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The widespread availability of digitized music collections and mobile music players have enabled us to listen to music during many of our daily activities, such as physical exercise, commuting, relaxation, and many people enjoy this. A practical problem that comes along with the wish to listen to music is that of music retrieval, the selection of desired music from a music collection. In this paper, we propose a new approach to facilitate music retrieval. Modern smart phones are commonly used as music players and are already equipped with inertial sensors that are suitable for obtaining motion information. In the proposed approach, emotion is derived automatically from arm gestures and is used to query a music collection. We derive predictive models for valence and arousal from empirical data, gathered in an experimental setup where inertial data recorded from arm movements are coupled to musical emotion. Part of the experiment is a preliminary study confirming that human subjects are generally capable of recognizing affect from arm gestures. Model validation in the main study confirmed the predictive capabilities of the models. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stream segregation or fission of the fast alternating tone sequence ABAB is known to occur if there is a sufficient frequency difference between the tones A and B. In this paper it will be shown that level difference instead of frequency difference can be sufficient to enable the occurrence of fission. The smallest level difference between A and B, ΔL?3 dB (2.5-10 tones per sec; tone duration 40 msec). At rates faster than 12 tones per sec a new perceptive phenomenon was observed: the roll effect. It is characterized by the weak tones being heard at double the tempo. The relation with the continuity effect is investigated using alternating sequences with both level and frequency difference between the tones as stimuli. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by John Bispam about the importance of musical rhythm to humans and another by Geoff Luck and Petri Toivianen about the gestures of a conductor

The study explored the effect of music on the temporal aspects of walking behavior in a real outdoor urban setting. First, spontaneous synchronization between the beat of the music and step tempo was explored. The effect of motivational and non-motivational music (Karageorghis et al., 1999) on the walking speed was also studied. Finally, we investigated whether music can mask the effects of visual aspects of the walking route environment, which involve fluctuation of walking speed as a response to particular environmental settings. In two experiments, we asked participants to walk around an urban route that was 1.8 km in length through various environments in the downtown area of Hradec Králové. In Experiment 1, the participants listened to a musical track consisting of world pop music with a clear beat. In Experiment 2, participants were walking either with motivational music, which had a fast tempo and a strong rhythm, or with non-motivational music, which was slower, nice music, but with no strong implication to movement. Musical beat, as well as the sonic character of the music listened to while walking, influenced walking speed but did not lead to precise synchronization. It was found that many subjects did not spontaneously synchronize with the beat of the music at all, and some subjects synchronized only part of the time. The fast, energetic music increases the speed of the walking tempo, while slower, relaxing music makes the walking tempo slower. Further, it was found that listening to music with headphones while walking can mask the influence of the surrounding environment to some extent. Both motivational music and non-motivational music had a larger effect than the world pop music from Experiment 1. Individual differences in responses to the music listened to while walking that were linked to extraversion and neuroticism were also observed. The findings described here could be useful in rhythmic stimulation for enhancing or recovering the features of movement performance.