Stephen Mcadam
Biographic Data
| ID | 796739 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen Mcadam |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen |
| FAMILY NAME | Mcadam |
| SIGNATURE | MCADAM S |
| AFFILIATIONS | McGill University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6744-9035 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 28 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 157 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1987 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Continuous Response to Perceived Affective Intentions in Music Listening
Perception of affective intentions in music is a complex, yet commonplace, phenomenon that is influenced by listeners’ experience with different musical traditions and the style of the music. This study explores the continuous responses of listeners to a piece of Chinese orchestral music and how their musical backgrounds influence affective responses, as well as the acoustic and musical features used in the perception of affective intentions. Thr…
Instrument Timbre Combinations Influence the Relative Prominence of Perceptual Layers in Orchestral Music
The stratification of layers of differing prominence (foreground/background) is a common technique in orchestration. Musicians heard 23 excerpts containing foreground and background layers as previously determined by music analysts. A given layer comprised either a single auditory stream of one or more blended instruments or a harmonic or rhythmic background. Two-layer excerpts had either the same, overlapping, or different instrument families (t…
Perceived and Induced Affective Responses to Musical Sounds
Local features of instrument family and pitch register can influence the affect a music listener perceives and feels. We investigate the effect of those features on perceived and induced affect in response to single tones (Experiment 1) and chromatic scales (Experiment 2) and explore the moderating effect of individual differences. In two online experiments, participants (N1 = 263; N2 = 152) rated their affective response on dimensional (valence,…
The function of timbre in the perception of affective intentions
Timbre has been identified as a potential component in the communication of affect in music. Although its function as a carrier of perceptually useful information about sound source mechanics has been established, less is understood about whether and how it functions as a carrier of information for communicating affect in music. To investigate these issues, listeners trained in Chinese and Western musical traditions were presented with Phrases, M…
Albert S. Bregman (1936–2023)
Research Article| September 01 2023 Albert S. Bregman (1936–2023) Stephen McAdams Stephen McAdams McGill University, Montreal, Canada This piece was written by Stephen McAdams, with thoughts taken from Susan Pinker, Howard Steiger, Don Donderi, and Norman White. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Music Perception (2023) 41 (1): 74–75. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2023.41.1.74 Views Icon Views Article contents …
A Taxonomy of Orchestral Grouping Effects Derived from Principles of Auditory Perception
The study of timbre and orchestration in symphonic music research is underexplored, and few theories attempt to explain strategies for combining and contrasting instruments and the resulting perception of orchestral structures and textures. An analysis of orchestration treatises and musical scores reveals an implicit understanding of auditory grouping principles by which many orchestration techniques give rise to predictable perceptual effects. W…
Instrument Timbre Enhances Perceptual Segregation in Orchestral Music
Timbre perception and auditory grouping principles can provide a theoretical basis for aspects of orchestration. In Experiment 1, 36 excerpts contained two streams and 12 contained one stream as determined by music analysts. Streams—the perceptual connecting of successive events—comprised either single instruments or blended combinations of instruments from the same or different families. Musicians and nonmusicians rated the degree of segregation…
Semantic Dimensions of Sound Mass Music
We combine perceptual research and acoustic analysis to probe the messy, pluralistic world of musical semantics, focusing on sound mass music. Composers and scholars describe sound mass with many semantic associations. We designed an experiment to evaluate to what extent these associations are experienced by other listeners. Thirty-eight participants heard 40 excerpts of sound mass music and related contemporary genres and rated them along batter…
Sound mass, auditory perception, and ‘post-tone’ music
The term ‘post-tonal’ embodies a broad distinction between musical explorations of new combinations of tones (‘post-tonality’) and explorations of sonic resources other than tones (‘post-tone’). A significant turning-point in post-tone thinking occurred when some composers replaced notes with masses of notes, or sound masses, as musical units. Existing definitions of sound mass are reviewed and a new definition drawing on empirical evidence is of…
