i was wondering....

[Whale and Wasp]

i dont know if anyone can answer this question but....i was wondering....what makes, for example, a minor chord sound sad? i know its the minor 3rd, but what about that minor third makes your brain go "hey this is sad"? is it just because you grow up being told that this partucular interval sounds sad, so you believe it is sad? or is it because you hear it in sad songs? or is there some scientific reason about it? and this doesnt just apply to minor chords or scales or intervals, but major ones and everything else.....what MAKES you feel a certain emotion hen you hear it? if you spent the first 20 or so years of your life and you never heard music, and then you heard music, would it at first affect your emotional feelings?

just something i was wondering about :) thanks if anyone answers

[Trigger_003]

There are a lot of opinions on this - interesting of you to bring it up.

Well I don't really need to say this, but it's obviously a psychological response to what we hear. Mentally and emotionally, music effects us all, and it particularly addresses the limbic system (the part of the brain that deals with emotional responses to various occurances).

A guy called Meyer claimed the emotion one reaps from a musical excerpt is depicted on the music's comfirmations and violations of the listener's expectations (through both musical knowledge - particularly of that specific type of music - and the general perceptive psychological principles one holds), and this idea has been formalised by... someone, can't remember who.

The aspects that mainly depict our reactions are:
minor/major,
firm/flowing,
simple/complex,
dissonant/consonant,
loud/soft
and the speed of the piece.

Okay, example time.
If you lived in one country and everyone drove at 20 kph for a top speed, then you came over to Straya (hey Chris :wave: ) and saw guys driving down a road at 100kph that'd be like "Woah, that's insanely fast"... Whereas everyone else would look at you strangely and think "...no it's not?" simply because we're used to it.

In a similar fashion, you also know that if someone smiles, they're either happy or acting as if they are, and if they're sad, you know the kinds of facial expressions they'd have then too.
The difference is that you've known this since you were a child.

Several studies have shown that music works like other forms of non-verbal communication (such as through facial, vocal and bodily expressions); from the early developmental stages, a child's sensitivity to non-verbal emotional stimuli has become effective.

That said, whilst a subject will be able to state quite accurately "sad", "happy", "angry", and other such basic emotions, the results for a more indepth description vary quite immensely, and this has been put down somewhat to a person's experiences. For instance, subconciously, if we hear a piece music in a movie and we cry in that part, hearing the music, or a piece that resembles that music, several years later will create the same feeling we experienced in the cinema, even though we may not conciously connect the music to that particular sad scene within the film.

When hearing music, it could either be creating emotions for us (real emotions - right then and there), or representing them (relating them back to previous experiences via the form of music), and this is something that a lot of musicologists/psychologists/whatever are debating over. I don't know whether one or the other has been made definate or note yet.

Another thing you could take into consideration is the culture. Little has been done to research this across cultures, actually. In the minimal testing that has been done, quite a few pieces were seen by both cultures to invoke relatively similar emotions, but some didn't.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear what some of you guys think.

[Whale and Wasp]

There are a lot of opinions on this - interesting of you to bring it up.

Well I don't really need to say this, but it's obviously a psychological response to what we hear. Mentally and emotionally, music effects us all, and it particularly addresses the limbic system (the part of the brain that deals with emotional responses to various occurances).

A guy called Meyer claimed the emotion one reaps from a musical excerpt is depicted on the music's comfirmations and violations of the listener's expectations (through both musical knowledge - particularly of that specific type of music - and the general perceptive psychological principles one holds), and this idea has been formalised by... someone, can't remember who.

The aspects that mainly depict our reactions are:
minor/major,
firm/flowing,
simple/complex,
dissonant/consonant,
loud/soft
and the speed of the piece.

Okay, example time.
If you lived in one country and everyone drove at 20 kph for a top speed, then you came over to Straya (hey Chris :wave: ) and saw guys driving down a road at 100kph that'd be like "Woah, that's insanely fast"... Whereas everyone else would look at you strangely and think "...no it's not?" simply because we're used to it.

In a similar fashion, you also know that if someone smiles, they're either happy or acting as if they are, and if they're sad, you know the kinds of facial expressions they'd have then too.
The difference is that you've known this since you were a child.

Several studies have shown that music works like other forms of non-verbal communication (such as through facial, vocal and bodily expressions); from the early developmental stages, a child's sensitivity to non-verbal emotional stimuli has become effective.

That said, whilst a subject will be able to state quite accurately "sad", "happy", "angry", and other such basic emotions, the results for a more indepth description vary quite immensely, and this has been put down somewhat to a person's experiences. For instance, subconciously, if we hear a piece music in a movie and we cry in that part, hearing the music, or a piece that resembles that music, several years later will create the same feeling we experienced in the cinema, even though we may not conciously connect the music to that particular sad scene within the film.

When hearing music, it could either be creating emotions for us (real emotions - right then and there), or representing them (relating them back to previous experiences via the form of music), and this is something that a lot of musicologists/psychologists/whatever are debating over. I don't know whether one or the other has been made definate or note yet.

Another thing you could take into consideration is the culture. Little has been done to research this across cultures, actually. In the minimal testing that has been done, quite a few pieces were seen by both cultures to invoke relatively similar emotions, but some didn't.

Anyway, it'd be interesting to hear what some of you guys think.


woah, thanks :thumb: that was very interesting....


never struck me just how many experiences in your life there are to affect the way you hear music

[Trigger_003]

Yeah, it's pretty sweet stuff eh?

Anyone got any more input or discussion on this at all?

[mutant!]

I'm wondering if musical training (as in theory) changes one's emotional connection to music. For example, as I was reading your (Trigger's) post, I was listening to Muse's Unintended, which goes on a chord progression of I-iii-IV-I-IV-V/V-V-I. It's a sad kind of guitar picking song (no bass or drums, initially at least) with a slowish, soft vocal melody and slow harmonic movement (1 chord per bar at 90 bpm). So anyway, as I'm listening to this, the I-iii part has a very melancholy feel to me. This is strange, as one would imagine a progression starting on a minor chord and going to a major one (vi-IV, for example) would sound sadder - and usually does. So I'm wondering whether my knowledge of the typical harmonic movement associated with I-iii is causing this added emotion.

Also, I only recently "discovered" the use of chord iii, and this usually only in Chopin-type classical music, which I often find more melancholy. That have something to do with it?

I'm rambling. Pancakes.