# Is there emotion in music?



## JohnG (Mar 15, 2016)

Is there emotion in music? Just saw this on the BBC:

"Any creative artist will tell you that the emotional resonance of a piece emerges out of the construction of the work and is rarely an ingredient fed in at the beginning of a composition. The composer Philip Glass admits that he never deliberately programs any emotional content in his work. He believes it’s generated spontaneously as a result of all the processes that he employs. “I find that the music almost always has some emotional quality in it; *it seems independent of my intentions.*” The structure and internal logic of a piece is what drives its composition." -- BBC article http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160307-the-hidden-maths-in-great-art

It's a provocative question for us media composers. What, exactly, makes music "sad?" Or "happy?" You can put a sweet melody over a man crying and, even if you don't know why he's crying, you'll likely feel the music is sad in -- some undefined way. The Smiths used to write sing-song melodies for the most depressing lyrics, but it added to the jangle of the experience and I thought was quite successful.

Apart from the obvious -- loud / fast = exciting etc. -- what do you think about emotion and music?


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## thesteelydane (Mar 15, 2016)

I don't think the music itself has any inherent emotional quality to it, but it triggers "learned emotional responses" in the listener, and these are very predictable and can be used by the composer to manipulate the listerne's emotions. You don't need to understand what a minor chord is, but you will have been emotionally conditioned to it since the first piece of music you heard. To a baby it will probably just be sound, but that could be an interesting field of research. It's also worth noting that these responses are naturally dependent on culture. I live in Vietnam at the moment and they definitely don't feel the same that I do, or get the same emotional response as I, when listening to a western piece of music.


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## d.healey (Mar 15, 2016)

There is emotion in the composer, the musician, and the listener, the music is just a means of communicating the emotion, like any art.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 15, 2016)

What David says. Why would anyone be interested in what Philip Glass has to say (in his music) if he's not communicating anything?

The interesting thing is how the same music can have totally different meanings in different contexts. I'm talking about scoring, but I think that's always true - people react differently at different times.


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## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 15, 2016)

And by the way, my issue with the popular "democratizing" 1-finger electronic toys is that this is often what's missing, beyond a pacemaker beat. 

To be honest, it's always been a common pitfall with all-synth music, at least with all-analog-synth music. Where's the human? Synths are capable of creating an infinite number of sounds, but they can all sound the same!

Obviously I also like synths a lot. I'm talking about misuse.


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## Musicologo (Mar 15, 2016)

This field of research has been explored since forever (at least since the XVII century there has been TONS of literature about the subject). A most remarkable recent source about the subject is: http://tagg.org/mmmsp/NonMusoInfo.htm

Currently most trends recognize that music has no intrinsic content per se, except frequencies. The ways how each one interpret and reacts to those frequencies largely varies according to cultural values, conventions, and *some very slim universalistic traits.* *That is to say: It's extremely difficult to manipulate the listeners emotions a priori if your listener is from outside your cultural context.

*beat (depends on human heart, therefore most people around the world feel the same about music being fast or slow); gestural anaphores mimicking what human voices and bodies do - for instance a screeching upward sound will be connected to "screaming" in most cultural contexts...


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## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 15, 2016)

Really, Musicologo? I've had cats who responded to music.

Okay, Korean court music sounds weird to Western ears, but I don't believe for one minute that music has no content!


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## Hannes_F (Mar 15, 2016)

d.healey said:


> There is emotion in the composer, the musician, and the listener, the music is just a means of communicating the emotion, like any art.


^^^ This.
And so much more. If we want and if we can.