Learning metrics on spectrotemporal modulations reveals the perception of musical instrument timbre
Exploring emotional responses to orchestral gestures
Research on emotional responses to music indicates that prominent changes in instrumentation and timbre elicit strong responses in listeners. However, there are few theories related to orchestration that would assist in interpreting these empirical findings. This article investigates listeners’ emotional responses to four types of orchestral gestures – large-scale timbral and textural changes that occur in a coordinated, goal-directed manner – th…
Acoustical correlates of perceptual blend in timbre dyads and triads
Achieving a blended timbre for particular combinations of instruments, pitches, and articulations is a common aim of orchestration. This involves a set of factors that this study jointly assesses by correlating the perceptual degree of blend with the underlying acoustical characteristics. Perceptual blend ratings from two experiments were considered, with the stimuli consisting of: 1) dyads of wind instruments at unison and minor-third intervals …
Simulating melodic and harmonic expectations for tonal cadences using probabilistic models
This study examines how the mind’s predictive mechanisms contribute to the perception of cadential closure during music listening. Using the Information Dynamics of Music model (or IDyOM) to simulate the formation of schematic expectations—a finite-context (or n-gram) model that predicts the next event in a musical stimulus by acquiring knowledge through unsupervised statistical learning of sequential structure—we predict the terminal melodic and…
Koechlin’s volume
Charles Koechlin’s Traité de l’orchestration ascribes different dimensions to timbre than those usually discussed in multidimensional scaling studies: “volume” or grosseur, related to extensity (the sound’s perceived size), and intensity, related to loudness. Koechlin also provides volume rankings for orchestral instruments in different registers. Studies show that humans, as well as several animal species, perceive extensity for many sound sourc…
A Comparison of Approaches to Timbre Descriptors in Music Information Retrieval and Music Psychology
A curious divide characterizes the usage of audio descriptors for timbre research in music information research (MIR) and music psychology. While MIR uses a multitude of audio descriptors for tasks such as automatic instrument classification, only a highly constrained set is used to describe the physical correlates of timbre perception in parts of music psychology. We argue that this gap is not coincidental and results from the differences in the…
News, Politics, and Negativity
Work in political communication has discussed the ongoing predominance of negativenews, but has offered few convincing accounts for this focus. A growing body of literatureshows that humans regularly pay more attention to negative information thanto positive information, however. This article argues that we should view the natureof news content in part as a consequence of this asymmetry bias observed in humanbehavior. A psychophysiological experi…
Musique et émotion
Cet article prend pour prétexte une expérimentation menée en 2011 par une ethnomusicologue et une équipe de psychologues de la musique pour évoquer les problématiques reliées au travail interdisciplinaire. Le sujet qui fait l'objet de la recherche concerne les émotions évoquées par la musique en lien avec l'expressivité de la musique. L'hypothèse qui motive ce travail est l'existence éventuelle d'universaux musicaux en relation avec la significat…
Comparison of Methods for Collecting and Modeling Dissimilarity Data
Sorting procedures are frequently adopted as an alternative to dissimilarity ratings to measure the dissimilarity of large sets of stimuli in a comparatively short time. However, systematic empirical research on the consequences of this experiment-design choice is lacking. We carried out a behavioral experiment to assess the extent to which sorting procedures compare to dissimilarity ratings in terms of efficiency, reliability, and accuracy, and …
Improved Score-performance Matching Using Both Structural and Temporal Information from MIDI Recordings
Automated score-performance matching is a complex problem due to the use of expressive timing by performers and the presence of notes that are unspecified in the score, such as performance errors and ornaments. Automated matchers typically use performance data extracted from MIDI recordings. For the most part, these algorithms use structural information, such as pitch and chronological succession, but do not use timing information. As a result, m…
Psychology of music
Acoustics, psychoacoustics and spectral music
The aim of this article is to examine the points at which acoustics, psychoacousticsand what has been called 'spectral music" meet. The motivationsbehind this bringing together of three more or less barbaric wordsare to be found in the principle of the spectral approach itself.[...]
