Abstract

Recent research has shown that different musical instrument sounds have strong emotional characteristics. It has also shown how these emotional characteristics change with different pitch and dynamics for the piano and solo bowed strings. This paper investigates how the emotional characteristics of the section bowed strings vary with pitch and dynamics, comparing and contrasting the solo and section string results. We conducted listening tests where listeners compared the section string sounds pairwise over ten emotional categories. The section and solo string results were somewhat similar overall, but with some notable differences as well. The emotional characteristics Happy, Heroic, Romantic, Comic, Calm, and Shy generally increased with pitch in an arching shape that peaked at C5 and decreased at the highest pitches. The characteristics Angry and Sad generally decreased with pitch. Scary was somewhat U-shaped and especially strong in the extreme high register. In terms of dynamics, the results showed that Happy, Heroic, Comic, Angry, and Scary were stronger for loud notes, while Romantic, Calm, Shy, and Sad were stronger for soft notes. These results provide audio engineers and musicians with possible suggestions for emphasizing various emotional characteristics of the section strings in orchestral recordings and performances.