Originally Posted by EPOCH6

I wanted to use the low frequency theories as an example but I couldn't remember the specific tones and failed to find them through some quick Googling so I left it out, but yeah that's exactly the sort of point I was making, and the comparison to earthquakes works too. I think our unconscious mind, and the unconscious mind of any mammals, has evolved to perceive certain sounds as signals of danger.

However, it would be harder to take this same reasoning and apply it to sounds being inherently sad. The evolution of "sadness" is still a foggy concept to me period, I don't know if lower level mammals can experience it, I'm confident that dogs, dolphins, cats, and probably the majority of farm animals can experience it, but I'm not sure where the evolutionary line in the sand is for mammals. Would a sound that is (incoming assumption) inherently sad to a human, like the intro to this Boards of Canada song:



Also make a dog feel "sadness"? I have no idea.

Also feel free to use a better example of a "sad" sound, but this particular BOC song has always come across as overwhelmingly sad to me, at least for the first minute or so of the track. And I figured it would work as a good example because it's a "synthetic" sound that can be perceived as sad, a simple combination of digital tones, rather than something more complicated like a violin or piano piece.

EDIT: **** you fellas post fast. This was in response to Frown.