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2013 Federation of European Psychophysiology Societies

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Article

Investigation of the Effect of Mode

and Tempo on Emotional Responses
to Music Using EEG Power
Asymmetry
Konstantinos Trochidis1 and Emmanuel Bigand2
1

McMaster University, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behavior, Hamilton, Canada,

2
University of Burgundy, Department of Cognitive Psychology, Dijon, France

Abstract. The combined interactions of mode and tempo on emotional responses to music were investigated using both self-reports and
electroencephalogram (EEG) activity. A musical excerpt was performed in three different modes and tempi. Participants rated the emotional
content of the resulting nine stimuli and their EEG activity was recorded. Musical modes influence the valence of emotion with major mode
being evaluated happier and more serene, than minor and locrian modes. In EEG frontal activity, major mode was associated with an increased
alpha activation in the left hemisphere compared to minor and locrian modes, which, in turn, induced increased activation in the right
hemisphere. The tempo modulates the arousal value of emotion with faster tempi associated with stronger feeling of happiness and anger and
this effect is associated in EEG with an increase of frontal activation in the left hemisphere. By contrast, slow tempo induced decreased frontal
activation in the left hemisphere. Some interactive effects were found between mode and tempo: An increase of tempo modulated the emotion
differently depending on the mode of the piece.
Keywords: music, emotion, EEG asymmetry, tempo, mode

The relation between tempo, mode, and emotional

responses during music listening has been the subject of
intensive investigation for decades (see Gabrielsson &
Lindstroem, 2010, for a review). In music, the mode designates a specific organization of pitch intervals. The most
important difference between major and minor mode rests
in the pitch interval that separates the first and the third tone
of the scale. In major mode this interval is major with
four semitones (C-E). In minor mode, this pitch interval
is reduced by three semitones (C-Eb). This difference in
pitch interval is small but it roughly corresponds to the size
of the interval bandwidth of auditory filter on the basilar
membrane. Minor thirds are more likely to stimulate the
same auditory filter, whereas major thirds stimulate two
separate filters. A minor third thus results in stronger roughness than a major third, and this contributes to explain the
difference in perceived emotion for both modes. Other differences in pitch interval are found between the first and the
sixth tones of the scale (C-A in major mode versus C-Ab in
minor mode) as well as between the first and the seventh
tones of the scale (C-B vs. C-Bb), all of them leading to
greater roughness in minor mode. The pioneering work of
Hevner (1935, 1937) demonstrated that both tempo and
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(3):142147
DOI: 10.1027/0269-8803/a000099

mode affect the emotional response to music. Short pieces

of tonal music were played in major or minor mode with
fast and slow tempi and listeners were instructed to mark
adjectives they found appropriate for each piece of music
with the help of clusters of adjectives. Faster tempi and
major mode were associated with happiness, whereas sadness was associated to slow tempi and minor mode. These
findings were replicated by Rigg (1940a, 1940b). Since
these pioneering works, numerous studies consistently confirmed that mode and tempo are reliable indicators of mood
(Peretz, Gagnon, & Bouchard, 1998). Even among 8-yearold children the major mode is associated with happiness
and joy, whereas minor mode is associated with sadness
(Dalla Bella, Peretz, Rouseau, & Gosselin, 2001).
Because mode and tempo refer to two different perceptual dimensions of musical stimuli (i.e., pitch and time
dimensions), a critical issue is to address whether both
effect on emotion combined in an additive or interactive
way. Scherer and Oshinski (1977) studied emotional
responses to musical excerpts with varying tempo and
mode of Beethoven melodies but no interaction effects
between tempo and mode were reported. Husain, Thompson, and Schellenberg (2002) investigated the effect of
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K. Trochidis & E. Bigand: Effect of Mode and Tempo on Musical Emotion

