Unraveling the Mystery of How Music Evokes Emotions

[Avichal]

Why music causes emotions in our mind? They are just sound waves interpreted by our brain? But what causes it to trigger emotions? Do scientists have an answer for this yet?

 

[Evo]

Why music causes emotions in our mind? They are just sound waves interpreted by our brain? But what causes it to trigger emotions? Do scientists have an answer for this yet?

The words can be sad and/or evoke unhappy memories or thoughts.

 

[Adyssa]

It has to be much deeper than that. Most of the music I listen to doesn't have words or even a vocalist, and it affects me deeply. I don't think much when I listen, my mind goes blank, I just soak up the sounds, it's a visceral experience. Music is a wonderful thing, I would love to know more about why humans love it so much, but at the same time, I kind of enjoy the mystery!

 

[Avichal]

I too mostly listen to songs with no words. I was curious to know why it affects me deeply. I googled a bit but found nothing informative.
I suppose its still a mystery

 

[ImaLooser]

Why music causes emotions in our mind? They are just sound waves interpreted by our brain? But what causes it to trigger emotions? Do scientists have an answer for this yet?

A mystery.

 

[Avichal]

I was pretty optimistic to find the answer here on PF

 

[Evo]

Try this.

http://intl-scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/3/235.full

 

[Pythagorean]

I saw a presentation by a neuroscience professor who studies the neuroscience of music (don't remember the name or the venue now) and his (speculative) suggestion was that music was about expectation. Often, when our expectations are met in a timely manner, we are satisfied. A musical rhythm gives you an opportunity at every measure to have your expectations met in the short term.

An anecdote: my 18-month-old can't help but dance every time music comes on. She can happily step back and forth to the beat, knowing it will come every time. If the beat suddenly doesn't come... she will sometimes throw a fit.

But it becomes more complicated when considering lyrics, and sounds typical in your culture. An older blues musicians once told me there's only two beats in blues: the horse-gallop and the train-chug: two rhythmic sounds that were typical in early America (where blues was born). I notice that Celtic music has the constant thump thump thump, like an armorer hammering an anvil.

Of course, this is all speculative, and while I think the neuroscience is interesting, I think it has a lot more to do with psychology and sociology than neuroscience since it's such an emergent phenomena.

 

[256bits]

Quite a lot of reseach into the topic
One site:
http://www.zlab.mcgill.ca/supplements/emotion_and_music.html

and a course
http://csml.som.ohio-state.edu/Music829D/music829D.html
with an extebsive bibliography ( but nolinks sorry )

 

[glb_lub]

I saw a presentation by a neuroscience professor who studies the neuroscience of music (don't remember the name or the venue now) and his (speculative) suggestion was that music was about expectation. Often, when our expectations are met in a timely manner, we are satisfied.

Does the expectation factor explain why certain piece of music has a tendency to 'grow' on one ?

Often one hears a piece of music and it doesn't quite impress one. But on repeated hearings one tends to enjoy it.

 

[Adyssa]

I like the expectation argument. However, some music doesn't adhere to popular song structure, and deliberately works against the listener's expectations. The freer forms of jazz, for example, or ambient music without any rhythmic frame of reference. I enjoy stretching my ears a bit and I listen to some fairly off the wall sounding stuff but I definitely consider it to be music and the enjoyment comes from allowing whatever happens to happen. You might find yourself listening to something very pleasing, and you roll with it and your ears are delighted and then it all turns to cavernous darkness, a clanging cacophony, jarring and unpredictable sounds, and these eventually move into another more pleasing arrangement. You can't have any expectations, you just have to see where it goes. Perhaps after repeated listens you begin to appreciate a grander structure, but that first experience is not always unpleasant, on the contrary - it can be the best thing you hear that week!

I find this similar to why I think the happy people I know, are happy. They just live in the moment. Nice things happen. They enjoy them. Unexpected frustrations dash their plans. No matter, just sort things out, frustrations pass. Moments of sadness and despair. Use them to highlight past happiness, or forge new dreams. Everything is transient, so don't set your plans in stone and then be upset when things change.