Perception et agnosies
cote interne IRCAM: Botte95a
The Fusion and Layering of Noise and Tone
Since their earliest explorations of African music, Western researchers have noted a fascination on the part of traditional musicians for noise as a timbral element.The authors present the results of perceptual and acoustic investigations of the fusion and "layeringn of noise and tone.These results have implications for pitch and timbre in both traditional and non-traditional, acoustic and synthesized music.The results define possible perceptual …
La Musique et les sciences cognitives
Dichotic perception and laterality in neonates
News, Politics, and Negativity
Work in political communication has discussed the ongoing predominance of negativenews, but has offered few convincing accounts for this focus. A growing body of literatureshows that humans regularly pay more attention to negative information thanto positive information, however. This article argues that we should view the natureof news content in part as a consequence of this asymmetry bias observed in humanbehavior. A psychophysiological experi…
Music
There is an increasing interest in psychological studies of music for the advancement of both musical and scientific thought. An historical perspective of psychological considerations of music reveals a trend leading from physical thought through theories of sensation and finally up to modern cognitive psychology. What might truly be called the field of music psychology can be shown to exist by an overview of the domains of research covered by co…
Psychological constraints on form-bearing dimensions in music
In raising the question of form-bearing dimensions in music, we are trying to understand the possibilities and limits of the apprehension of musical form in terms of the psychological mechanisms that operate on a received acoustic structure. To approach this understanding theoretically and experimentally, we need to define the notion of form-bearing dimension and to develop some ideas of the interactions that take place between perceptual process…
A Taxonomy of Orchestral Grouping Effects Derived from Principles of Auditory Perception
The study of timbre and orchestration in symphonic music research is underexplored, and few theories attempt to explain strategies for combining and contrasting instruments and the resulting perception of orchestral structures and textures. An analysis of orchestration treatises and musical scores reveals an implicit understanding of auditory grouping principles by which many orchestration techniques give rise to predictable perceptual effects. W…
Improved Score-performance Matching Using Both Structural and Temporal Information from MIDI Recordings
Automated score-performance matching is a complex problem due to the use of expressive timing by performers and the presence of notes that are unspecified in the score, such as performance errors and ornaments. Automated matchers typically use performance data extracted from MIDI recordings. For the most part, these algorithms use structural information, such as pitch and chronological succession, but do not use timing information. As a result, m…
Music
There is an increasing interest in psychological studies of music for the advancement of both musical and scientific thought. An historical perspective of psychological considerations of music reveals a trend leading from physical thought through theories of sensation and finally up to modern cognitive psychology. What might truly be called the field of music psychology can be shown to exist by an overview of the domains of research covered by co…
Dichotic perception and laterality in neonates
Introduction
The presentations at the Symposium on Music and the Cognitive Sciences covered a vast array of approaches and aims from disciplines such as music composition, musicology, music theory, music analysis, experimental psychology, neuropsychology, mathematics, and computer science. These different approaches are briefly described. A plethora of fundamental concerns were raised across these disciplines. Those discussed in this chapter include the perce…
Psychological constraints on form-bearing dimensions in music
In raising the question of form-bearing dimensions in music, we are trying to understand the possibilities and limits of the apprehension of musical form in terms of the psychological mechanisms that operate on a received acoustic structure. To approach this understanding theoretically and experimentally, we need to define the notion of form-bearing dimension and to develop some ideas of the interactions that take place between perceptual process…
La Musique et les sciences cognitives
The Fusion and Layering of Noise and Tone
Since their earliest explorations of African music, Western researchers have noted a fascination on the part of traditional musicians for noise as a timbral element.The authors present the results of perceptual and acoustic investigations of the fusion and "layeringn of noise and tone.These results have implications for pitch and timbre in both traditional and non-traditional, acoustic and synthesized music.The results define possible perceptual …
Perception et agnosies
cote interne IRCAM: Botte95a
Acoustics, psychoacoustics and spectral music
The aim of this article is to examine the points at which acoustics, psychoacousticsand what has been called 'spectral music" meet. The motivationsbehind this bringing together of three more or less barbaric wordsare to be found in the principle of the spectral approach itself.[...]
Psychology of music
Comparison of Methods for Collecting and Modeling Dissimilarity Data
Sorting procedures are frequently adopted as an alternative to dissimilarity ratings to measure the dissimilarity of large sets of stimuli in a comparatively short time. However, systematic empirical research on the consequences of this experiment-design choice is lacking. We carried out a behavioral experiment to assess the extent to which sorting procedures compare to dissimilarity ratings in terms of efficiency, reliability, and accuracy, and …
Improved Score-performance Matching Using Both Structural and Temporal Information from MIDI Recordings
Automated score-performance matching is a complex problem due to the use of expressive timing by performers and the presence of notes that are unspecified in the score, such as performance errors and ornaments. Automated matchers typically use performance data extracted from MIDI recordings. For the most part, these algorithms use structural information, such as pitch and chronological succession, but do not use timing information. As a result, m…
Musique et émotion
