators representing the vibrating prop-
erties of a structure. In the general case, the damping factor αn is frequency-
dependent and relates to the physical properties of the material .
X X
s(t) = sn (t) = An e2iπfn t e−αn t (3)
n=1 n=1

Fig. 1. Within the modal paradigm, a vibrating structure is decomposed into a sum
of simple modes.

2.2 Implementation
By discretizing equation 1 with finite difference and using a sampling interval
T = nt we obtain:
2m + T r m
x[n] = x[n − 1] 2k
− x[n − 2] (4)
m + Tr + T m + T r + T 2k
which is the formulation of a standard IIR two-poles resonant filter. Conse-
quently we implemented a real-time synthesizer as a bank of biquad resonant
filters in Max5 [11, 37] excited by an impulse (Figure 2).

3 Perceptual Control of The Synthesis Parameters

Previous psychoacoustics studies on timbre have emphasized the perceptual im-
portance of features such as spectral centroid, log-attack time and spectral flux
(cf. Section 1). As a means to generate perceptually relevant sounds, we have
built a simple and efficient physically-inspired modal synthesizer that produces
realistic percussive sounds. We will now show how to map those psychoacoustical
features to sound synthesis parameters.
4 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

Resonator
(F,A,d)
Attack Time

Impulse Resonator
+ + ADSR
Generator (F,A,d)

.
.
Amp .

Resonator
(F,A,d)

Freq, Amp, Decay

Fig. 2. The sounds are produced by an impulse that injects energy in a bank of
exponentially-decaying resonant filters, modulated by a time envelope.

3.1 Background

Few studies have explored the control of audio synthesis from perceptual param-
eters. We can distinguish four main trends: the machine learning view, where a
model of the timbre is learned from audio data, the concatenative view, where the
timbre is “constructed” by the juxtaposition of pre-existing sonic grains, the sig-
nal processing view, where the transformations on timbre are model-dependent
and direct applications of the signal model possibilities, and the physical model
view, where the sound generation is modulated by intuitive physical parame-
ters. One of the earliest examples of the machine learning point of view can be
found in [36] where an additive synthesis model was driven by pitch, loudness
and brightness using artificial neural networks. This paradigm has been more
recently generalized and adapted to Support Vector Machine learning [16]. In
the case of concatenative synthesis [29], a sound is defined as a combination of
pre-existing samples in a database. These samples are already analyzed, classi-
fied and can be retrieved by their audio characteristics. For signal models, a set
of timbral transformations based on additive modeling is proposed. For instance
by explicitly translating and distorting the spectrum of a sound, one can achieve
the control over vibrato, tremolo and gender transformation of a voice [30]. In
addition, a few studies have investigated the relationship between perceptual
and physical attributes of sounding objects [2, 20].
Here we follow this last approach with a simple physical model of impact
sound and propose a set of acoustic parameters corresponding to the tridimen-
sional model of timbre proposed by psychoacoustics studies [21, 9, 10] (cf. Section
1).
 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 5

3.2 Tristimulus / Spectral Centroid

We propose to control the spectral centroid of the sound by using the tristimulus
values to specific brightness surfaces [24, 26].
The tristimulus analysis of timbre proposes to quantify timbre in terms of
three coordinates (x, y, z) associated with band-loudness values. Inspired from
the tristimulus theory of colour perception, it associates high values of x to dom-
inant high-frequencies, high values of y to dominant mid-frequency components
and high values of z to dominant fundamental frequency. The coordinates are
normalized so that x + y + z = 1.
H
X
ah
a1 a2 + a3 + a4 h=5
T1 = H , T2 = H
, T3 = H (5)
X X X
ah ah ah
h=1 h=1 h=1

Mid-
Frequency

High-
Fundamental Frequency
0
1
X

Fig. 3. An intuitive 2D representation of the tristimulus timbre space is a triangle. The

arrow represents a specific time-varying trajectory of a sound in the tristimulus timbre
space [24].

