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
characteristics of the piece and is applied directly to national anthems. Anthems have been written as a Pace Expression Key Pace Expression Key
Index11 Index
representation of a group of people and their culture. Part of a culture is the military prominence in a country,
as there are countries that wish to be dominant and others that are of a pacifistic nature. From this knowledge, United States 82.42 43.91 1 0.94 Andorra 89.82 26.63 1 0
this study was conducted to answer the following question:
Are the characteristics of dynamics, tempo and key in a national anthem connected to the strength of the Russia 80.65 43.56 1 0.80 Canada 90.36 26.84 1 0
military in that country?
China 105.63 33.87 1 0.79 Costa Rica 101.35 70.93 1 0

Literature Review Japan 50.85 57.04 0 0.72 Dominica 94.93 39.49 1 0

India 110.29 45.25 0 0.69 North Korea 98.68 56.17 1 0
To almost anyone who listens to music, it may seem obvious that different musical features correspond to
specific emotions in audiences; there is indeed a wealth of academic literature that supports this conclusion. France 117.19 47.15 1 0.61 Grenada 82.42 25.71 1 0
Researchers have determined that loudness and tempo are associated with feelings of excitement or piqued
Italy 113.64 70.41 1 0.52 Haiti 111.94 33.23 1 0
interest,1 and the tonality of a piece of music can be used as an indicator of its mood.2 Dynamic variation of a
piece correlates positively with perceived expression.4 Studies have also shown that the emotive properties of South Korea 68.18 43.93 1 0.52 Kiribati 90.36 24.12 1 0
a song may be independent of genre,3 cultures,5 age (largely),2 and even musical systems and traditions.5 It is
UnitedKingdom 178.57 68.94 1 0.50 Liechtenstein 147.06 65.22 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- Turkey 83.33 46.67 0 0.47 Palau 129.31 43.83 1 0
versa. Researchers have found that sociopolitical control by elites tends to lead to simpler, less embellished
Vatican City 98.68 56.17 1 0
national anthems.6 Studies have also shown that the classical music of an era reflects the belief systems that
are prevalent in society.7 In an extreme case, countries suicide rates have been positively correlated with the t- Test (Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variances):
concentration of sad words and low notes in their national anthem.8 Music is thoroughly intertwined with the Power Index and Key
emotions of individuals and with the collective values of a society.
Minor Key Major Key
Linear Regression: Linear Regression: Power
Mean 0.63 0.26
Methods and Materials Observations 3 18
Power Index and Pace Index and Expression

A specific countrys military strength can be measured with an index representing the overall contributions R Square 0.026 R Square 0.026
from both active personnel and available resources. For the top ten countries, the Credit Suisse Military df 7
Observations 21 Observations 21
Strength Indicator report was used as an index for military strength.11 The lowest ten countries were selected t Stat 3.209
from a list of countries with functionally no active military.12 For statistical analysis, each strong country was F 0.518 F 0.517
assigned its Credit Suisse index, while each country with no military was assigned a value of zero. t Critical two-tail 2.365
The dynamics of a song are the changes in volume perceived by the listener. Dynamics can change P-value 0.48 P-value 0.48
suddenly, usually to get or retain the listeners attention, but can also be more gradual to emulate the intended P(T<=t) two-tail 0.015
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
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.
The half-steps between the notes and the first note of the chord were calculated and analyzed to see if a chord
could be created with those calculated half-steps. If needed, more frequencies were pulled from the anthem or
notes were reordered to create a chord, which was then be used to determine the key.

Equation 1. Conversion of Frequency to Note10

Conclusions
The only musical feature of a countrys national anthem that is a statistically significant indicator of the
military strength of that country is the anthems key. As such, it remains unclear if a countrys militarism is related
to its national anthem. However, because all of the occurrences of minor keys were for countries with strong
militaries, it can be concluded that on average anthems from countries with stronger military power 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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