Cet article prend pour prétexte une expérimentation menée en 2011 par une ethnomusicologue et une équipe de psychologues de la musique pour évoquer les problématiques reliées au travail interdisciplinaire. Le sujet qui fait l'objet de la recherche concerne les émotions évoquées par la musique en lien avec l'expressivité de la musique. L'hypothèse qui motive ce travail est l'existence éventuelle d'universaux musicaux en relation avec la significat…
News, Politics, and Negativity
Work in political communication has discussed the ongoing predominance of negativenews, but has offered few convincing accounts for this focus. A growing body of literatureshows that humans regularly pay more attention to negative information thanto positive information, however. This article argues that we should view the natureof news content in part as a consequence of this asymmetry bias observed in humanbehavior. A psychophysiological experi…
A Comparison of Approaches to Timbre Descriptors in Music Information Retrieval and Music Psychology
A curious divide characterizes the usage of audio descriptors for timbre research in music information research (MIR) and music psychology. While MIR uses a multitude of audio descriptors for tasks such as automatic instrument classification, only a highly constrained set is used to describe the physical correlates of timbre perception in parts of music psychology. We argue that this gap is not coincidental and results from the differences in the…
Koechlin’s volume
Charles Koechlin’s Traité de l’orchestration ascribes different dimensions to timbre than those usually discussed in multidimensional scaling studies: “volume” or grosseur, related to extensity (the sound’s perceived size), and intensity, related to loudness. Koechlin also provides volume rankings for orchestral instruments in different registers. Studies show that humans, as well as several animal species, perceive extensity for many sound sourc…
Simulating melodic and harmonic expectations for tonal cadences using probabilistic models
This study examines how the mind’s predictive mechanisms contribute to the perception of cadential closure during music listening. Using the Information Dynamics of Music model (or IDyOM) to simulate the formation of schematic expectations—a finite-context (or n-gram) model that predicts the next event in a musical stimulus by acquiring knowledge through unsupervised statistical learning of sequential structure—we predict the terminal melodic and…
Exploring emotional responses to orchestral gestures
Research on emotional responses to music indicates that prominent changes in instrumentation and timbre elicit strong responses in listeners. However, there are few theories related to orchestration that would assist in interpreting these empirical findings. This article investigates listeners’ emotional responses to four types of orchestral gestures – large-scale timbral and textural changes that occur in a coordinated, goal-directed manner – th…
Acoustical correlates of perceptual blend in timbre dyads and triads
Achieving a blended timbre for particular combinations of instruments, pitches, and articulations is a common aim of orchestration. This involves a set of factors that this study jointly assesses by correlating the perceptual degree of blend with the underlying acoustical characteristics. Perceptual blend ratings from two experiments were considered, with the stimuli consisting of: 1) dyads of wind instruments at unison and minor-third intervals …
Semantic Dimensions of Sound Mass Music
We combine perceptual research and acoustic analysis to probe the messy, pluralistic world of musical semantics, focusing on sound mass music. Composers and scholars describe sound mass with many semantic associations. We designed an experiment to evaluate to what extent these associations are experienced by other listeners. Thirty-eight participants heard 40 excerpts of sound mass music and related contemporary genres and rated them along batter…
Sound mass, auditory perception, and ‘post-tone’ music
The term ‘post-tonal’ embodies a broad distinction between musical explorations of new combinations of tones (‘post-tonality’) and explorations of sonic resources other than tones (‘post-tone’). A significant turning-point in post-tone thinking occurred when some composers replaced notes with masses of notes, or sound masses, as musical units. Existing definitions of sound mass are reviewed and a new definition drawing on empirical evidence is of…
Learning metrics on spectrotemporal modulations reveals the perception of musical instrument timbre
Instrument Timbre Enhances Perceptual Segregation in Orchestral Music
Timbre perception and auditory grouping principles can provide a theoretical basis for aspects of orchestration. In Experiment 1, 36 excerpts contained two streams and 12 contained one stream as determined by music analysts. Streams—the perceptual connecting of successive events—comprised either single instruments or blended combinations of instruments from the same or different families. Musicians and nonmusicians rated the degree of segregation…
A Taxonomy of Orchestral Grouping Effects Derived from Principles of Auditory Perception
The study of timbre and orchestration in symphonic music research is underexplored, and few theories attempt to explain strategies for combining and contrasting instruments and the resulting perception of orchestral structures and textures. An analysis of orchestration treatises and musical scores reveals an implicit understanding of auditory grouping principles by which many orchestration techniques give rise to predictable perceptual effects. W…
Albert S. Bregman (1936–2023)
Research Article| September 01 2023 Albert S. Bregman (1936–2023) Stephen McAdams Stephen McAdams McGill University, Montreal, Canada This piece was written by Stephen McAdams, with thoughts taken from Susan Pinker, Howard Steiger, Don Donderi, and Norman White. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Music Perception (2023) 41 (1): 74–75. https://doi.org/10.1525/mp.2023.41.1.74 Views Icon Views Article contents …
The function of timbre in the perception of affective intentions
Timbre has been identified as a potential component in the communication of affect in music. Although its function as a carrier of perceptually useful information about sound source mechanics has been established, less is understood about whether and how it functions as a carrier of information for communicating affect in music. To investigate these issues, listeners trained in Chinese and Western musical traditions were presented with Phrases, M…
Neuroscience and Music Perception (25 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Art (18 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Music and Audio Processing (14 works) · Musical (14 works) · Perception (14 works) · Visual arts (12 works) · Cognitive psychology (11 works) · Music Technology and Sound Studies (11 works)