J. W. Goethe, Faust:

Unless you feel, naught will you ever gain;
Unless this feeling pours forth from your soul
With native, pleasing vigour to control
The hearts of all your hearers, it will be in vain.
Pray keep on sitting! Pray collect and glue,
From others' feasts brew some ragout;
With tiny heaps of ashes play your game
And blow the sparks into a wretched flame!
Children and apes will marvel at you ever,
If you've a palate that can stand the part;
But heart to heart you'll not draw men, no, never,
Unless your message issue from your heart.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Mar 15, 2016)

Now seriously, how could music "contain" emotion? It's not material. It's a phenomenon - whether you wanna call it neuroelectrical or psychological or spiritual or whatever isn't really that important; it depends on your favored narrative - that manifests itself in our minds. It doesn't "exist" outside of the mind. Whatever stimulates the mind (or the spirit or whatever the heck) to produce, or experience, emotion is a catalyst, but not a carrier. There's a process of encoding and decoding involved in music.

I feel that the more genuine emotion an artist invests into creating a piece of work, the greater is the chance that the recipient's mind can pick up on it and decode it to something relateable. Because essentially it's communication, it's a cultural thing. You arrange a set of codes, signs and symbols into an artistic ensemble for another mind to read and decode, by its own associations. But still: the emotion happens in the listener's mind, it's not being carried from A to B. And how could it be - both music as well as emotions being such highly abstract and entirely immaterial conceptions to begin with.

Volume, pitch, pulse frequency etc. exciting the physical body is a different matter, that's initially not connected to emotion.


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## elpedro (Mar 15, 2016)

the emotion is generated by the listener's nervous system...it is an abstraction...recommend Alfred Korzybski's science and sanity it's a good read about how we abstract reality....


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## Silence-is-Golden (Mar 15, 2016)

thesteelydane said:


> I don't think the music itself has any inherent emotional quality to it, but it triggers "learned emotional responses" in the listener, and these are very predictable and can be used by the composer to manipulate the listerne's emotions. You don't need to understand what a minor chord is, but you will have been emotionally conditioned to it since the first piece of music you heard. To a baby it will probably just be sound, but that could be an interesting field of research. It's also worth noting that these responses are naturally dependent on culture. I live in Vietnam at the moment and they definitely don't feel the same that I do, or get the same emotional response as I, when listening to a western piece of music.


I do think that unfortunately many people react to condioned emotional 'triggers' which is why generally human behaviour is predictable anyway.
There is however worlds of undiscovered territory for the human, including emotional territories. 
I don't know if anyone here has ever read something from a man called Gurdjieff, but there is a reason why he has spoken about ' the war against sleep' and why he started a school 'the harmonious development of man' with a purpose to introduce Eastern ways into Western life.
His books on 'all and everything' are a must read if you want to get to know something about the possible origins and meanings of human life. And thus what role music, emotions, movement, thinking, plays in our life.

To put something other into this topic......


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## TimCox (Mar 15, 2016)

I believe emotion can be channeled into a piece as a sort of pastiche of the composer's emotional intent. But music by itself? I don't think it carries emotions in the way we think of it! Too much can influence that, the performer, the listener, etc.

So my answer is, yes and no? I truly believe my feelings can be coalesced into a piece but I know it won't necessarily come across that way for the person on the other end

***I know I said basically nothing, but there it is anyway!***


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## Gerhard Westphalen (Mar 15, 2016)

There was a great feud between Schoenberg and Stravinsky relating to this and it's worth looking into. We learned about it in class a few weeks ago. 

Stravinsky:
"I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, or psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc….Expression has never been an inherent property of music. That is by no means the purpose of its existence."


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## JonFairhurst (Mar 15, 2016)

An esteemed colleague tells you that you've done an excellent job. You feel great.

A jerk calls you names. You feel annoyed, if not hurt.

Communication triggers emotional responses. Language carries the intellectual message, the unspoken message, and the tone. Even if you don't speak the language, you get the tone. One person coos at you. Another screams angrily in your face. You don't need to understand the language to feel what's being communicated.

Same with music. It's communication. It doesn't matter if it's technically just cold frequencies, timing, and durations, we can still understand the energy and the subtext.

