Syncopation, Body-Movement and Pleasure in Groove Music

Moving to music is an essential human pleasure particularly related to musical groove. Structurally, music associated with groove is often characterised by rhythmic complexity in the form of syncopation, frequently observed in musical styles such as funk, hip-hop and electronic dance music. Structural complexity has been related to positive affect in music more broadly, but the function of syncopation in eliciting pleasure and body-movement in groove is unknown. Here we report results from a web-based survey which investigated the relationship between syncopation and ratings of wanting to move and experienced pleasure. Participants heard funk drum-breaks with varying degrees of syncopation and audio entropy, and rated the extent to which the drum-breaks made them want to move and how much pleasure they experienced. While entropy was found to be a poor predictor of wanting to move and pleasure, the results showed that medium degrees of syncopation elicited the most desire to move and the most pleasure, particularly for participants who enjoy dancing to music. Hence, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between syncopation, body-movement and pleasure, and syncopation seems to be an important structural factor in embodied and affective responses to groove.随乐而动是人类一项核心的愉悦体验，尤其与音乐律动（groove）息息相关。从结构上看，与律动相关的音乐往往以切分音（syncopation）形式体现出节奏复杂性，这类特征常见于放克（funk）、嘻哈（hip-hop）以及电子舞曲（electronic dance music）等音乐风格中。整体而言，音乐的结构复杂性已被证实与积极情绪存在广泛关联，但切分音在律动引发愉悦感与肢体动作中所发挥的具体功能仍不明朗。本研究报道一项网络调查的结果，该调查旨在探究切分音与"想要随乐而动"的评分以及感知到的愉悦感之间的关联。受试者聆听了不同切分程度与音频熵（audio entropy）的放克鼓点片段（drum-breaks），并对这些鼓点片段促使其产生舞动欲望的程度以及自身感受到的愉悦感进行评分。研究发现，音频熵并非预测舞动欲望与愉悦感的有效指标，而结果显示，中等程度的切分音最能激发人们的舞动欲望与愉悦感，这一现象在喜爱随乐起舞的受试者中尤为显著。由此可见，切分音与肢体动作、愉悦感之间存在倒U型关联，切分音似乎是影响人们对律动产生具身反应与情绪响应的关键结构因素。