MMM - Music, Military, and MATLAB: Using

MATLAB to Analyze Sound Waves

Benjamin Hollar, Mitchell Isler, Brennan Thomas, Meghan Zuelke
Advisor: Nora Honken, PhD

Introduction Results
Music has the ability to evoke emotions in its listeners. This is done through an expression developed by the Power Power
Pace Expression Key Pace Expression Key
characteristics of the piece and is applied directly to national anthems. Anthems have been written as a Index1 Index
1
representation of a group of people and their culture. Part of a culture is the military prominence in a country,
Andorra 89.82 26.627 1 0
as there are countries that wish to be dominant and others that are of a pacifistic nature. From this knowledge, United 82.42 43.914 1 0.94
this study was conducted to answer the following question: States Canada 90.36 26.838 1 0
Are the characteristics of dynamics, tempo and key in a national anthem connected to the strength of the
military in that country? Russia 80.65 43.556 1 0.8 Costa 101.35 70.925 1 0
Rica
China 105.63 33.872 1 0.79
Literature Review Japan 50.84 57.044 0 0.72
Dominic
a
94.94 39.490 1 0

To almost anyone who listens to music, it may seem obvious that different musical features correspond to India 110.29 45.247 0 0.69 North 98.68 56.171 1 0
specific emotions in audiences; there is indeed a wealth of academic literature that supports this conclusion.
France 117.19 47.146 1 0.61 Korea
Researchers have determined that loudness and tempo are associated with feelings of excitement or piqued
interest,1 and the tonality of a piece of music can be used as an indicator of its mood.2 Dynamic variation of a Italy Grenada 82.42 25.705 1 0
113.64 70.408 1 0.52
piece correlates positively with perceived expression.4 Studies have also shown that the emotive properties of Haiti 111.94 33.231 1 0
South 68.18 43.931 1 0.52
a song may be independent of genre,3 cultures,5 age (largely),2 and even musical systems and traditions.5 It is
Korea Kiribati 90.36 24.120 1 0
therefore safe to say that music is able to communicate emotion on a broad scale.
A cultures most common music also has effects on the collective psychology of the time, and vice- United 178.57 68.936 1 0.5 Liechten 147.06 65.222 1 0
versa. Researchers have found that sociopolitical control by elites tends to lead to simpler, less embellished Kingdom stein
national anthems.6 Studies have also shown that the classical music of an era reflects the belief systems that Turkey 83.33 46.666 0 0.47 Palau 129.31 43.829 1 0
are prevalent in society.7 In an extreme case, countries suicide rates have been positively correlated with the
concentration of sad words and low notes in their national anthem.8 Music is thoroughly intertwined with the T Test (Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variances): Vatican 98.68 56.171 1 0
emotions of individuals and with the collective values of a society. Power Index and Key City
Minor Key Major Key
Linear Regression: Power Linear Regression: Power
Methods and Materials Mean 0.626667 0.26 Index and Pace Index and Expression
Observations 3 18 R Square 0.026523
A specific countrys military strength can be measured with an index representing the overall contributions R Square 0.026475
from both active personnel and available resources. For the top ten countries, the Credit Suisse Military df 7
Observations 21
Strength Indicator report was used as an index for military strength.11 The lowest ten countries were selected Observations 21
t Stat 3.209271
from a list of countries with functionally no active military.12 For statistical analysis, each strong country was F 0.517673
assigned its Credit Suisse index, while each weak country was assigned a value of zero. t Critical two-tail 2.364624 F 0.516711
The dynamics of a song are the changes in volume perceived by the listener. Dynamics can change
suddenly, usually to get or retain the listeners attention, but can also be more gradual to emulate the intended P-value 0.48
P(T<=t) two-tail 0.015 P-value 0.48
emotion of the song. Thus, using MATLAB, the audio file was converted to decibel (dB) magnitude, then
averaged for each 0.5 seconds to smooth the data. Using the smoothed data, the number of sudden shifts in The p-values for measures of pace and expression versus military strength are both too large to be considered
dynamics, as well as periods of gradual change were counted. To this count, the overall dynamic range -- the dB statistically significant, while the p-value for a T-test of military strength by key is 0.015, which is significant.
range from the loudest to the quietest point music -- was added in order to tabulate a score. The highest 33%
were evaluated as highly expressive, the middle 33% as moderately expressive, and the lowest third as
minimally expressive.
The tempo of a piece of music is a measure of the speed or motion of the piece at a specific time.
Measuring the exact marked tempo is neither helpful nor possible, however, because two songs marked at the
same tempo can have a different level of motion, depending on the division of notes and how often they
change. The code developed instead measured an arbitrary value that reflected the overall motion of the
song, using a beat detection algorithm.9

Equation 1. Conversion of Frequency to Note

The key is defined as major or minor based on the overall chord structure having either three of four half-
steps, respectively, between the root and the third of the chord. The key-determining code takes the top ten
frequencies played in each anthem and converts them to notes based on the half-steps from the reference
note, A, as shown in Equation 1. This was used to convert the notes to a number, 0 to 11, starting with A=0. Conclusions
The half-steps between the notes and the first note of the chord are calculated and analyzed to see if a chord
The only musical feature of a countrys national anthem that is a statistically significant indicator of the
can be created with those calculated half-steps. If needed, more frequencies are pulled from the anthem or
military strength of that country is the anthems key. As such, it remains unclear if a countrys militarism is related
notes are reordered to be able to create a chord, which can then be used to determine the key. to its national anthem. However, because all of the occurrences of minor keys were for countries with strong
militaries, it can be concluded that stronger countries anthems create more feelings of tension or irritation, as the
minor key indicates.

Future Research
Post-analysis included preliminary tests of musical features versus other national data including GDP,
population, and landmass. None of these comparisons yielded statistically significant results.
Future research would include taking the militarism of the country at the time the anthem was written or using
current interpretations of the anthem. It is predicted that taking data from the same time period would result in a
greater correlation between military might and the characteristics of an anthem that would create an emotion to
reflect a militaristic or pacifistic nature.

References
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7. Rejai, Mostafa, and Kay Phillips. "Classical Music and Political Psychology: A Research Note." Journal of Political & Military Sociology 29.1 (2001): 177. EbscoHost. Web. 22 Mar. 2017.
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9. D. Ellis (2007) Beat Tracking by Dynamic Programming J. New Music Research, Special Issue on Beat and Tempo Extraction, vol. 36 no. 1, March 2007, pp. 51-60. (10pp)
10. Suits, B. H. "Physics of Music - Notes." MTU Physics. Michigan Technological University, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <http://www.phy.mtu.edu/~suits/NoteFreqCalcs.html>.
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