Emotion in Music: Nurture or Nature?
 

It's probably been discussed here already but I couldn't find any threads and it's been on my mind lately.

Conventionally speaking, major keys are "happy", minor keys are "sad". We hear a guitarist add vibrato or some edge to their playing and we consider it emotive compared to the to the books rendition of, say, Mozart. Is this innate or is it learned? Do we naturally interpret dissonance as ugly, or is this only a product of being exclusively exposed (relatively speaking) to consonance?

Both science and conjecture based comments are welcome.

When I saw the thread title I assumed it was the first post of some hopeless n00b desperately trying to drum up conversation.

Good point.

With neuroscience advancements, there are some really interesting implications if nurture influences our taste. You could potentially make objectively perfect music if you can base a composition off of brain imaging. On the flipside, neurological research on environmental influences could change the whole game for targeting audiences online.

Fascinating ::arched eyebrow:: I watched a tv show in which the claim was made that there is no such thing as a truly unpleasant smell. It is just something we are socialized into believing. But then I wondered about skunks, and how they could have ever convinced the animal kingdom that their famous expulsion was in fact foul. I don't understand skunks, much less people, and as far as I'm concerned, it's innate to the listener if the drummer flailing about on some mid tempo generic song is a conveyor of emotion. Now that's a good five minutes hate.

There are certainly innate sad songs I'm sure, and music can sound sad (or happy) but I tend to react more to lyrics, specifically something that comes out of left field, like in "Kentucky Avenue" by Waits, where it's slowly and cleverly revealed that the kid in the song he's playing with is in a wheelchair. That kind of thing cuts me up. I'm not sure the song would affect me so much were it just simple instrumental. I'm trying to think of a piece of music that really affects me and I can't ... oh. Wait. Of course.


But I couldn't say why. Some instruments seem naturally expressive, like violins, cellos and mandolins. Mind you, I'm not a musician so I wouldn't know I guess. I can only go off how music makes me feel.

This was my idea behind the thread. What makes us think this?

Additionally, I was actually thinking about how wind instruments seem to be more expressive than stringed the other day. It might have something to do with it being fueled by breath, so it in a way becomes an extension of the musician's body. Obviously you can be as emotive on a guitar, but it doesn't come as naturally as it does with wind instruments based on my thinking.

Going more back to the original topic, I wonder if you were thinking that the cello and violin were more expressive because of their association with classical music, which is conventionally seen as one of the "moodier" genres.

To take your conjecture a step further, TH might consider strings expressive because they sound like singing/breathing.

Dissonant, aggressive, sad, or discomforting music may just be a more elaborate and complex example of inherently unsettling sounds, the same way a droning water pump or generator or combination of tones can give you a headache or make you uneasy. One could claim that some people might like the sound of a malfunctioning machine or droning speaker feedback, there are a handful of people here that I know would, implying that it is a matter of nurture and the conditioning you've experienced, a matter of "taste", but at the same time I'd imagine it would be pretty difficult to find a baby that doesn't start crying when you place it near these kinds of sounds, and since a baby has yet to be exposed to much conditioning maybe it's fair to suggest that it's at least partly nature, and evolutionary.

I've never been confident in choosing nature over nurture in the development of human behavior, it has always seemed crystal clear to me that both are at play, so I don't think it's a stretch to claim the same for perception of sounds & music. Of course everybody is conditioned to perceive music differently. Abrasive punk music makes some kids overjoyed and inspired regardless of lyrical content or the musician's emotional intent when it was written, abrasive punk music makes some people scowl and plug their ears like they've had a blender placed next to their dome. But I don't think it's a wild claim to suggest that the default human perception of that kind of music would be negative, it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. Loud, sudden, abrasive noises are automatically perceived as dangerous, or even predatory, at its core it's survival instinct, like prey hearing the roar of an approaching predator. Not until you've been exposed to it for some time and have learned that it's safe to hear will you be ready to enjoy it and perceive it differently.

That last point is a great one. It's sort of like how infrasound can make people feel fear or uneasiness because of the similarity that that hertz range has to earthquakes. It only makes sense that it would extend to other sounds.

Frownland needs to father a child, lock it up and subject it to a series of cruel aural experiments involving saxophones and merzbows.