Nah. I'm gonna have to have identical twins so that I have a control.

Good thinking.
A friend of mine just had twins. I wonder whether I could borrow them...

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, can a mole be sad, or a mouse? 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 a few digital tones, rather than something more complicated like a violin or piano piece.

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

Isn't it a minor chord though?

Yeah it is but I've never really bought the whole "minor chords are sad major chords are happy" idea.

Pretty sure these are also minor chords (could be wrong, but if I am I'm sure there are a few happy Foghat tunes built of minor chords that I could use as an example):

It's not always the case, but I think it's an additional factor in this case, which weakens your 'inherently sad sound' reasoning.

Yeah I agree, I'm sure there are magnitudes more minor key songs that would be perceived as sad sounding by most than there are happy sounding ones.

My dilemma right now is that if I'm going to claim that we've evolved to perceive some sounds as inherently dangerous or aggressive, then we must be able to perceive some other sounds as inherently sad or depressing, but I'm having a much harder time identifying that sort of sound.

It's much easier to come up with examples using predators and prey in the wild, but it's not as easy when you're talking about sadness because it's not as easy to talk about mammals other than humans being sad period, making them more difficult to shoehorn into an argument.

I think a lot of it is cultural.
Also even more complicated. Most sad music doesn't make me feel sad. I just know it's supposed to be sad, but I just feel happy because it's beautiful. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Good point, much of the world's music doesn't even use the whole major/minor thing.

I think in the case of the one I posted, it actually sounds not only like the music is crying, but as it scales up and becomes (what's the term? Up an octave? No, that's not it: you know the one anyway, as it climbs and gets, for the want of a proper phrase, squeakier or higher in register) it begins to sound more frantic and sad, not a howl or a scream but the sound of a heart breaking. I mean, take that last part, just before it descends almost to silence again (just on the six minute mark): doesn't it sound like something is reaching its apex, the most it can take before it breaks? I was going to say climax but didn't want to provide too easy a target for Batty.
The only wind instrument that can affect me emotionally I think is a sax, if it's played in the right way and evokes the right mood. Other than that, strings do it every time. Well, not every time obviously, but compared to wind instruments.
I don't think so. I usually describe a cello as "moaning" or "mournful" and a violin as "crying" or "lamenting", which is generally how I perceive them when I hear them.
I'm not going to say no, as who knows what really motivates us, but that doesn't sound right to me.
This is very true and well worked out. It's also likely that we are conditioned genetically to turn away from loud or harsh noises, as a means of protection. After all, if you're standing beside a jet engine and don't cover your ears or move away you could go deaf, so it could be seen as a sort of inbuilt defence mechanism. Your ears hear something harsh and they are "warned" by your brain to do something about the sound. In the same way, softer sounds (birdsong, humming, rain etc) present no danger and so might for that reason appear pleasurable to us: the brain marks them as "safe" to listen to.