image: The music samples being composed.
Credit: Shimpei Ikegami
HONOLULU, Dec. 2, 2025 — Some music is for grooving: It evokes spontaneous dancing, like head bopping, jumping, or arm swinging. Other music is for swaying, or for crying, or for slow dancing. Music makes people move, but whether musicians intentionally induce specific movements with their compositions, such as vertical bouncing or horizontal swaying, or what musical features would contribute to these distinctions, is more complex.
Shimpei Ikegami, an associate professor at Showa Women’s University, sought to understand how musicians express intended bodily movement directions using specific acoustic features.
“It’s almost magical how something we hear with our ears can influence our entire body. In Japan, we even have terms to describe distinct rhythmic feelings to music,” Ikegami said.
Ikegami will present his musical results Tuesday, Dec. 2, at 2:55 p.m. HST as part of the Sixth Joint Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America and Acoustical Society of Japan, running Dec. 1-5 in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Four professional pop musicians composed short musical excerpts intended to elicit either “tate-nori” (vertical, up-and-down movement), “yoko-nori” (horizontal, side-to-side movement), or neither movement type.
Ikegami quantified the acoustic characteristics of the excerpts, measuring features such as loudness, beat clarity, rhythm complexity, and timbre. By comparing the prominence of features across intended-movement conditions, he found that vertical “bop” music was characterized by a clearer beat and percussive sounds, fueling listeners with the rush of high-energy workout songs. In contrast, horizontal “sway” excerpts were smoother and included less percussive sounds, creating a mellow and atmospheric musical impression. In a listener-rating experiment, participants heard each excerpt and rated the extent to which it made them feel like moving vertically and horizontally. Ikegami found that the listeners’ directional dancing inclinations matched the musicians’ intended expressions.
Ikegami’s findings suggest that the way musicians express certain qualities of danceability is specific and quantifiable. He aims to further explore commonalities and differences between musical profiles that induce vertical versus horizontal bodily movement.
“In the immediate future, I am investigating the psychological impressions — how the music is perceived by listeners. I am also deeply interested in cultural differences in these phenomena,” said Ikegami. “I believe that advancing my understanding of how music influences our body movements could be beneficial in fields such as health care, rehabilitation, and education.”
###
Main Meeting Website: https://acousticalsociety.org/honolulu-2025/
Technical Program: https://eppro02.ativ.me/web/planner.php?id=ASAASJ25
ASA PRESS ROOM
In the coming weeks, ASA’s Press Room will be updated with newsworthy stories and the press conference schedule at https://acoustics.org/asa-press-room/.
LAY LANGUAGE PAPERS
ASA will also share dozens of lay language papers about topics covered at the conference. Lay language papers are summaries (300-500 words) of presentations written by scientists for a general audience. They will be accompanied by photos, audio, and video. Learn more at https://acoustics.org/lay-language-papers/.
PRESS REGISTRATION
ASA will grant free registration to credentialed and professional freelance journalists. If you are a reporter and would like to attend the meeting and/or press conferences, contact AIP Media Services at media@aip.org. For urgent requests, AIP staff can also help with setting up interviews and obtaining images, sound clips, or background information.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
The Acoustical Society of America is the premier international scientific society in acoustics devoted to the science and technology of sound. Its 7,000 members worldwide represent a broad spectrum of the study of acoustics. ASA publications include The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (the world’s leading journal on acoustics), JASA Express Letters, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Acoustics Today magazine, books, and standards on acoustics. The society also holds two major scientific meetings each year. See https://acousticalsociety.org/.
ABOUT THE ACOUSTICAL SOCIETY OF JAPAN
ASJ publishes a monthly journal in Japanese, the Journal of the Acoustical Society of Japan, as well as a bimonthly journal in English, Acoustical Science and Technology, which is available online at no cost https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/ast. These journals include technical papers and review papers. Special issues are occasionally organized and published. The Society also publishes textbooks and reference books to promote acoustics associated with various topics. See https://acoustics.jp/en/.
###