Major and minor keys to be precise.
Do the different musical keys really have a different emotional effect on the listener?
If so, is it the same for everybody?
Or is it a learned response?
Or is it all arbitrary and made up?
>Do the different musical keys really have a different emotional effect on the listener?
Yes. But the effects can be subtle and varied depending on the specific work, the listener and her mood etc. For example, many “sad” songs are in a major key.
Major keys can be merry and cheerful (sometimes annoyingly so) but also contemplative and melancholy, and many shades in between.
Minor keys can be dark and sombre but also inspiring and uplifting, etc etc.
There are also musical modes consisting of major/minor hybrids which can be very versatile in their emotional effects and are favoured in a lot of traditional music.
>If so, is it the same for everybody?
It’s not even the same for one individual, in different frames of mind.
>Or is it a learned response?
Inevitably our responses to music are influenced by our musical history and education, but a lot of the emotional response is probably innnate, given that small children are emotionally very responsive to music.
>Or is it all arbitrary and made up?
Very unlikely.
I think it’s just the vibe.
filters, something like phase locked loops, or tone decoders(?), in the hard wiring, which probably isn’t that hard given some new ideas about how neurons operate, together.
The Rev Dodgson said:
Major and minor keys to be precise.Do the different musical keys really have a different emotional effect on the listener?
If so, is it the same for everybody?
Or is it a learned response?
Or is it all arbitrary and made up?
I’ll ask mrs m, because she sees each key as a colour. And even claims to be able to tell the difference in colour between the key of F sharp and the key of G flat, which has me scratching my head.
I only see the difference between major and minor as shades of grey, with the biggest difference being the difference between E natural and E flat, those being the primary differences between the keys of C major and C minor.
I’m absolutely sure that Beethoven’s use of alternating E and E flat at the start of Fur Elise is what makes the piece so memorable.
There are happy pieces in major keys and sad ones in minor keys, but generally the emotional content follows the key.
> is it the same for everybody?
Obviously not deaf people, probably not the tone deaf, but otherwise.
This would make a good science project. Have people listening to major and minor pieces that are identical except for the third note of the scale (the top end of the minor scale is too disastrous to contemplate) in an MRI machine and observe if there are any differences in the emotions generated.
> is it a learned response?
Try it with children of different ages.
Someone has tried it with a few children.
http://mp.ucpress.edu/content/8/2/189
Perception of the Major/Minor Distinction: IV. Emotional Connotations in Young Children
Marianna Pinchot Kastner, Robert G. Crowder
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 8 No. 2, Winter, 1990; (pp. 189-201)
“Thirty-eight children between ages 3 and 12 listened to 12 short musical passages derived from a counterbalanced 2 × 2 arrangement of major versus minor modes and harmonized versus simple melodic realizations of these modes. For each passage, they pointed to one of four schematic faces chosen to symbolize happy, sad, angry, and contented facial expressions. The main result was that all children, even the youngest, showed a reliable positive-major/negative-minor connotation, thus conforming to the conventional stereotype. The possible contributions of native and experiential factors to this behavior are discussed.”
“For most Western listeners, the minor mode suggests a negative emotional tone while the major mode has a more positive connotation, other things equal. Whether the different conno tations of the two modes result from acoustic, spectral differences in the major and minor triads, as Helmholtz proposed (1877), or whether they are culturally transmitted, is an unresolved question (Crowder, 1984).”
“All we can say for sure now is that at 3 years of age, these connotations already exist, and we cannot study children much younger than three with the present technique”.
Peak Warming Man said:
I think it’s just the vibe.
You could be right :)
mollwollfumble said:
Someone has tried it with a few children.http://mp.ucpress.edu/content/8/2/189
Perception of the Major/Minor Distinction: IV. Emotional Connotations in Young Children
Marianna Pinchot Kastner, Robert G. Crowder
Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 8 No. 2, Winter, 1990; (pp. 189-201)“Thirty-eight children between ages 3 and 12 listened to 12 short musical passages derived from a counterbalanced 2 × 2 arrangement of major versus minor modes and harmonized versus simple melodic realizations of these modes. For each passage, they pointed to one of four schematic faces chosen to symbolize happy, sad, angry, and contented facial expressions. The main result was that all children, even the youngest, showed a reliable positive-major/negative-minor connotation, thus conforming to the conventional stereotype. The possible contributions of native and experiential factors to this behavior are discussed.”
“For most Western listeners, the minor mode suggests a negative emotional tone while the major mode has a more positive connotation, other things equal. Whether the different conno tations of the two modes result from acoustic, spectral differences in the major and minor triads, as Helmholtz proposed (1877), or whether they are culturally transmitted, is an unresolved question (Crowder, 1984).”
“All we can say for sure now is that at 3 years of age, these connotations already exist, and we cannot study children much younger than three with the present technique”.
Interesting. I was wondering if there was something like that.
Still, it must be pretty difficult to avoid confirmation bias when working with 3 year olds.
My reason for asking is that I went to a classical music concert last weekend featuring several operatic pieces with a solo soprano. Whilst recognising her technical expertise, the music left me totally cold.
The female voice in a UK folk style on the other hand, I find instantly moving, with the right singer and song.
So I wonder if there is a similar variation in how people respond to different keys.
request waveform image for superposition of notes in major 3rd and minor 3rd for comparison
> My reason for asking is that I went to a classical music concert last weekend featuring several operatic pieces with a solo soprano. Whilst recognising her technical expertise, the music left me totally cold.
> The female voice in a UK folk style on the other hand, I find instantly moving, with the right singer and song.
Ah, different musical tone. I went looking for research into “tone” and found startlingly little.
As a general rule, opera always leaves me cold. There are few exceptions including: the very early operas by Monteverdi, a few singers heard live at close range, and pieces that were written to be outrageously funny.
The right singer can make a huge difference.