tempo and mode on arousal and mood. A Mozart sonata

was manipulated to produce four versions that varied both
in tempo and mode. The results show that tempo manipulation affected arousal but not mood, whereas mode
manipulation affected mood but not arousal. Furthermore,
musical excerpts that have fast or slow tempi were judged
to be happy or sad respectively. Gagnon and Peretz (2003)
confirm that both mode and tempo determine the happysad judgments but they reported that happy-sad conditions
were influenced more strongly by tempo than they were by
mode. Webster and Weir (2005) investigated systematically
the effect of tempo, mode, and texture on emotional
responses to music. They concluded that the effects of
mode, tempo, and texture were interactive in nature. Major
modes presented at fast tempi were positively valence,
whereas minor modes presented at slow tempi were negatively valence. Recently, Ramos, Bueno, and Bigand
(2011) studied the combined influence of seven modes
and three tempi on emotional responses to music. Musical
pieces were composed in the Ionian mode and then played
in the remaining six Greek modes without affecting the
melodic contour. The resulted musical excerpts were then
played at three different tempi. Some interactive effects
between tempo and mode were found but the effect of
the two parameters was mainly additive. The research
reported so far on the interaction between musical characteristics of mode and tempo provided contradictory results.
Most of the research on mode and tempo involved
behavioral measure (self-report, rating scales) but no physiological responses. Physiological responses, compared to
self-reports, provide unbiased responses and are able to
capture changes in emotions that would be undetected in
self-reports. Recently, Van der Zwaag, Westerink, and
Van den Broek (2011) studied the effect of tempo, mode,
and percussiveness on emotion using skin conductance
and cardiovascular responses. Fast tempo increases arousal
and tension, while mode evoked higher arousal compared
to major mode. This finding stands in contradiction with
existing research. They also found interdependencies of
musical features in affecting emotion. Percussiveness is
strengthening the influence of either mode or tempo on
the intensity of positive feelings. Fast tempo and major
mode music are both experienced more positively in combination with high percussiveness compared to low
percussiveness.
The effect of mode and tempo on emotional response to
music was rarely addressed with electroencephalogram
(EEG) measures. Davidson (1988) suggested that the left
frontal area is involved in the experience of positive emotions such as joy and happiness. In contrast, the right frontal
region is involved in the experience of negative emotions
such as fear, anger, and sadness. Using EEG measurements
Davidson, Eckman, Saron, Senulis, and Friegenn (1990)
found substantial evidence for the asymmetric frontal brain
activation in the alpha band power. Musical stimuli, which
were considered positive or negative in valence, elicited
asymmetric frontal EEG activity. Other EEG studies using
various sets of musical stimuli provided support for the
hemispheric specialization hypothesis for emotional
valence. Schmidt and Trainor (2001) investigated patterns
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143

of EEG activity induced by musical excerpts in a group

of undergraduates. They found greater left and right frontal
activity during music listening to pleasant and unpleasant
music. Furthermore, the overall power of frontal activity
distinguishes the intensity of musical emotion. In a related
vein, Tsang, Trainor, Santesso, Tasker, and Schmidt (2001)
showed that both fast tempo and major mode, behaviorally
associated with happiness, resulted in greater relative left
frontal activity, whereas slower tempo and minor mode
resulted in greater relative right frontal activation. This
valence lateralization model was however not confirmed
by an fMRI study of Khalfa, Schon, Anton, and LiegoisChauvel (2005), who found stronger left activation for
minor mode (sad excerpts). In addition, Green et al.
(2008) also reported increased activity in limbic structure
associated with major and minor mode manipulations.
The present study provides a further investigation of
mode and tempo. By contrast to previous research, the present study investigates the effect of three modes (major,
minor, locrian) and three tempi (slow, moderate, fast) on
emotional ratings and EEG responses. In the locrian mode,
the pitch interval between the first and the third tones of the
mode is minor (C-Eb), but the main feature of this mode is
to exhibit numerous dissonant pitch intervals. For instance,
the pitch interval between the first and the fifth tones of the
scale corresponds to a highly dissonant pitch interval of
three tones (C-Gb), in the locrian modes and to the perfect
fifth consonant interval in both major and minor modes. As
a consequence, the mood induced by the locrian mode
should slightly differ from the one induced by the minor
mode, and it was expected to be more strongly associated
to anger than to sadness. The manipulation of the three
tempi (instead of two) allows evaluating whether there is
a linear tendency in the effect of tempo (the faster the
tempo, the happier the experienced feeling). Finally, by
crossing the three modes and tempi provided a more powerful way to investigate whether mode and tempo combined
in additive or interactive way. The critical new point was to
assess how these subtle manipulations in pitch and time
structure would affect behavioral and EEG responses. Testing three modes allows us to further evaluate the lateralization model. According to this model both minor and locrian
modes should be associated with greater right frontal activity. Manipulating three tempi allows to further assess the
link between tempo and the power of the EEG reported
by Schmidt and Trainor (2001). Finally, we hypothesized
that physiological responses are more appropriate to capture
subtle interactive effects between mode and tempo that
were not clearly reflected in behavioral studies using selfreports or rating scale.