For synthesis, the sound is approximated by a sum of weighted damped

oscillators at frequencies multiple of the fundamental. We use an additive model
and neglect the effect of phase:
N
X −1
s(t) ' e−αk t Ak cos(2πfk t) (6)
k=0
6 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

where n is the time index, N is the number of harmonics in the synthetic signal,
Ak is the amplitude of the kth partial, fk is the frequency of the kth partial.
with fk = k.f0 where f0 is the fundamental frequency (harmonicity hypothesis).
In the synthesis model, the harmonic modes belong to three distinct fre-
quency bands or tristimulus bands: f0 belongs to the first low frequency band,
frequencies f2...4 belong to the second mid-frequency band, and the remaining
partials f5...N belong to the high-frequency band.
The relative intensities in the three bands can be visualized on a tristimulus
triangular diagram where each corner represents a specific frequency band. We
use this representation as an intuitive spatial interface for timbral control of
the synthesized sounds (Figure 4). The inharmonicity of the sound was set by
scaling
p the values of partials following a piano-like law proposed by[2] fk =
kf0 1 + βk 2 .

Fig. 4. The synthesizer GUI allows for graphical control over the tristimulus values
(left). It automatically updates and displays the amplitudes of the corresponding par-
tials (right).

3.3 Damping / Spectral Flux

While the tristimulus is only a static property of the spectrum, the modal syn-
thesis technique described in Section 2 also allows for realistic control of the
time-varying attenuation of the spectral components. As a matter of fact, the
spectral flux, defined as the mean value of the variation of the spectral com-
ponents, is known to play an important role in the perception of sounds [21].
We decided, as a first approximation, to indirectly control the spectral flux -
or variation of brightness- by modulating the relative damping value αr of the
frequency-dependent damping parameter α (Figure 5 and Equation 3) proposed
by [2]:
α(ω) = exp(αg + αr ω) (7)

3.4 Time Envelope / Log Attack Time

The log-attack time (LAT) is the logarithm (decimal base) of the time dura-
tion between the time the signal starts to the time it reaches its stable part
 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 7

Fig. 5. The synthesizer GUI allows for graphical control of the damping parameters
αg and αr

[22]. Here, we control the log-attack time manually using our synthesizer’s in-
terface (Figure 6). Each time the synthesizer receives a MIDI note-on message,
an Attack-Decay-Sustain-Release (ADSR) time envelope corresponding to the
desired LAT parameter is triggered (Figure 7).

LAT = log10 (tstop − tstart ) (8)

Fig. 6. The synthesizer GUI allows for graphical control over log-attack time parameter
via the Attack Decay Sustain Release envelope.

4 From perception to emotion

4.1 Background
Music and Emotion Music and its effect on the listener has long been a
subject of fascination and scientific exploration from the Greeks speculating on
the acoustic properties of the voice [13]to Musak researcher designing “soothing”
elevator music. It has now become an omnipresent part of our day to day life,
8 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

Envelope
12000

10000

amplitude 8000

6000

4000

2000

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
time (s)
t_start t_stop

Fig. 7. The ADSR time envelope allows for direct control over the LAT each time a
note is triggered.

whether by choice when played on a personal portable music device, or imposed

when diffused in malls during shopping hours for instance.
Studies on musical emotion have traditionally been influenced by “standard”
research on emotion induction and usually assumed that musical emotion relies
on general emotional mechanisms such as cognitive appraisal. Nevertheless, while
observing that most emotional responses to music do not involve implications
for goals in life, a recent review article [12] proposes to challenge the cogni-
tive appraisal perspective, and put forward six additional mechanisms that can
be accounted for. Namely, brain stem reflex, evaluative conditioning, emotional
contagion, visual imagery, episodic memory and musical expectancy.
In our experiment, we decided to limit our focus to the investigation of the
relationship between perceptual acoustic properties and emotional responses. In
order to control for mechanisms such as musical expectancy and emotional con-
tagion, the stimuli consisted of one short note. In fact, previous studies have
revealed that only a few seconds of music are necessary to elicit an emotional
reaction [3, 23]. There was no conditioning task involved, and the sounds gener-
ated by our model were synthetic, but realistic. Therefore within the framework
proposed in [12], we most probably look at some reflex-like mechanisms reflecting
the impact of auditory sensation in the most basic sense.

Emotional Responses There exist a number of different methodologies to

measure emotional responses. They can be broadly classified into three categories
depending on the extent to which they access subjective experience, alterations
of behavior or the impact on physiological states [19]. Self-reports of emotional
 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 9

experience measure the participant’s “subjective feeling” of emotions, i.e. “the

consciously felt experience of emotions as expressed by the individual” [31]. Self-
reports can be subcategorized into verbal [34] and visual self-reports [27]. We
decided to use visual reports during experiments since these are more universal
than the verbal measures.
We followed the well established three dimensional theory of emotions: va-
lence and intensity of activation or arousal [27] plus dominance using the Self
Assessment Manikin (SAM) scale [14] (Figure 8). Emotions can then be placed
in a three-dimensional emotional space, where the valence scale ranges from pos-
itive to negative, the activation scale extends from calmness to high arousal and
the dominance scale goes from dominated to dominant.