And of course it depends on learned associations. The muted trombone of the teacher's voice in Peanuts might make sense to English speaking audience, but might have the wrong inflections for Swahili. But this is a false argument. No hearing person grows up without associating various sounds with various emotions.


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## Daryl (Mar 15, 2016)

There is emotion in performance, and without performance, music is nothing.


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## givemenoughrope (Mar 15, 2016)

^ So, then what about music that is rendered electronically. I guess "electronic music"...?


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## dgburns (Mar 15, 2016)

As the new Audi A4 commercial states-

"technology is the new power chord"


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## SergeD (Mar 15, 2016)

Music expresses the energy itself which expresses the magnitude of an emotion. It's like a small earthquake which causes a little thrill versus a massive earthquake which causes panic. Same phenomenom, but at differents levels.

Here is my own study about music : https://sergedaigno.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/the-echo-nest-study.pdf


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## JJP (Mar 16, 2016)

There is no inherent emotion in language either. Language is just a way we communicate through sound, gesture, expression, and symbols. By themselves, those elements have no meaning whatsoever. Our culture, instinct, and personal experience bestows meaning upon them. If we collectively understand those meanings, we can share our own emotions, trigger emotions in others, or formulate and communicate ideas that help us understand our emotions.

Music works in much the same way. It's a medium through which we communicate and even tickle each other's emotions.

I find it absolutely fascinating that our brains are so attuned to sound and that we can respond to it in such complex ways that it enables us to share in common experiences through music. It's absolutely thrilling!


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## Hannes_F (Mar 16, 2016)

Quoting from a thread some years ago, here is some suggestion (slightly edited from the older version):

*Models of the inner human constitution*

We all have models about what happens inside us and one of the simplest is the division between the rational and the irrational/emotional/feeling aspect in us. In this simple picture it would be clear that monetary reasons for a musical profession would be on the rational side while a "I simply have to" is on the irrational side.





According to who it is the weight of these sides might be different. A scientist will perhaps be rationally orientated while an artist could perceive himself as more emotional.




Left brain and right brain considerations come into play, the so called emotional intelligence, and so on, and so on, etc. pp. ....

*HOWEVER ...*

It might be of use to suggest and introduce a finer model of our inner being because we have much more in us than just "intellect" and "emotion":




Here we see more parts, shells or veils of ourselves. Beyond the body there are the more or less automatic functions of instincts which are laid-out to help us surviving and staying healthy. But at times can get in the way of the other faculties and that is one reason education is needed or else everybody would steal anything that is eatable from everybody else 

Then comes our emotional meshwork which greatly helps the instincts but also needs to be educated and mastered in order to become an instrument, not the dominator.

Our thought processes are where we are self conscious - more or less. The part of our thinking (or ratio) that tends to the emotions is what we call intellect. Actually, most of our thinking might be happening within the emotional part still. This might be puzzling because in our age and culture we tend to hold the intellect very high. However there exists a part or rather a possibility of our thinking that develops more into the causal and intuitive direction.

And this is where we sometimes can get to insights that draw more directly from what comes beyond it - our spirituality, and also the part that did not get a distinct name in this diagram. Some might call it our SELF, some say it is the divine spark, the inner god, Atman, our spiritual root. However every name is a boundary and therefore it might be best to not name it.

*Where does music live in this diagram?*

There is no easy answer to this. Obviously: It depends.

Music can express many if not all of these layers. Music can be anything from coarse to fine and any levels between. We could say from hell to heaven, from demonic to spiritual it is all there, and the rational part is only a very small fraction of it. It depends on who the composer is, who the musicians are, and also who the listeners are.

Some musicians/composers feel they have a mission. This might be true or not, but if it is then sometimes this comes from the purely emotional part of us, and sometimes it comes from the more intuitive part. Sometimes music can go beyond that by combining the highest possible emotional, intellectual and intuitive aspects and touch unity.

If you ask for my personal opinion then the natural mandate of arts is to elevate us, to bring forth the best in us. It can get go beyond simple emotion and beyond pure intellectual thought for sure.

