Mood in Music

Sentiment Analysis of the Stories We Hear in

Music

By Sarah Geist and Eiryn

Hodges
 A Brief History of Music and Narrative
and DHLC

- Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab, directed

by Dr. Natalie Phillips
- 47 undergraduate students listened to eight pieces of
orchestral music
- After listening to each piece, subjects were asked if
they imagined a story or elements of a story
- If they did, they were then asked to write the narrative
down
 In C, by Terry Riley

- Low contrast
- Cyclical repetitive structure to the music
- Limited variation in tempo, volume, and
pitch, throughout the piece; low musical
contrast
- Percussive sound, abrasive, generally
perceived as unpleasant to listen to
 In C, by Terry Riley

Ex 1. I thought of a railroad crossing when the train is crossing and the road is blocked off and there is
that noise that the crossing sign makes, it dings, to catch people's attention.

Ex 2. This music sounded like a mixture of Michael Myers and clowns. Both of which I hate and am not
a fan of. I'm terrified of both. The constant noise in the background sounded like the Michael Myers
theme song, just a bit altered. And the intermittent noise of a somewhat honking sound, to me sounded
like a clown’s nose. Everything about this piece, with the loud noises, reminded me of childhood fears.
 Faust Symphony, by Franz Liszt

- Low contrast
- Longer phrases, lack of repetition
- Large changes in volume and pitch
- Full symphonic orchestral sound
 Faust Symphony, by Franz Liszt

Ex 1. This music made me think of a classic cat mouse situation. The lighter music represented the
mouse scurrying and running from one hiding spot to the next, while the heavier sounds represented
the cat getting close to catching the mouse, but never coming quite close enough. I imagined a second
mouse attempting to distract the cat at one point when low, but still soft, music was played. I imagined
this story in a living room with a fire in the fireplace and red curtains on the wall and a big fat, mean gray
cat.

Ex 2. I imagined a Tom and Jerry story outline.

 Narrative Convergence

When we compared the stories written about each piece, we

found remarkable similarities.

For example . . .
 Narrative Convergence

When listening to Liszt, 72% of participants heard a story.

Of this, 74% heard narratively similar stories.
The common themes were:
- cat and mouse
- chases
- Tom and Jerry
 Sentiment Analysis

But topic isn’t the only thing that can connect narratives.

What if the narratives are similar in sentiment as well?

In order to do this, we need to find a way to identify or measure the sentiment of

the narratives.

We could do it subjectively, but would that be the best way?

 Sentiment Analysis - IBM Natural Language
Understanding

- Run by IBM Watson

- Provides an overall sentiment rating ranging
from -1 (negative) to 1 (positive)
- Assigns numbers from 0 to 1 for each of
five more specific emotions: joy, anger,
disgust, sadness, and fear
- Analyzes large chunks of text that are
usually more than one sentence
 IBM Riley Sentiment Ratings

- Mean: -0.188
- Standard Deviation: 0.497
- Relatively negative
sentiment rating

Negative Positive
 IBM Riley Sentiment Ratings

Ex. I imagined a stressful environment that had

a procession of workers, working
simultaneously and the whole time, there was a
bird flying around crazily.
Rating: -0.62 (Negative)
- This makes sense.
- Expresses stress and anxiety
 IBM Riley Sentiment Ratings

Ex. I imagined a bunch of ducks just all gathered

up trying to find food.
Rating: -0.48 (Negative)
- Subjectively, this seems wrong.
- Duck are generally considered cute.
 IBM Liszt Sentiment Ratings

- Mean: -0.174
- Standard Deviation: 0.572
- Relatively negative
sentiment rating
- Note: Nearly twice the
number of participants
heard stories in Liszt than
did in Riley

Negative Positive
 IBM Liszt Sentiment Ratings

Ex. I imagined a cartoon mouse sneaking around a

dark building looking for something and constantly
looking around for fear of getting caught, and
almost getting caught many times.
Rating: -0.78 (Negative)
- This makes sense.
- Dark setting, mouse is scared
 IBM Liszt Sentiment Ratings

Ex. Had to laugh! Swear I've heard this on Bugs

Bunny before. I couldn't help but think of my
childhood, watching the cartoon and seeing the
"wascally wabbit" playing out the scene.
Rating: -0.21 (Negative)
- This doesn’t feel negative.
- Happy childhood memory of watching
cartoons
 IBM Conclusion

The tool measured the narratives for both pieces as slightly negative, even
though the musical style is so different.

