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Vassilakis, P.N. and Kendall, R.A. (2008a).  Auditory roughness profiles and musical tension/release patterns in a Bosnian ganga song.  J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 124(4/2): 2448 (presented at the 156th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Miami, FL).

Abstract
  
Within western musical tradition, auditory roughness constitutes one of the perceptual correlates of dissonance. In a previous study [Vassilakis PN (2006), "The worlds of music: culture-dependent emotional reactions to an improvisation on the mijwiz," Proceedings of the 51stSEM: 197, University of Hawai’i, Manoa], an application that calculates roughness profiles of musical pieces [Vassilakis PN (2006), "SRA: An online tool for Spectral and Roughness Analysis of sound signals," J.Acoust.Soc.Am., 120(5/2):3677], based on a previously published roughness calculation model [Vassilakis PN (2005), "Auditory roughness as means of musical expression," Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, 12:119-144], was used to examine if and how tension/release patterns within a stylized improvisation on the Middle Eastern mijwiz relate to auditory roughness changes. An extension of that study, the present experiment examines the relationship between roughness and tension/release patterns in a Bosnian ganga song. Patterns were obtained by a Bosnian ganga singer/scholar and by American-raised musicians in a perceptual experiment. Similarly to the mijwiz study, cultural background differences were associated with tension/release judgment differences as well as with differences between tension/release patterns and auditory roughness time profiles. The results provide further evidence that the concepts of musical tension and release and their relationship to auditory roughness are culture-specific.