The influence of loudness and synchrony on pleasure during listening to the drumming section of a Brazilian Samba School쀀

Listening to the drumming section of a Brazilian samba school evokes positive emotions (happiness and power), physical sensations (goose bumps), and the desire to accompany the rhythms with movements and dance. This experience can be described as the feeling of being in “groove”. In this behavioral study we investigated the effects of synchrony between instruments and loudness of the drumming section of a Brazilian samba school on experienced pleasure and the desire to move or dance. 12 volunteers (mean age 31±7 years) who had varying musical experience listened to sound excerpts of the drumming section of a Brazilian samba school. These excerpts were either loud (95dB) or softer (85dB) and varied in the degree of synchrony between instruments (realized by delaying the entrance of the snare drums by 0, 28, 55, or 83ms). Furthermore, volunteers participated in a test on rhythmic and time perception abilities. Results showed that drumming stimuli that had high synchrony between instruments and that were louder were perceived as more pleasurable and evoked more desire to move/dance with the drumming sounds than stimuli that had less synchrony between instruments. Participants who had better rhythmic abilities were more sensitive to asynchronies between instruments in the drumming section of a samba school, reflected in their ratings about felt pleasure and their desire to move/dance with the drumming.