Methods
Participants
Sixteen nonmusicians (M = 26 years of age) were
recruited as participants (eight males and eight females).
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(3):142147

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K. Trochidis & E. Bigand: Effect of Mode and Tempo on Musical Emotion

They had no formal musical training and had never

learned to play a musical instrument. All participants
reported normal hearing and no medical history of neurological disease.

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Musical Stimuli
A musical piece of 36 s duration composed by a Brazilian
composer for the purpose of the study was used. The musical piece was played in three modes: Ionian (corresponding
to the major mode), Aeolian (corresponding to minor
mode), and Locrian mode. The selection of modes was
based on the difference between consonance and dissonance contents. Locrian mode can be classified as the most
dissonant mode because it is formed from a diminished
triad on the first note of the scale compared with minor,
which has a minor third and major which is the most consonant mode with a major third interval. Chord sequences
were performed in triads using traditional harmony rules,
and the melodic lines remind pleasant folk music from Brazil referred to as Choro. The musical notes were distributed
through the frequency range from 73.8 to 24.39 Hz. The
change of mode did not affect the melodic contour, the
rhythm, or the loudness of a piece. The three different mode
excerpts were played at three different tempi of 72 (slow),
100 (moderate), and 184 (fast) beats per minute. Thus, a
total of nine musical excerpts were used. The volume at
the average frequency of each stimulus was 50 db. A piano
timbre was chosen for the stimuli. Stimuli were recorded
using Encore 4 software (gvox, Princeton, NJ, USA) for
musicians, transformed into wave format synthesized in a
recording studio for better equalization.

Ethics Statement
Human subject data presented in this article have been
acquired under an experimental protocol approved by an
Institutional Review Board of University of Burgundy
University. Written consent was obtained from each
subject.

EEG Recording and Preprocessing

The EEGs were recorded with a Biosemi instrumentation
from four scalp locations: left and right mid-frontal (F3,
F4) and parietal (P3, P4). These sites represent the left
and right hemispheres and frontal and posterior regions of
the brain. After the measurements all electrodes were referenced to the central vertex (Cz). The data were bandpass
filtered between 1 Hz and 100 Hz and digitized at
512 Hz. Muscular and eye-blinking artifacts were rejected
off-line. Power spectrum analysis was performed using
Welchs method of spectral averaging. Artifact-free EEG
epochs were selected. Segment power spectra were computed via Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) and then averaged
to yield the mean power spectrum. Before FFT calculation,
data segments were windowed using a Hamming function
in order to reduce spectral leakage and zero padded to
obtain a spectral resolution of 0.448 Hz. Mean band power
values were calculated for each condition by averaging
power values across frequency bins. Power (microvoltssquared) was derived in the theta (48 Hz) and alpha (8
12 Hz) bands. On average, six epochs per participant
entered the grand average for each condition.

