This is a small thing I wrote about some of my observations regarding music. Hope you all enjoy it! Feel free to give suggestions. 9/21/14 My Thoughts on Music and the Emotions that it Causes By: Henry Wenzel Why do certain melodies sound happy, while others sound sad and/or ominous? This is a question people, especially people in the music industry including myself, have been asking for quite a long time. Since the feelings that a piece of music gives people are largely dependent on the culture of the people listening to it, no one has been able to find one solid answer to that question. In summary, the emotions caused by a piece music are usually dependent on the culture and era the audience is from, the type of key that the music is in, and the speed at which the music is being played, all of which I will talk about in the following paragraphs. In my experience, culture and era seem to play a significant role in how a piece of music makes one feel. For example, many people in America feel that pieces of music that are in major keys sound cheerful, while pieces of music that are in minor keys sound more sad and/or serious. People from other parts of the world might have different feelings about what sounds cheerful, sad, or serious. An example of this that I recently found while researching music is the fact that some of the old European churches used to forbid the use of the minor scale, thinking that a couple of the pitches within it were “from the devil” or something like that. Therefore, they invented what we call the “melodic minor” scale, which is the same as the minor scale, but with the 6th and 7th pitches raised up by a half-step. So basically, the old European churches thought that certain pitches in certain keys were “evil” which is definitely not how most of us think today in hardly any of the current cultures. Another big factor of music sounding happy, sad, or serious is the type of key a piece of music is in. Like I mentioned previously, American people tend to find major keys to be more happy and minor keys to be sad or serious. To me personally, minor keys do not exactly sound sad, but do not usually sound cheerful either. They usually sound more serious or spooky to me. For instance, you may have heard the Halloween song known as “Ghost of John”, which is in a minor key. If you have not heard that song, I recommend looking it up. You will probably note that the melody is far from cheerful but does not really make you want to cry either. You may also want look for other other tunes that are in a minor key. In doing so, you might find that the thing that many of us say about minor keys being the saddest is not completely true. From what I have observed in studying and making music, the main reason that minor melodies sound more serious is the heavy amount of half-steps that are in it, which are also known as “minor seconds”. In my experience, many of the pieces of music that make us cry are slow and in major keys, but have a lot of minor intervals, especially the minor second. The song “When She Loved Me”, written by Randy Newman, performed by Sarah McLachlan, and featured in the movie Toy Story 2, is a pretty good example of that. Some have even said that that song is the saddest song they have ever heard. Indeed, I agree that it is a very sad song, though not necessarily the saddest. When listening to it, you might think it is in a minor key at first since it sounds rather sad, but in reality, it is in a major key being played with a fairly high amount of minor second intervals. If the song was in a minor key, it probably wouldn’t sound as sad and uplifting as it sounds, and will likely sound more serious or even ominous, which makes it true that minor keys tend to sound less happy, though I still would not generally describe melodies in a minor key as “sad”. In our current culture and time, we often feel more sad or even uplifted by hearing music that does not have too many large intervals, and so we tend to find tunes with smaller intervals that are in major keys to be the most pleasing to our ears. As a general rule, our ears do not generally like hearing pitches that are played right next to each and are super far apart. As such, when a melody has many large intervals, we rarely feel any emotions other than maybe annoyance. To sum this all up, my experience in music has shown me that people are right when they say that music does not generally sound very cheerful when it is in a minor key, but not completely accurate when they say that that makes a piece of music sound sad. This observation is based mostly on the fact that whenever me or people I know have listened to a tune that we find sad, I have noticed that it has almost always turned out to be in a major key with lots of minor intervals, mainly the minor second. The speed, which is often referred to as the “tempo” of a song, is also pretty important in determining the mood of it. For example, if a song is being played at a speed that is of 120 beats per minute or higher, rarely does it sound very sad to anybody. Having said that, some of those are songs that might sound quite sad if played at a slower tempo. Dance music is often even higher than 120 in tempo, and is therefore a pretty good example of something that rarely sounds sad. Indeed, people have said that this is due to us being more excited by things that are going at a speed that is past our normal heart rate, which I agree with. What makes you feel uplifted, sad, happy, etc. in music? Do you think it is these things I have been talking about? Do you think there is more to it than what I have said, or perhaps even disagree? In any case, emotions caused by something are very subjective, so whether you agree or disagree, these are certainly not observations that speak for everybody. As I am sure you know, we each have at least slightly different reactions to many of the same things.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 22:42:19 +0000
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