Visual comparison of the improvisations of “ugly” and “beautiful” of an individual participant.

These correspond to the improvisations’ timeline appearing in S2 Fig and S1 and S2 Audio Files. (A) Histogram presentation of the octave number as percentage of the playing time. In “ugly”, the octave most used is no. 3, whereas for improvising “beautiful” it is octave no. 5. The histogram also shows that the higher pitch section of the keyboard was used for the latter. (B) Intensity histogram showing that “ugly” was played with more intensity than “beautiful”. Note that the ff (fortissimo) was the value most used in improvising the former but ppp (pianississimo) in the latter. (C) The pitch classes, as a percentage of playing time, showing that the black keys were preferable when improvising “ugly” and the white keys for “beautiful”; most notably the notes C and G.