Sometimes the tool accurately rated the sentiment of a narrative, and

sometimes it was very obviously wrong.
 Sentiment Analysis - Stanford NLP (Natural
Language Processing)

Based off of a corpus of 11,855 sentences from movie reviews

Contributors can help the system learn by correcting ratings that they think are
incorrect

Analyzes individual sentences and assigns ratings from 1 to 100 of positivity and
negativity to each
 Stanford NLP Riley Sentiment Ratings

Positivity Negativity

Less Positive More Positive Less Negative More Negative

 Stanford Riley Sentiment Ratings

Positivity: 14%
Remember this one? Negativity: 42%
Ex. I imagined a stressful environment that had
Understandable, right?
a procession of workers, working
simultaneously and the whole time, there was a Primarily negative feeling
bird flying around crazily.
 Stanford Riley Sentiment Ratings

Positivity: 2%
And this one? Negativity: 66%
Ex. I imagined a bunch of ducks just all gathered
up trying to find food. This goes way negative using the
tool, which is weird

What’s so negative about some

ducks?
 Stanford NLP Liszt Sentiment Ratings

Positivity Negativity

Less Positive More Positive Less Negative More Negative

 Stanford Liszt Sentiment Ratings

Ex. I imagined a cartoon mouse sneaking around a Positivity: 8%

dark building looking for something and constantly Negativity: 81%

looking around for fear of getting caught, and Just as with the IBM test, this is
almost getting caught many times. what one would expect

A negative result for a negative

narrative
 Stanford Liszt Sentiment Ratings

Ex. Had to laugh! Swear I've heard this on Bugs
Bunny before. I couldn't help but think of my
childhood, watching the cartoon and seeing the
"wascally wabbit" playing out the scene.
Positivity: 31%
Negativity: 47%
Yeah, the difference here isn’t AS
profound as in others, but it still came
out as primarily negative…

But when read, it doesn’t feel negative

at all!
 Significance

There is a trend towards negative narratives for both pieces of music, despite
their vast differences in musical style and structure.

But the system isn’t perfect; it doesn’t make any sense at times.

So our goal of developing methodology for measuring narrative convergence…

isn’t really completed.
 Significance

There are significant problems with both tools, leading us to reconsider the
importance of human assessment.

This information could also be used to try to improve natural language

processing softwares.

Moving forward, human judgement is likely more accurate for assessing

sentiment, but more research is needed.
 Tools Sourced

Histogram maker: http://www.socscistatistics.com/descriptive/histograms/

Stanford NLP: http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/sentiment/rntnDemo.html

Natural Language Understanding IBM:

https://natural-language-understanding-demo.ng.bluemix.net/?cm_mc_uid=0731
9364460215214895112&cm_mc_sid_50200000=56779051521489511229&cm_
mc_sid_52640000=23751291521489511236
 Thank you!

This research could not have been completed without the help of Dr. Natalie
Phillips and everyone at the DHLC.

Thanks to MSU, Dr. Lisa Margulis and the University of Arkansas, the Chinese
University of Hong Kong, and the National Science Foundation.
IBM - Fear
Riley Liszt
Mean: 0.222 Mean: 0.215
Standard Deviation: 0.171
Standard Deviation: 0.148

Less Fear More Fear Less Fear More Fear

IBM- Sadness
Riley Liszt
Mean: 0.275 Mean: 0.332
Standard Deviation: 0.148 Standard Deviation: 0.154

Less Sadness More Sadness Less Sadness More Sadness

IBM- Disgust
Riley Liszt
Mean: 0.125 Mean: 0.198
Standard Deviation: 0.066 Standard Deviation: 0.129

Less Disgust More Disgust Less Disgust More Disgust

IBM- Anger
Riley Liszt
Mean: 0.199 Mean: 0.198
Standard Deviation: 0.163 Standard Deviation: 0.129

Less Anger More Anger Less Anger More Anger

IBM- Joy
Riley Liszt
Mean: 0.329 Mean: 0.285
Standard Deviation: 0.212 Standard Deviation: 0.187

Less Joy More Less Joy More

Joy Joy