Procedure

Results

The nine stimuli were presented once to the participants

with an alternating and random order. Participants had to
rate each musical excerpt for each different mode and
tempo on a four 7-point rating scale according to four emotions namely happiness, anger, sadness, and serenity (with
seven corresponding to very happy, angry, sad, or serene,
and vice versa). Participants were asked to rate their experience with music and not the emotion expressed by the
music. Behavioral ratings were then averaged for each condition and participant. The EEGs were collected using a
Lycra stretch cap (Electro-Cap, Inc., Eaton, OH, USA) with
electrodes positioned according to the International 10/20
Electrode placement position. During the experiments participants sat comfortably in an acoustically isolated and
electrically shielded room. Music excerpts were presented
via loudspeakers using presentation software. Participants
were instructed to relax and listen carefully to the music
with eyes open during the whole experiment. To control
the attention of the participants, the subjects were instructed
to look at a cross in the screen while listening to the music.
The experiment was run at LEAD laboratory of the University of Burgundy.

Behavioral Data Analysis

Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(3):142147

Figure 1 summarizes the influence of the three modes and

three tempi on the four emotional rating scales. Not surprisingly, major modes received higher ratings on the happy
and serenity scales, whereas both minor and locrian modes
received higher ratings on the sad and anger rating scales.
Increasing the tempo led participants to report stronger feeling of happiness and anger, and lower feeling of serenity
and sadness. On the whole, the effect of mode and tempo
on emotional rating seems to combine in an additive way,
and only a few slight tendencies for interactive effect can
be observed. For instance, increasing the tempo from moderate to fast tended to result in stronger anger ratings for
locrian mode but a decrease for minor mode. A reverse tendency was found for the happy ratings between these
modes at these tempi. In order to investigate the mode
and tempo on the affective states, ANOVAs with a Greenhouse-Geisser correction were performed with mode and
tempo as within-subject factors for each rating scale separately. Major mode generated happier responses,
F(2, 24) = 21.913, p < .0001, and higher serenity,
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anger

happiness

sadness

serenity

145

Figure 1. Normalized emotional ratings for different modes and tempi.

EEG Data Analysis

Figure 2 summarizes the results of the analysis of EEG
responses. The results are interpreted in terms of brain activation, that is, alpha power asymmetry between left and
right hemisphere for each condition, with more negative
values indicating less alpha power and consequently more
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-3
Fast

log alpha power (mV )

F(2, 24) = 6.289, p < .01 compared to minor and locrian

modes. In contrast, minor and locrian modes induced stronger sadness, F(2, 24) = 36.826, p < .001, and anger,
F(2, 24) = 24.059, p < .001. Fast tempi increased happiness, F(2, 24) = 27.928, p < .0001 and anger ratings,
F(2, 24) = 6.626, p < .01, whereas slow tempi were associated with stronger sadness, F(2, 24) = 46.996, p < .0001,
and serenity, F(2, 24) = 28.691, p < .0001.
Finally, an interaction effect between mode and tempo
was found on happiness ratings, F(4, 48) = 3.493,
p < .01). An increase in tempo from slow to moderate
had a stronger effect on major than minor and locrian
modes. An increase of tempo from moderate to fast reinforced feelings of happiness for minor and major modes,
but not for locrian mode.

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K. Trochidis & E. Bigand: Effect of Mode and Tempo on Musical Emotion

Moderate

Slow

-4

left
right

-5

-6

-7

major minor locrian major minor locrian

major minor locrian

Figure 2. Alpha power in left and right frontal hemisphere regions for different mode and tempi conditions.
activation. The negative numbers are a result of the log
power transform.
A Mode (3) Tempi (3) Hemisphere (2) ANOVA
with mode, tempi, and hemisphere as within-subject factors
was performed on log (EEG) alpha power. The ANOVAs
were performed separately for theta (48 Hz) and alpha
(812 Hz) bands. In the theta band no significant main
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146

K. Trochidis & E. Bigand: Effect of Mode and Tempo on Musical Emotion

effects and interactions were observed. On the contrary, in

the alpha band significant correlates between different
mode and tempo conditions were found.
The ANOVA revealed a main effect of mode,
F(2, 12) = 12.191, p < .001, and a significant cross over
interaction between mode and hemisphere, F(2, 12) =
18.163, p < .001. In the left hemisphere, the alpha power
increased (i.e., brain activation diminished), when music
was played from major (happy) mode to minor (sad) and
locrian (sad-anger). A complete opposite finding is
observed in right hemisphere. There was no main effect
of hemisphere nor tempo, but a significant two-way interaction tempo-hemisphere, F(2, 12) = 5.838, p < .017. Specifically, an increase in tempo (fast tempo) induced increased
frontal activation in the left hemisphere, whereas a decrease
in tempo (slow tempo) induced decreased frontal activation
in the left hemisphere.