Perhaps this is why I find a lot of entertainment to be intellectually patronising. I like to be involved in what I listen to, watch, and read. I like books by authors like Hemingway, where the prose is a little sparse, where I'm allowed to feel emotions by implication and not have them handed to me, where I'm given the freedom to draw the pictures in my mind, in my own way. I like music that isn't ridiculously bombastic, with lyrics that aren't pseudo-emotional. I can't abide bands like U2 because their songs have no depth and yet they sing them so earnestly. It's just sunglasses music made to sell video clips. I'd rather listen to the blues sung by an incomprehensibly sad man, fumbling on the fretboard. I can feel that.

:)

I'm not very good at articulating my thoughts ...

 

[Drakkith]

Does the expectation factor explain why certain piece of music has a tendency to 'grow' on one ?

Often one hears a piece of music and it doesn't quite impress one. But on repeated hearings one tends to enjoy it.

Seems kind of like those tastes that you don't like at first, but grow on you in the long run until you "love" them.

 

[Drakkith]

I'd rather listen to the blues sung by an incomprehensibly sad man, fumbling on the fretboard. I can feel that.

I on the other hand cannot. I am VERY choosy on what music I listen to by myself, for myself. I can listen to almost anything if I'm in the car with someone else, or out working with people, but when I'm by myself I pretty much can't even listen to the radio at all because I don't like any of it. Almost like I have a "public" taste and a "private" one.

Perhaps the blues sung like that just doesn't do anything for me because I don't WANT to feel that way?

I'm not very good at articulating my thoughts ...

Join the club!

 

[Adyssa]

Perhaps the blues sung like that just doesn't do anything for me because I don't WANT to feel that way?

Yep that's fair enough. I should say that I also like joyous music for the same reason, but only if I feel that the joy is genuine. I think that's the key for me, I like to feel a real emotional connection to the music, and not some contrived travesty. I don't much mind what the emotion is. This may stem from having battled with depression for a long time. Depression makes you numb. It's hard to feel happy, but (interestingly) it's also hard to feel sad. It's hard to feel anything, you turn into this apathetic shadow of a person. Music sets me free!

 

[Drakkith]

For me, whether or not I like a song can depend on the "message" of the song too. But oddly enough, sometimes not. This can happen if I really can't understand the lyrics and the sounds are just amazing to me.

For example, I'm listening to "This is War" by 30 Seconds to Mars, and I think it's an amazing song. I feel this..."buildup" throughout the song, and it reminds me of all the things that I think are worth fighting for. Towards the end it hits its high mark and I feel like I've just won against all odds. But I'm a sucker for things like epic battles with good vs evil and things that have this message of "put yourself between danger and those you love", if you get my drift. Not sure I explained that well enough but oh well lol.

 

[BenG549]

Why music causes emotions in our mind? They are just sound waves interpreted by our brain? But what causes it to trigger emotions? Do scientists have an answer for this yet?

It's all learned behaviour. We all did music to some extent at school and we are told that a minor chord sounds sad and major chords sound happy etc... If you travel around the world different cultures all have very different musical styles, a lot of them would not even be perceived as music per se, just random incoherent sounds to people that grew up listening to western music, and the same may be heard when these cultures hear our music. A minor chord may not sound sad to someone raised with completely different cultural understanding. I'll have a look for some examples to post if I have a bit of time free in the next couple of days but just as we do, these "unusual sounds" in other cultures are used in much the same way we use music i.e. certain differences for different occasions, like funerals for example. I'm no neurobiology but I doubt that due to a massive fundamental difference in brain chemistry. They have just learned to associate different sounds and sound combinations with different thoughts and behaviours.

 

[Drakkith]

It's all learned behaviour. We all did music to some extent at school and we are told that a minor chord sounds sad and major chord sounds happy etc... If you travel around the world different cultures all have very different musical styles, a lot of them would not even be perceived as music per se, just random incoherent sounds to people that grew up listening to western music, and the same may be heard when these cultures hear our music. A minor chord may not sound sad to someone raised with completely different cultural understanding. I'll have a look for some examples to post if I have a bit of time free in the next couple of days but just as we do, these "unusual sounds" in other cultures are used in much the same way we use music i.e. certain differences for different occasions, like funerals for example. I'm no neurobiology but I doubt that due to a massive fundamental difference in brain chemistry. They have just learned to associate different sounds and sound combinations with different thoughts and behaviours.

