This article reports a study in which listeners were asked to provide continuous
ratings of perceived emotional content of clinical music therapy improvisations.
Participants were presented with 20 short excerpts of music therapy improvisations,
and had to rate perceived activity, pleasantness and
strength using a computer-based slider interface. A total of nine musical
features relating to various aspects of the music (timing, register, dynamics,
tonality, pulse clarity and sensory dissonance) were extracted from the excerpts,
and relationships between these features and participants' emotion ratings were
investigated. The data were analysed in three stages. First, inter-dimension
correlations revealed that ratings of activity and pleasantness
were moderately negatively correlated, activity and strength were
strongly positively correlated, and strength and pleasantness
were moderately negatively correlated. Second, a series of cross-correlation
analyses revealed that the temporal lag between musical features and listeners'
dimension ratings differed across both variables and dimensions. Finally, a series
of linear regression analyses produced significant feature prediction models for
each of the three dimensions, accounting for 80 percent (activity), 57
percent (pleasantness ) and 84 percent (strength) of the variance
in participants' ratings. Activity was best predicted by high note density
and high pulse clarity, pleasantness by low note density and high tonal
clarity, and strength by high mean velocity and low note density. The
results are discussed in terms of their fit with other work reported in the music
psychology literature, and their relevance to clinical music therapy research and
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