And I see that for the practical working composer it is not at all easy or even possible to strive for the inner, higher, more spiritual voice in todays music industry. But despite all practical arguments it might make sense for some.

All the best for your journey, Hannes


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## Udo (Mar 16, 2016)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_emotion


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## Daryl (Mar 16, 2016)

givemenoughrope said:


> ^ So, then what about music that is rendered electronically. I guess "electronic music"...?


It's an electronic performance.


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## Carbs (Mar 16, 2016)

Daryl said:


> There is emotion in performance, and without performance, music is nothing.



Well put.


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## JohnG (Mar 16, 2016)

But what do you mean, Daryl?


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## thov72 (Mar 16, 2016)

nice thread but gets rather philosophical.
I rather follow the Swedenborg/Lorber principle that within emotion lies heaven and hell, thus (most) music is a gift from heaven. The better mood I am in and the more relaxed I am, the more I´m open for heaven "sending" me musical ideas. 
Of course there is a lot of own creativity involved, but this creativity itself again is a heavenly principle- God is creator of life and abundance and thus highest form of creativity. 
For me, the creative process is the most satisfying and emotional positive part. The rest, like making everything more precise, harmonizing , etc...is just plain work.


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## maraskandi (Mar 16, 2016)

What is a beating heart without another sound to sing?


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## Zenkkon (Mar 16, 2016)

I think music itself is like language, it's the way of "playing" it that communicates with another person thus triggering a certain kind of emotion. In this case it might be the orchestration, speed, dynamics, etc.

Another thought I have would be if emotion is strictly tied to music then we would have lost a lot of the freedom when creating our music.


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## JonFairhurst (Mar 17, 2016)

Maybe there is limited emotion in the notes and rests, but the very next level of composition is generally about emotion. Don't we notate one moment p add a crescendo and end up at f with emotion in mind? When we orchetrate one passage with a boys choir and another with timpani and low brass, aren't we doing this to express different feelings?

Just look at the words on the page for tempo:
* Vivace means "lively"
* Allegro means "cheerful"
* Espressivo means "expressively"
* Tranquillamente means "tranquilly"
* Grave means "grave".

It's common for composers to add additional emotional direction to their scores.

This talk of no emotion probably comes from people making music with sequencers, rather than composers notating for humans.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Mar 17, 2016)

JonFairhurst said:


> Maybe there is limited emotion in the notes and rests, but the very next level of composition is generally about emotion. Don't we notate one moment p add a crescendo and end up at f with emotion in mind? When we orchetrate one passage with a boys choir and another with timpani and low brass, aren't we doing this to express different feelings?
> 
> Just look at the words on the page for tempo:
> * Vivace means "lively"
> ...



The slight jab towards "sequencer musicians" appears misplaced: why would the means of notation/recording dictate the amount of emotional intent in music? How does that make sense? Why would a composer who clicks things into a MIDI roll have less interest in expressing an emotion than a composer who makes funny signs on a piece of paper?

What you're describing is how musicians generally, or frequently, are inspired by emotional experience to arrange music, and try to inspire an emotional response from their listeners. Of course music is generally propelled by emotional experiences and associations (but then again - Schönberg). I don't think anyone was trying to challenge that. But to believe that there is something inherently universal and archetypal in musical idioms would be quite superstitious.


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## Hannes_F (Mar 17, 2016)

JonFairhurst said:


> This talk of no emotion probably comes from people making music with sequencers, rather than composers notating for humans.



No I don't think so, not at all. I have had the joy of working with great composers that use sequencers.

The talk of no _whatsoever _in music comes from a totally misled physicalistic psychology that has idiotized not only the artistically impotent (which was predictable) but even some able thinkers and composers. The sadness about it is that once the physicalists and physiologists convince the artist that "there is no content" and "there is nothing behind it" - and if he then indeed looses his faith about getting "in the zone" and "let It happen", something every artist knows once it happened just one time, but not those that so stupidly conclude from themselves to others instead of earnestly trying to join - then this becomes a self fulfilling statement, and in the end the artist looses his very object - q.e.d..