I don't know, I've heard some music from other cultures before, and while it's different, I wouldn't say it's so different I can't associate with it. Plus I know I was never told that certain chords sound sad/happy. Heck, I don't even know what a minor and major chord even are.

 

[BenG549]

Plus I know I was never told that certain chords sound sad/happy. Heck, I don't even know what a minor and major chord even are.

Yeah the fact you don't remember specifically being told this at school doesn't mean you didn't have a music class as a kid. I knew someone would pick at this lol. You would know a minor and major chord if you heard them sequentially (assuming you're not tone deaf), you would not necessarily say "that's minor and that's major because the former has a flattened 3rd in it..." but you would hear a sad chord and a happy chord and that is how you would describe it.

I don't know, I've heard some music from other cultures before, and while it's different, I wouldn't say it's so different I can't associate with it.

Obviously we have all heard some form of music from other cultures that we can relate to, in some way, but that is like saying you've eaten food from other cultures, it's not exactly a definitive exploration of world cuisine is it? Most cultures use very similar rhythmical and tonal structures, most that you've heard are probably tribal and are associated with drums and dancing etc and hence have very basic rhythmical elements. I could probably play you some western music that you can't emotionally relate to that was written with a specific personal subject matter in mind.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyHWLkU7PgQ&list=AL94UKMTqg-9Agr1dVYRbx7kyUdqBuPkeI

... Pretty much anything by John Cage actually!



OK not surprisingly the internet is not over run by abstract indigenous tribal music lol. I did find some less extreme examples though.

Gamalan is generally pretty strange although is usually accompanied by some visual pupettry or something to convey meaning and emotion.



and we've all seen this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=VTCJ5hedcVA#!

OK these are bad examples of what I'm talking about because most of them are still using familiar tonal structures and patterns but its 6:30 in the morning here so I should go to sleep lol.

Of course the discussion of music invoking emotion is also hampered by the ambiguity of what music is, any noise could technically be musical any pleasant sound can become annoying. Anyway I'll get onto my music savvy buddies and see if I can't dig up some examples of what I was actually talking about.

 

[Pythagorean]

When strummed alone, the minor chord certainly sounds more morose and the major chord has more chime.

But in the context of other chords, it can go anywhere. Add a melody over all major chords and you can make it a sad song.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Oliver Sacks throws out a lot of ideas about this in his book, Musicophilia. He believes our response to music is deeply hardwired in the cerebellum. Parkinson's patients who can't take a step across the room without their muscle contractions fighting each other can suddenly start dancing when music is played. The whole book is full of incredible tales of the effects music can have on people.

 

[AnTiFreeze3]

... He believes our response to music is deeply hardwired in the cerebellum ...

While the exact time and origin of humanities' ability to speak isn't clear at all, I have heard (which, is of course the most-esteemed source of evidence) that music existed before speech did, which would imply that music holds a deep resonance (lul) within humanities' past.

There are also incredibly old cave paintings in Africa, and art is often thought to be beautiful and inspiring. We don't necessarily know why that's what it is, or even why it began or has continued, but we can at least appreciate it and try to learn more about it's origins.

 

[zoobyshoe]

While the exact time and origin of humanities' ability to speak isn't clear at all, I have heard (which, is of course the most-esteemed source of evidence) that music existed before speech did, which would imply that music holds a deep resonance (lul) within humanities' past.

If someone wanted to argue that speech is a form of music, I think they could make a good case for it.

I had a Russian professor in college who spent some time trying to get us to appreciate the concept of the "music of a language". You can hear that music really strongly in languages like Italian, or in the Liverpool accent of the Beatles, for example. Feynman claims he used to pass himself off as Italian as a kid by just imitating the sound of Italian. He'd wave and shout Italian sounding giberish out to Italian looking people he passed while riding his bike. They'd wave and shout back. (He figured they all assumed he spoke a different dialect than them.)

Anyway, this Russian teacher had moved here years before knowing no English. She had a young boy, 5 or 6 years old. One day she was floored to hear him speaking what sounded like perfect English. After a while she realized he was just doing what Feynman had done, imitating the "music" of English while actually speaking gibberish.

There are also incredibly old cave paintings in Africa, and art is often thought to be beautiful and inspiring. We don't necessarily know why that's what it is, or even why it began or has continued, but we can at least appreciate it and try to learn more about it's origins.