4.2 Methods

Fig. 8. The presentation software S-Blast programmed in Max/MSP uses SAM scales
(Dominance, Arousal and Valence)[14] to measure emotional responses to sound stimuli
from the subjects.
10 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

Participants A total of ten university students (2 female; mean age 29 years)

took part in the pilot experiment. The experiment was conducted in accordance
with the ethical standards laid down in the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki.

Stimuli Eight sound samples of about 4 s. duration each were used as acoustic
stimuli 3 . They were presented to the participants using stereo headphones (AKG
K66).
We investigated the effect of three timbre descriptors (two levels each) on
arousal, valence and dominance:

– Attack time: low level corresponded to 1ms while high level corresponded to
150 ms.
– Spectral Centroid (controled by tristimulus): low level corresponded to en-
ergy in the first and second tristimulus band while high level corresponded
to energy in the third tristimulus band only.
– Spectral-flux (controled by damping): high level corresponded to high damp-
ing αr = 0.6 while low level corresponded to low damping αr = −1.6 while
αg was kept at the constant value 0.23 (cf. Equation 7).
– All the other parameters of the synthesizer were fixed (partial amplitude
decay, harmonicity, even/odd ratio, decay, sustain, release), and the sound
samples were normalized in amplitude with Peak Pro (BIAS4 ).

Procedure We investigated the influence of different sound features on the

emotional state of the patients using a fully automated and computer based
stimulus presentation and response registration system. In our experiment, each
subject was seated in front of a PC computer with a 15.4” LCD screen and
interacted with custom-made stimulus delivery and data acquisition software
called S-blast (Figure 8) made with the MAX programming language [37]. Sound
stimuli were presented through headphones (K-66 from AKG). At the beginning
of the experiment, the subject was exposed to a sinusoidal sound generator
to calibrate the sound level to a comfortable level. Subsequently, a number of
sound samples with specific sonic characteristics were presented together with
the different scales (Figure 8).
The subject had to rate each sound sample in terms of their emotional content
(valence, arousal, dominance) by clicking on the SAM manikin representing her
feelings [14]. The subject was given the possibility to repeat the playback of the
samples. The SAM graphical scale was converted into an ordinal scale (from 0
to 5) where 0 corresponds to the most dominated, aroused and positive and 5 to
the most dominant, calm and negative (Figure 8). The data was automatically
stored into a SQLite5 database composed of a table for demographics and a table
containing the emotional ratings. SPSS (IBM) statistical software suite was used
3
Available from http://www.dtic.upf.edu/∼slegroux/confs/CMMR10
4
http://www.bias-inc.com/
5
http://www.sqlite.org/
 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 11

to assess the significance of the influence of sound parameters on the affective

responses of the subjects 6 .

4.3 Results

We verified that, for each condition, the data passed the Kolmogorov-Smirnov
test of normality. We then conducted a factorial (three-way) repeated measure
ANOVA to look at the influence of perceptual parameters of timbre on the
emotional responses of the participants as measured by a five points SAM scales.

Arousal Mauchly’s test indicated that the assumption of sphericity had been
violated for effects of attack, centroid and damping (p¡0.05). Therefore degrees
of freedom were corrected using Greenhouse-Geisser estimates of sphericity.
There was a significant main effect of centroid (F(1,9)=11.663, p¡0.05) as well
damping (F(1,9)=5.857, p¡0.05) on arousal. Post-hoc pairwise comparisons with
Bonferonni corrections showed a significant mean difference of -0.725 between
high spectral centroid (M=1.825) and low spectral centroid (M=2.55) showing
higher values produce higher ratings along the arousal scale (i.e. lower value on
the scale). Similarly, a significant mean difference of -1.075 was observed between
low damping (M=1.65) and high damping (M=2.725), showing low damping was
more arousing than high damping (Figure 9).

Valence No sound property significantly affected ratings along the valence scale.