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## Suganthan (Mar 17, 2016)

JonFairhurst said:


> This talk of no emotion probably comes from people making music with sequencers


I was listening to a Deadpool OST. Reading your comment makes me to question whether there is emotion in sound design and Impacts. The big drums, big reverb, more synths can convey the massiveness and power fullness, but what really this sound effects stuff convey?



JohnG said:


> What, exactly, makes music "sad?" Or "happy?"


Maybe you know about this already, anyway - Strebetendenz Theory - which I believe answers some of the basic questions regarding emotion and music.


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## germancomponist (Mar 17, 2016)

JohnG said:


> Is there emotion in music? Just saw this on the BBC:
> 
> "Any creative artist will tell you that the emotional resonance of a piece emerges out of the construction of the work and is rarely an ingredient fed in at the beginning of a composition. The composer Philip Glass admits that he never deliberately programs any emotional content in his work. He believes it’s generated spontaneously as a result of all the processes that he employs. “I find that the music almost always has some emotional quality in it; *it seems independent of my intentions.*” The structure and internal logic of a piece is what drives its composition." -- BBC article http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160307-the-hidden-maths-in-great-art
> 
> ...


Emotion is everywhere!


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## JonFairhurst (Mar 17, 2016)

Don't take my jab as sequencer users too seriously. Just as there are great and poor composers who use paper, there are great and poor composers who use sequencers. 

Interestingly, poor use of a sequencer is often related to people who input the notes fully quantized, without expression, and without any type of moving modulation - in other words, without a human feel or without emotion. Of course, this can be the perfect effect for writing music about a robot or a person who views things coldly and mechanically.

Wait, isn't a cold mechanical approach an emotion? A measurement of zero emotion still makes an emotional statement (cold, uncaring.)

The best use of sequencers has us playing the lines in live with a human touch while using expression controls to make the sound rise and fall sonorously. While this can touch more on performance than composition, traditional composers use tempo and expression marks which guide performance.

Here's an interesting thing: when we accelerate the tempo, it can make things feel like a snowball gaining speed and going out of control. When we slow a tempo, it can make the listener anxious as they want the music to push forward. A slowing tempo conveys suspense. We don't speed and slow tempos for the heck of it. (Sometimes we do it to hit a given video frame though.) We slow and speed things to give a specific feeling to the music. A common example is to slow the last measure as we lower the dynamics of a consonant chord to provide a soft landing - or a feeling of gentleness. Now blast a double-forte tritone and tell me that doesn't change the mood!


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## Udo (Mar 17, 2016)

Regardless how it makes you feel, should it be put as:
"Composed music is contrived, improvised music is sincere"?


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## Nick Batzdorf (Mar 17, 2016)

Ya know what I think? Philip Glass is so focused on the intellectual part of what he's doing that he isn't aware of everything going on in his head.

Every choice he makes has an emotional side to it, even if it's just what sounds good to him. I don't see how it's possible to avoid it.


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## Jimmy Hellfire (Mar 17, 2016)

Nick Batzdorf said:


> Ya know what I think? Philip Glass is so focused on the intellectual part of what he's doing that he isn't aware of everything going on in his head.
> 
> Every choice he makes has an emotional side to it, even if it's just what sounds good to him. I don't see how it's possible to avoid it.



Yes of course, but that's because we're human. Everything we do is tied to some kind of emotion, it's impossible to turn off. Thinking about it on that level takes the whole topic on the "is water wet?" level. What Glass said is that he doesn't _deliberately_ program emotions in his music. His creative decisions and their logic most certainly are partly driven by emotional impulses, but he chooses to not be particularly aware of them. Which merely means that he's not trying to convey any particular emotion and probably doesn't try to make the listener feel a certain way. 