Nova did a thing on the Neanderthals last night. Apparently the current trend is to try and prove they had some rudimentary art. They've found what could well be pigments in association with Neanderthal sites.

 

[AlephZero]

We all did music to some extent at school and we are told that a minor chord sounds sad and major chords sound happy etc
...
A minor chord may not sound sad to someone raised with completely different cultural understanding.

You don't need to look further that Country and Western to disprove the theory that major chords sound happy.

But you might counter that argument by claiming that "cultural understanding" doesn't compute in the context of C&W - or even than C&W isn't music.

 

[BenG549]

You don't need to look further that Country and Western to disprove the theory that major chords sound happy.

But you might counter that argument by claiming that "cultural understanding" doesn't compute in the context of C&W - or even than C&W isn't music.

lol, yeah I hear your point, it's a rule to thumb more than anything but if you were to then hear the same songs played in a minor key you would hear a big difference in the mood of the song.

 

[BenG549]

If someone wanted to argue that speech is a form of music, I think they could make a good case for it.

I would say it was an open and shut case in favour of that argument. Objectively there is no real difference. Your vocal track is just a pipe closed at one end that we adjust the dimensions of in order to manipulate the standing wave resonance and hence the pitch and timbre of the sound we produce... That's the basis of any brass or woodwind instrument you can think of. Plus there is no actual hard and fast definition of music due to its inherently subjective nature, banging two rocks together can be considered music, white noise can be considered music, in fact when we play a lot of instruments or talk etc all we are doing is producing a white noise source (Vocal chords, vibrating lips of a trumpet player) and filtering it though a resonator (Vocal track, trumpet) to subtract the unwanted elements of the noise, or re enforce the desired elements. So yeah, speech as a form of music, not really debatable in my book. It just happens to be useful for communicating information as well, but we could probably think of situations in which music (in a more traditional sense of the word) has been used for communication.

 

[BenG549]

What you seem to be saying is that all sound = music. I would have to disagree with that 100%. At the same time I haven't bothered to work up a rigorous definition of music by which we could put up a fence between that which is just sound and that which is authentically music, I am confident such a fence could be erected based on non-arbitrary criteria. (Maybe AlephZero, who seems pretty conversant with music qua music and also with the physics of sound might offer some guidelines.)

Well that's not particularly useful is it? "I disagree, but I've not idea why"... plus seeing as I have a BSc in Audio Technology and a Masters degree in Acoustics I'm pretty knowledgeable on the physics of sound and I've had the discussion on what constitutes music more times than I care to remember and to date I have heard no suitably objective definition. If you come up with one then let me know.

If you listen to early recordings of the Beatles before their Liverpool accent was toned down, you are struck by the musical/lyrical properties of their speech patterns. They are halfway toward singing when they speak.

What do you mean by the musical and lyrical properties of their speech patterns? As for it being half way towards singing I know a lot of people in the UK that that far less complimentary about the scouse accent lol!

I think their native accent was the bedrock of their music, why they had music in their blood, so to speak. That particular accent lent itself beautifully to the pop genre they received and contributed so much to. I honestly believe that, had they grown up in London or Manchester or Sheffield their tunes would never have been so infectious and catchy.

Well I guess that goes some way to explaining why since the beetles acts from Liverpool have widely had greater success that those from London or Manchester... Oh wait, that isn't actually true. And their accent is obviously not why they have music in their blood, there is no reason to believe that a scouse accent acts as a catalyst for great song writing ability, the production of one of the first music videos revolutionising how we experience music, the luck of having a manager in brian epstein who was willing to invest $40,000 in a US marketing campaign with DJ Carrol James, who was the force behind wide spread radio coverage of the Beatles in the US... the list can go on. You can't attribute all their success to their accent, most people in the UK dislike the accent but they were popular over here.

When someone speaks, there are two things going on: the words, and how they say the words. You can vastly change the meaning of an utterance by changing the tone of voice, rhythm, word emphasis, etc. Imagine removing the words, replacing them with non-significant gibberish, and being left only with tone of voice, rhythm, emotional emphasis. In the absence of words, what is communicated? Huge amounts about the mood, attitude, and personality texture of the speaker. What you'd be hearing, in the absence of understandable words, is that person's personal music.