Dominance Mauchly’s test indicated that the assumption of sphericity had

been violated (p¡0.05). Therefore degrees of freedom were corrected using Greenhouse-
Geisser estimates of sphericity.
There was a significant interaction effect between attack and damping (F(1,9)=7.23,
p¡0.05) on the dominance scale. A contrast analysis for repeated measures re-
vealed the increased dominance found when using low damping (compared to
high damping) is actually reversed when high log-attack time is used instead of
low log-attack time. In other words, the increase in dominance due to low damp-
ing is significantly greater when used in conjunction with a short log-attack time
(low value).

5 Conclusion

In this study we investigated the role of timbre on emotional responses as mea-

sured by the SAM scale. We proposed a physically-inspired model to synthesize
sound samples from a set of well-defined and perceptually-grounded sound pa-
rameters, and showed their correspondence to arousal and dominance scales. In
particular, spectral centroid and damping were significantly related to arousal
6
http://www.spss.com/
12 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

Arousal

HHH HHL HLH HLL LHH LHL LLH LLL

Conditions

Fig. 9. Boxplot of the different conditions on the arousal scale (from 0 to 5 with 0
maximum arousal). Notation: a 3 character string codes for condition (Attack, Centroid
and Flux in that order) and levels (High, Low). For example, HHL corresponds to High
Attack-time, High Spectral Centroid and Low Spectral flux .

Interaction Graph
Damping
Low
High

2.2
Estimated Marginal Means

1.8

1.6

Low High

Log(Attack Time)

Fig. 10. Interaction graph between log-attack time and spectral flux on the dominance
scale (from 0 to 5 where 5 represents highest dominance). Estimated Marginal Means
are obtained by taking the average of the means for a given condition.
 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 13

subjective ratings, while interaction effects between log-attack time and damping
were found, showing that short attack with low damping maximized dominant
responses.
The study of the relationship between sonic features and emotional responses
combined with techniques for real-time sound synthesis paves the way for the
design of affective interactive music systems. We plan to use this type of system
for affective state diagnosis, affective state modulation (e.g. involving Alzheimer
patients and autistic children [15]) and neurofeedback studies [17].
In future experiments, we want to investigate in more details the potential
of timbre and higher level musical parameters to induce specific affective states.
We wish to expand our analysis to time-varying parameters and to co-varying
parameters. Our results, however, already demonstrate that a rational approach
towards the definition of affective interactive music systems is possible. We will
integrate this knowledge into SiMS, the biomimetic interactive music system we
have developed [18], and explore adaptive emotional mappings of musical param-
eters using algorithms such as reinforcement learning with a response evaluation
loop.

References

1. J. Adrien. The missing link: Modal synthesis. 1991.

2. M. Aramaki, R. Kronland-Martinet, T. Voinier, and S. Ystad. A percussive sound
synthesizer based on physical and perceptual attributes. Computer Music Journal,
30(2):32–41, 2006.
3. E. Bigand, S. Vieillard, F. Madurell, J. Marozeau, and A. Dacquet. Multidimen-
sional scaling of emotional responses to music: The effect of musical expertise and
of the duration of the excerpts. Cognition & Emotion, 2005.
4. G. Bismarck. Timbre of steady sounds: A factorial investigation of its verbal
attributes. Acustica, 30(3):146–59, 1974.
5. P. Cook. Real sound synthesis for interactive applications. AK Peters, Ltd., 2002.
6. A. Friberg, R. Bresin, and J. Sundberg. Overview of the kth rule system for
musical performance. Advances in Cognitive Psychology, Special Issue on Music
Performance, 2(2-3):145–161, 2006.
7. A. Gabrielson and P. N. Juslin. Emotional expression in music performance: Be-
tween the performer’s intention and the listener’s experience. In Psychology of
Music, volume 24, pages 68–91, 1996.
8. A. Gabrielsson and E. Lindström. Music and Emotion - Theory and Research,
chapter The Influence of Musical Structure on Emotional Expression. Series in
Affective Science. Oxford University Press, New York, 2001.
9. J. Grey. An exploration of musical timbre using computer-based techniques for anal-
ysis, synthesis and perceptual scaling. PhD thesis, Dept. of Psychology, Stanford
University., 1975.
10. P. Iverson and C. Krumhansl. Isolating the dynamic attributes of musical timbre.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 94:2595, 1993.
11. T. Jehan, A. Freed, and R. Dudas. Musical applications of new filter extensions to
max/msp. In International Computer Music Conference,(Beijing, China, 1999),
ICMA, pages 504–507. Citeseer.
14 Sylvain Le Groux, Paul F.M.J. Verschure

