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.

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.

What about inherently funny sounds?
Although I've also heard people describe the daxophone's sound as creepy.

I think we should be clear that dangerous vs safe is not equal to angry vs happy, though. As one would imagine, once we move the discussion towards more complex emotions like sadness and happiness the conversation becomes much more difficult, dangerous and safe is easy to understand, higher emotion is not at all.

But, I still think it stands to say that IF a sound can be perceived as inherently dangerous or safe, some other sound can be perceived as inherently happy or sad, it's just going to be a lot harder for us to define what that sound is, especially if the "test subjects" are adult humans that have all been exposed to wildly different conditioning throughout their lives that can't agree on what sounds "sad".

I honestly think those of us with dogs (unfortunately that doesn't include me) ought to conduct some experiments in sound tonight, since they're one of the easiest animals to observe clear happiness or sadness in, and are MUCH less likely to have a "taste" in music than us.

If I were going to try this I wouldn't use music, your dog ain't gonna give a **** what tunes you throw on, too much for Rover to process. See if you can play some sounds out of your speakers that make your dog wag its tail, less obvious sounds, don't just play a video of another dog playing or getting excited, and likewise see if you can find sounds that make your dog bow its head or look worried.

This reminds me of my cat who would lay on my bed and not give a flying **** if I played brutal death metal.

Precisely why I didn't mention cats, most cats just don't give a **** and hide their emotions behind a perpetually unimpressed stare.

I'd also like to add that I don't believe any particular instrument is in of itself capable of making us feel happy or sad. I can get just as emotional over a violin passage played on a synth, if played well enough, as I can about the real thing. I think it's more about a mood that's evoked. I could see there being certain guitar passages that would make me emotional ("Cavantina/The Deer Hunter" springs to mind) although it's almost 100% certain that no drummer could move me. Even a fretless bass could have an effect on me, but by the same token, that exact same passage played on say a trumpet or a clarinet might not.

Drums on their own, maybe not (although apparently they can settle baby Jesus), but in the context of other instruments it can be one of the most important elements in driving the mood. Here's a good example

Hmm. I'm not going to listen to a full album to get your point, but I know what you mean, and I've said it before: without drums or at least percussion a lot of songs would not have the impact they have. I know you hate him but think of Phil Collins's "In the air tonight" without that big drum roll, or "We will rock you" without the drum intro. It's a good point, one I had not considered.

Then of course you have the cumulative effect of a whole lot of instruments together, as in an orchestra, or even a pile of voices. Can you deny this is emotional?

or something on a smaller scale

Is it given though that this will be the case for everyone? A song I may think is sad you might not get the same feeling from, and vice versa. Like I say, for me, it has a lot to do with the subject matter, the lyric: if something unexpected or sad or tragic happens in the story, it may affect me. There's a Dan Fogelberg song which ends with the lovers dying, and it's kind of unexpected and so comes across to me as sad. You might listen and just think "that's a bunch of crap" and get no message from it. You might think a particular, let's say, ambient piece was very moving and sad, I might not. I think a lot of it is definitely down to personal interpretation and how the music makes you as a person feel, while it may not make anyone else feel that way.