I'm not sure what your point is here. If it is that information content (in the sense of communicating speech) is not an important part of music, I totally agree. Some of my favourite music is instrumental, but again in the context of this discussion I'm not sure of the point. When a said "It just happens to be useful for communicating information as well" I was mealy saying that we can use our vocals for both music and communication of ideas, or both.

Ever notice that you just love the sound of a certain person's voice? Math Is Hard once said she loved Morgan Freeman's voice so much she could sit and listen to him read the phone book. The opposite's also true: some people's personal music is quite ugly, and you can't stand the very sound of their voice. There's everything in between and more gradients along all other axes.

Again I'm not sure your point. It sounds lie you're arguing my side here by saying that just someone talking can have emotionally pleasing or objectionable effects.

That's my personal take on why we respond so strongly to music. We recognize the texture, tone, color, line, and rhythm of the human speaking voice in it, greatly enhanced and concentrated, polished, formalized, and otherwise artistically edited.

So if music is popular because of the voices we hear in the music, how do you explain the endless list of popular music that contains no vocals?

I liked that video as well... but sorry to be so repetitive, I'm not totally sure what your point is, you say that you hear the persons personal music when without intelligible words, but then you send a link of a guy who makes no noise at all... I'm a little bit confused by your argument.

But yeah, get back to me when you have a definition of music that negates my assertion any sound including speech can be considered music and I'll have a think about it.

 

[BenG549]

If someone wanted to argue that speech is a form of music, I think they could make a good case for it.

I only just realized that my post - which you tore apart, was intended to be in agreement your statement lol. So if speech can be considered as music, which you agree with?, then you don't need any consistent tonal or rhythmical structure to qualify. Hand clapping and things of that nature can be a from of musical expression, so just impulsive noises can be musical? It's already becoming difficult to think of things that you could exclude from the list, providing that they are audible.

Would you agree that any visual creation can be considered artistic?

There is a case for changing 'any sound' to 'any man-made sound'... but beyond that I'm not sure you can be any more restrictive because people can appreciate all kinds of crazy noise as music (there are some examples in links I've posted above)

 

[Evo]

Bird songs. Some are very pretty. Random thought.

 

[BenG549]

Bird songs. Some are very pretty. Random thought.

Agreed, and it's not that random. I would say that sounding pretty is far better qualifier for what constitutes music than any physical descriptor, the only real case for suggesting man made sound (which I don't necessarily agree with) is that some people might argue that music/art does suggest some creative quality, as opposed to natural beauty or natural sounds that happen to sound nice.

However, for me bird song would definitely qualify as musical.

 

[AlephZero]

What you seem to be saying is that all sound = music. I would have to disagree with that 100%. At the same time I haven't bothered to work up a rigorous definition of music by which we could put up a fence between that which is just sound and that which is authentically music, I am confident such a fence could be erected based on non-arbitrary criteria. (Maybe AlephZero, who seems pretty conversant with music qua music and also with the physics of sound might offer some guidelines.)

I wouldn't attempt to define it, beyond "music is whatever a particular group of people, at a particular time, call music"

Of course you can attempt a retrospective analysis: see what a particular group of people called "music", and try and invent some "rules" that characterize it. And if the rules are fairly accurate, you can use them to write more "music" in the same style, and decide whether the music is "good" or "bad" without the hassle of listening to it.

That's the way "music" used to be taught, right up to the highest level. And it leads to nonsense conclusions, like the fact that if you marked J S Bach by the standards of Cherubini's 19th century "rules for writing fugues", which was one of the classic texts for teaching composition in every music conservatiore in Europe, he would have failed the course. Of Cherubini's "8 essentials" for a good fugue, most Bach fugues score between 0 and 3 (and several of the best ones score 0).

If you never heard of Cherubini before, that also makes a point. Very few textbooks on "how to compuse music" have been written by composers that anybofy still listens to. It's been a "those who can't do, teach" situation for centuries, if not millennia.

As a practical experiment, try this - probably something you never heard, composed and performed by people you never heard of either. Is it "music", or 45 minutes of random noise made by somebody horsing around in an organ loft? (You don't have to listen to all 45 minutes to make your mind up - though it's only a clip from a piece which lasts over 2 hours).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GlQvBQdKfI