Genre-typical Timbre and the Urge to Move to Music

This study investigates how timbre, an important factor in music listening, influences the groove experience, one of the most important reactions to music. We selected six short popular music bass and drum patterns from the genres funk, pop, and rock and rendered them with three different genre-typical timbres (funk, pop, rock) each (18 stimuli). In an online listening experiment (N = 131), participants rated their experienced urge to move, pleasure, energetic arousal, time-related interest, and inner representation of temporal regularity in response to these stimuli. We found that the genre-typical timbres had only tiny effects on the experienced urge to move, which moreover varied by pattern. In contrast, acoustical measurements of two aspects of timbre, brightness and fullness, proved to be better predictors for the urge to move (R2m = .132). An analysis with the psychological model of groove revealed that aspects of timbre influence the urge to move directly, and via energetic arousal and time-related interest, but not via pleasure.