The interesting thing is that he says: _"I find that the music almost always has some emotional quality in it; it seems independent of my intentions." _That's inevitable, but the question is: what does he make of it? Making music is a cultural process, and when he listens to his own stuff, his mind will inevitably recognize codes and patterns that to him "mean" something emotionally, or will associate them with emotional qualities "on the fly". Just as it happens to another person when they listen to the same piece of music. We're always decoding and reading signs. It's almost impossible to have absolutely no emotional reaction to a piece of music, even if it's deliberately created without any emotional intent whatsoever - like some strict 12-tone-music - or better: this computer-generated, formula -and process-based stuff or whatever.

To me, the most interesting thing that I take away from that is that you can't ever really "program" your music 100%. Sure, the more stereotypes (cultural codes that are widely universally agreed upon) you employ, the greater is the chance that you will generate the expected reaction from the listener, but at the same time, it's gonna be a reaction that's as superficial as the intent that prompted it. But you can't ever really make someone feel or experience exactly what you intend. Somewhere in the encoding and decoding process, it's gonna turn into something else - sometimes something similar, but it could also end up being something completely different. The best example are extreme or very foreign forms of music one's not culturally "calibrated" for: the initiated may delighftully enjoy it, but to the person that's not familiar with the cultural codes, it sounds weird, off, unsettling or is "just noise".

So personally, I come to the realisation that once you finished a piece, you have to kind of "let it go". It's gonna develop a life of its own in every individual's mind, and it's gonna make something different out of it.


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## marclawsonmusic (Mar 19, 2016)

"Meaning in music is... an elusive thing; all we can say is that a meaningful series of tones is one which moves us in one way or another, one which seems to have artistic truth."

Leonard Bernstein
"On Modern Music", Gentlemen's Quarterly, 1958


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## marclawsonmusic (Mar 20, 2016)

Another one I saw today...

"I want to write and feel the drama. Music is essentially an emotional language, so you want to feel something from the relationships and build music based on those feelings."

Howard Shore


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## novaburst (Mar 29, 2016)

JohnG said:


> Apart from the obvious -- loud / fast = exciting etc. -- what do you think about emotion and music?



It is very clear if music is not an emotion it certainly can connect or condition our feelings and emotions, The Bible tells a very nice story of how music had the power or ability to stop a murderous emotion.

It tells us when King Soul wanted to murder or kill, or end Davids life, it is said David played his harp and that it stopped King Soul from killing David this happened a number of times, at least until King Soul thrust him self through on his own sword.

But the point is music triggered an emotion in King Soul to the point he no longer wanted to murder David. how many times have we our self's had a ruff day and feel irritated or things just never went the way we wanted, we find a quiet spot turn on a nice piece of music and relax and allow the music to trigger a positive emotional response. 

How many times have we heard a very well put together piece of music and it trigger our inner ability we say to our self i have just got to do something like that, thats because that piece we listen to triggered a creative emotion.

What about some other types music with heavy fast beats in discos and night clubs triggering off sexual emotion, and lust, and drugs and promiscuous feelings. 

How about some rap music, its now against the law to rap about certain things because after the rap song young men went about and started stabbing people and committing crime because the rap music triggered off a very bad emotion in the listeners, and even some country's have band entry to certain rappers because they dont want there young people influenced, or there emotions triggered the wrong way 

I think it speaks for it self that music triggers different types of emotion and behavior patterns and it can not be denied.

People listen to music while they jug, drive, exercise, at work, when you ask them why they listen they say well it helps me concentrate so there you have it a focused emotion was triggered off.

So weather it is sonic wave patterns, or this frequency or that frequency high or low, or this chord or the minor chord or who ever produced the music, it is simply clear that it connects to, and influences our emotions and behavior, and attitude weather it is an out ward behavior pattern or the one we all cant see well you know what that one is thats the inner behavior pattern


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