12. P. N. Juslin and D. Västfjäll. Emotional responses to music: the need to consider
underlying mechanisms. Behav Brain Sci, 31(5):559–75; discussion 575–621, Oct
2008.
13. P. Kivy. Introduction to a Philosophy of Music. Oxford University Press, USA,
2002.
14. P. Lang. Behavioral treatment and bio-behavioral assessment: computer applica-
tions. In J. Sidowski, J. Johnson, and T. Williams, editors, Technology in Mental
Health Care Delivery Systems, pages 119–137, 1980.
15. S. Le Groux, M. Brotons, and P. F. M. J. Verschure. A study on the influence of
sonic features on the affective state of dementia patients. In Conference for the
Advancement of Assistive Technology in Europe, San Sebastian, Spain, October
2007.
16. S. Le Groux and P. F. M. J. Verschure. PERCEPTSYNTH: Mapping perceptual
musical features to sound synthesis parameters. In Proceedings of IEEE Inter-
national Conference ons Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Las
Vegas, USA, April 2008.
17. S. Le Groux and P. F. M. J. Verschure. Neuromuse: Training your brain through
musical interaction. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory
Display, Copenhagen, Denmark, May 18-22 2009.
18. S. Le Groux and P. F. M. J. Verschure. Situated interactive music system: Connect-
ing mind and body through musical interaction. In Proceedings of the International
Computer Music Conference, Montreal, Canada, August 2009. Mc Gill University.
19. R. W. Levensons. The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions, chapter Human
emotion: A functional view, pages 123–126. Oxford University Press, 1994.
20. S. McAdams, A. Chaigne, and V. Roussarie. The psychomechanics of simulated
sound sources: Material properties of impacted bars. The Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, 115:1306, 2004.
21. S. McAdams, S. Winsberg, S. Donnadieu, G. De Soete, and J. Krimphoff. Per-
ceptual scaling of synthesized musical timbres : Common dimensions, specificities,
and latent subject classes. Psychological Research, 58:177–192, 1995.
22. G. Peeters, S. McAdams, and P. Herrera. Instrument sound description in the
context of mpeg-7. In Proceedings of the 2000 International Computer Music Con-
ference. Citeseer, 2000.
23. I. Peretz, A. J. Blood, V. Penhune, and R. Zatorre. Cortical deafness to dissonance.
Brain, 124(Pt 5):928–40, May 2001.
24. H. Pollard and E. Jansson. A tristimulus method for the specification of musical
timbre. In Acustica, volume 51, 1982.
25. R. Rasch and R. Plomp. The perception of musical tones. d. deutsch (ed.). the
psychology of music (pp. 89-112), 1999.
26. A. Riley and D. Howard. Real-time tristimulus timbre synthesizer. Technical
report, University of York, 2004.
27. J. A. Russell. A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 39:345–356, 1980.
28. G. Sandell. Definitions of the word” timbre, 2008.
29. D. Schwarz. Data-Driven Concatenative Sound Synthesis. PhD thesis, Ircam -
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France, January 2004.
30. X. Serra and J. Bonada. Sound transformations based on the sms high level at-
tributes, 1998.
31. . L. J. Stout, P. A. Measuring emotional response to advertising. Journal of
Advertising, 15(4):35–42, 1986.
 Emotional Responses to the Perceptual Dimensions of Timbre 15

32. A. Terminology. S1. 1–1960. American Standards Association, New York, 1960.
33. K. van den Doel and D. Pai. Synthesis of shape dependent sounds with physical
modeling. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Auditory Displays,
1996.
34. C. L. E. . T. A. Watson, D. Development and validation of brief measures of
positive and negative affect: The panas scales. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 54:1063–1070, 1988.
35. D. Wessel. Timbre space as a musical control structure. In Computer Music
Journal, 1979.
36. D. Wessel, C. Drame, and M. Wright. Removing the time axis from spectral model
analysis-based additive synthesis: Neural networks versus memory-based machine
learning. In Proc. ICMC, 1998.
37. D. Zicarelli. How I learned to love a program that does nothing. Computer Music
Journal, (26):44–51, 2002.