Discussion
In our study, emotional responses to music were measured
by means of both subjective self-reports and EEG frontal
activity. Behavioral data analysis confirmed the well-established effect of mode and tempo on the listeners emotional
responses (Gagnon & Peretz, 2003; Ramos et al., 2011;
Rigg, 1940b; Webster & Weir, 2005). The major mode
was more associated with positive emotions such as happiness and serenity than minor and locrian modes. By contrast, these modes induced stronger emotions of anger and
sadness. A new point was to compare minor and locrian
modes. Locrian is a minor mode, which induced stronger
dissonance than the minor mode. Locrian was more associated with anger than sadness by comparison to minor mode
but this difference remained small and did not reach statistical significance.
Beyond the effect of mode, tempo was found to modulate the emotional ratings, with faster tempi being more
associated with the emotions of anger and happiness as
opposed to slow tempi, which induced stronger feeling of
sadness and serenity. This suggests that the tempo modulates the arousal value of the emotions. A new point of
the study was to manipulate three values of tempi (slow,
moderate, fast). Our finding suggests that there is a linear
trend between tempo and the arousing values of the emotion: the faster the tempo, the stronger the arousal value
of the emotion. Given these main effects of mode and
tempo, it was of interest to assess their interaction. Pitch
and time have been proposed to be processed independently
at perceptual level (Peretz et al., 1998), but they may interact in a higher level determining the emotional response.
Our data provide some evidence for such interactive effects
between mode and tempo. It appears that tempo affects in
different ways happiness depending on the mode. Increases
in tempo rendered music happier when played in major
modes, and to a lesser extent in minor mode, but a reverse
tendency was found when the music was played in locrian
mode. The critical point of the study was to assess how
these effects of mode and tempi were expressed in EEG
Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(3):142147

frontal activity. Our findings are consistent with the valence

lateralization model (Davidson, 1988). According to this
model, conditions eliciting greater relative left EEG activity
are considered happy, whereas conditions eliciting greater
right EEG activity are considered sad. Strong brain activation asymmetries between left and right hemisphere were
found in the present experiment for different mode and
tempo conditions. Major mode elicited greater relative left
EEG activity compared to minor and locrian modes for all
tempi, but this effect was even more pronounced for faster
tempo. Minor and locrian modes elicited greater relative
right EEG activity compared to major mode, minor mode
appearing a little bit happier compared to locrian mode.
According to previous studies (Ramos et al., 2011), the
valence of musical emotion becomes more negative as
the darkness of the mode increases. The locrian mode is
the one considered to evoke the darkest sensation been
the most dissonant and therefore, appears to be sadder compared to minor mode. This effect was not captured by subjective ratings. Finally, an increase in tempo (fast tempo)
induced increased frontal activation in the left hemisphere,
whereas a decrease in tempo (slow tempo) induced
decreased frontal activation in the left hemisphere (Tsang
et al., 2001).
The results of the present study show that both selfreports and EEG changes confirm the main effects of mode
and tempo on emotional responses to music. Physiological
responses however appeared more appropriate to capture
subtle effect of mode (notably the difference between minor
and locrian modes) as well as interactive effects between
mode and tempo that were not clearly reflected in behavioral studies using self-reports.

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K. Trochidis & E. Bigand: Effect of Mode and Tempo on Musical Emotion

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Accepted for publication: April 18, 2013

Published online: July 22, 2013

Konstantinos Trochidis
Department of Psychology
Neuroscience and Behaviour
McMaster University
1280 Main Street West
Hamilton
Canada
E-mail Konstantinos.Trochidis@gmail.com

Journal of Psychophysiology 2013; Vol. 27(3):142147