# Help needed for research project: Counting notes



## crucius (Jul 2, 2015)

Hello all!

My first post here, and I have registered precisely because I wanted to ask your help to prepare a research project in psychology.

- What I need to do is this: Divide a classical piece (let's say 20 minutes long) into, for example, 4 5-minute parts. However, I need those parts to have both a similar duration and similar number of information (notes). Is this possible?

I am only now learning to play the violin so my musical knowledge is limited, thus I need your help!


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## Proms Fanatic (Nov 23, 2014)

Are you looking for a work with 4-5 distinct sections ie. Fast/slow, quiet/fast or is this irrelevant?

Maybe Chopin's Etudes might be what you are looking for - they are each a few minutes long and there are 27 to choose from.

If you're looking for one work that's similar all the way through - you might be able to chop the final movement of Mahler's 3rd Symphony into an arbitrary number of pieces to suit your needs.


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## crucius (Jul 2, 2015)

Thanks a lot! It's irrelevant them being slow or fast, quiet or loud. 

This is a study on time perception. Some people believe we find things slower when there are more information available to process, but with classical music an excess of information/long duration makes people get bored and thus alter by boredom their time perception. Thus, I would like to isolate these variables by having short but similar classical pieces. Your Chopin suggestion may solve my problem, actually!


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2015)

crucius said:


> with classical music an excess of information/long duration makes people get bored and thus alter by boredom their time perception.


You do realize you are talking to a bunch of classical fans, right? Who do not get bored with "an excess" of information or long duration.

I went to a live performance of Mahler's sixth many years ago with a couple of Mahler freaks. As we exited the hall, we looked at each other and our watches--we were pretty sure all of us that only about twenty minutes had passed. But that symphony takes upwards of ninety minutes to perform.

There's some "time perception" there for ya, in spades.

Plus, I went to hear a four hour performance of Feldman's second string quartet, which is around six hours long in its full version. Sure enough, I felt after it was over that what I had just heard was too short. Lovely and engaging and enjoyable, but too short. (N.B., this was the first time I had heard any of it.)

I think perhaps you could do yourself well to work on your perception of "people." They're not all the same, you know.


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## Proms Fanatic (Nov 23, 2014)

To be fair to the OP, it seems like the experiment is to try and see whether his hypothesis is true or not!

Another option for OP - some works in Classical music are written in the form of 'Theme and Variations". The first part of the piece is the theme - and then there are several (usually between 10-20) sections that follow which are variations on that theme. Popular examples include Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a theme of Paganini and Mozart's 12 variations on "a vous dirai-je maman" (more commonly known to English speakers as Twinkle Twinkle Little Star).


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## crucius (Jul 2, 2015)

Thanks! 

I am a huge fan of classical music but i'm not blind to those around me. I have been to many great classical music performances and some people clearly seem bored. That's exactly what I am trying to investigate. Is it the amount of information? The overall duration? Mood?


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## Proms Fanatic (Nov 23, 2014)

I guess it's hard to concentrate on anything for an extended period of time if you're not actively seeking involved. You'll probably know better than I do if there's any literature on how long people can focus for in meetings, lectures or any other environment where you just have to sit and listen.


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## Guest (Jul 3, 2015)

The boredom you perceive is a result of you interpreting certain actions. I say that as a reminder that you can't see boredom. You can see fidgeting and looking around the hall and drumming fingers and the like, which you interpret as "boredom."

Having said that, I rush on to point number two, which is that now that you have identified "people" as only being "some people," you may have answered your own question--that is, it's nothing in the music that's causing the behaviors you're observing and interpreting, it's the people. A person who does not particularly like classical music will likely be bored at a classical concert. But the converse is equally true. A person who does not particularly like pop music will likely be bored at a pop concert. And where, in the latter situation, is there an excess of information or of duration either one? But there's still that boredom thing, nonetheless.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

crucius said:


> Thanks!
> 
> I am a huge fan of classical music but i'm not blind to those around me. I have been to many great classical music performances and some people clearly seem bored. That's exactly what I am trying to investigate. Is it the amount of information? The overall duration? Mood?


If you are at a classical music concert, the bored people tend to be the million dollar folks who go see classical music in order to look cultured or educated. They couldn't tell you the difference between Haydn and R. Strauss in most cases.

I on the other hand have no fear straddling in flip flops and flipping on the six hour and something minute String Quartet No. 2 by Morton Feldman. And I never get bored of that piece. In fact, I heard it 3 times this year already.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

There now, crucius, some people have provided some anecdotes. You don't need to do any research!


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## papsrus (Oct 7, 2014)

crucius said:


> Thanks a lot! It's irrelevant them being slow or fast, quiet or loud.
> 
> This is a study on time perception. Some people believe *we find things slower when there are more information available to process, but with classical music an excess of information/long duration makes people get bored *and thus alter by boredom their time perception. Thus, I would like to isolate these variables by having short but similar classical pieces. Your Chopin suggestion may solve my problem, actually!


Hm. My gut reaction here is that you've got it backwards. People who become bored with classical music (or anything, for that matter) do so because they have a misperception that there is _too little_ information. You've heard the criticism: "It all sounds the same."

Even among classical music lovers, you hear the refrain that "it takes time" to fully apprehend a piece of music -- the nuances, the thematic developments, etc. These things are typically not apparent during a casual encounter with the music.

If I understand your hypothesis -- that processing more information tends to alter/slow down the perception of time -- this also sounds intuitively backwards to me. Time tends to fly by when people are busy / processing a lot of information. The perception of time dragging on tends to happen when one is idle, processing little information.

In any case, I'd guess that if you took a piece of classical music with X-number of notes, a piece of jazz with the same X-number of notes and a piece of Rock 'n' Roll with the same X-number of notes, you'd get different judgments about how quickly time was passing depending on whether the subject was a fan of classical, jazz or rock.

Thus, the amount of information has no bearing. The type of information does.

I'd guess.


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## Guest (Jul 4, 2015)

Nereffid said:


> There now, crucius, some people have provided some anecdotes. You don't need to do any research!


The anecdotes so far have been exemplum of the conclusions the tellers have drawn from having had experiences and thinking about them. The anecdotes are not the thing, the conclusions are. The anecdotes provide support for the conclusions.

As the conclusions question pretty thoroughly the premises of this project, they should probably be considered pretty carefully. And if, as we story-tellers have concluded, crucius is looking in the wrong place for his answers, then none of the answers he comes up with will be very satisfying. Looking in the right places, though, that could be most delightful, eh?


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