"Things that cannot be measured"

[antcollinet]

The emotion post was made about 5 years ago** Some post necromancy going on here.
**as was the "we need more slack" post.

 

[Ropeburn]

Some post necromancy going on here.

Business as usual then.

(It's really easy to not notice post dates lol)

 

[antcollinet]

Business as usual then.

(It's really easy to not notice post dates lol)

I know. done it my self more than once. But when i do, people point and laugh. So....

 

[mhardy6647]

Emotion itself is measurable... kinda. Difficult and laborious. Realtime brainscan, skin conductivity, pupil dilation, test subject verbal reports, all this kinda measurements. Combine these with skilled psychologist researchers and you get a pretty good idea what's going on inside a person. Certainly an incomplete set of data of course.

The "emotion in music" on the other hand logically can't be measured directly, because it's only the trigger rather than the emotion itself. You can test how different people react to different types of auditory stimuli, and find general tendencies. But it's not measuring the music.

That's kind of how lie detectors work, right?

 

[RexrothPigeon]

That's kind of how lie detectors work, right?

except they don't

 

[Sal1950]

That's not the instrument's job. That's for the listener to do.

Emotion?
A job for the artist. Since I was about 12, a song on the radio either made my ears perk or raised the hair on my arm, or it didn't.
It really didn't matter if it was the 6 transistor radio on my pillow or a vibrator buzzing 50s tube radio in my car, it was all about the music.
As the years passed and my wallet grew, I searched for gear that could let me hear further into that music I loved most. Those that could reveal the inner details of the instruments playing. etc; they may raise the level of emotion felt, but still it all begins and ends with the music.
This 1965 song brought a tear to my eye the very first time I heard it back then, and just did again when it came on my FM radio.
YMMV

 

[j_j]

That's not the instrument's job. That's for the listener to do.

Exactly. Perception is personal, BUT there are very clear and distinct clues as to what can never be noticed.

 

[j_j]

Emotion?
A job for the artist. Since I was about 12, a song on the radio either made my ears perk or raised the hair on my arm, or it didn't.
It really didn't matter if it was the 6 transistor radio on my pillow or a vibrator buzzing 50s tube radio in my car, it was all about the music.
As the years passed and my wallet grew, I searched for gear that could let me hear further into that music I loved most. Those that could reveal the inner details of the instruments playing. etc; they may raise the level of emotion felt, but still it all begins and ends with the music.
This 1965 song brought a tear to my eye the very first time I heard it back then, and just did again when it came on my FM radio.
YMMV

"Question of Balance" did that for me.

 

[mhardy6647]

except they don't

Touche. I should have written "operate", which is the sense of the verb "to work" that I intended to invoke.
No, they do not really "work" in the sense of efficacy. That has been known for a long time.

 

[Keith_W]

The "emotion in music" on the other hand logically can't be measured directly, because it's only the trigger rather than the emotion itself. You can test how different people react to different types of auditory stimuli, and find general tendencies. But it's not measuring the music.

Some time ago I watched a music lecturer talk about a composition. He said "the job of this E-flat note is to make this C note sound sad", and then he played those two notes. For hundreds of years now, composers know that certain combinations of notes played in succession or in chords will evoke a certain emotion. IMO this is best illustrated by Bach's C Major Prelude from Book 1 of the Well Tempered Klavier:

It's the same progression of 8 notes, repeated twice over and over, and it's justifiably famous. Note how the mood shifts from bright and fresh, to introspective, to dark, and finally to a really bleak place. Then it pulls itself out with some optimistic notes before a satisfying conclusion back to the home key.

Bach knew what effect those chords would produce, even if he did not have a modern understanding of frequency. But these days, we know that some notes are multiples of another note (i.e. a harmonic), and some are not. So 200Hz - 400Hz sounds "harmonic", but 200Hz - 311Hz lacks a common divisor and it would have a slightly disturbing quality. All these can be found in music theory lectures if one is interested.

So the emotional effect of music is certainly predictable, otherwise people wouldn't know how to write music. And if it is predictable, I would speculate that it should be measurable. How would you measure such a thing? I don't know, you would need to ask a music theorist to help you come up with such a measurement.

 

[RexrothPigeon]

So the emotional effect of music is certainly predictable, otherwise people wouldn't know how to write music. And if it is predictable, I would speculate that it should be measurable. How would you measure such a thing? I don't know, you would need to ask a music theorist to help you come up with such a measurement.

Musicologists study this stuff and my understanding is that it's almost completely culturally contingent--the "emotions" associated with, say, gamelan/dhrupad/gnawa pitch relationships don't bear any resemblance to those that have been established over the course of the European classical tradition.

 

[wadude]

Some time ago I watched a music lecturer talk about a composition. He said "the job of this E-flat note is to make this C note sound sad", and then he played those two notes. For hundreds of years now, composers know that certain combinations of notes played in succession or in chords will evoke a certain emotion. IMO this is best illustrated by Bach's C Major Prelude from Book 1 of the Well Tempered Klavier:

It's the same progression of 8 notes, repeated twice over and over, and it's justifiably famous. Note how the mood shifts from bright and fresh, to introspective, to dark, and finally to a really bleak place. Then it pulls itself out with some optimistic notes before a satisfying conclusion back to the home key.

Bach knew what effect those chords would produce, even if he did not have a modern understanding of frequency. But these days, we know that some notes are multiples of another note (i.e. a harmonic), and some are not. So 200Hz - 400Hz sounds "harmonic", but 200Hz - 311Hz lacks a common divisor and it would have a slightly disturbing quality. All these can be found in music theory lectures if one is interested.

So the emotional effect of music is certainly predictable, otherwise people wouldn't know how to write music. And if it is predictable, I would speculate that it should be measurable. How would you measure such a thing? I don't know, you would need to ask a music theorist to help you come up with such a measurement.

Aren’t many of our responses to music based on cultural conditioning? Music from other cultures or even genres may not have the same impact if the listener is not conditioned to it.

 

[Keith_W]

Musicologists study this stuff and my understanding is that it's almost completely culturally contingent--the "emotions" associated with, say, gamelan/dhrupad/gnawa pitch relationships don't bear any resemblance to those that have been established over the course of the European classical tradition.

I forgot to insert that point. I think it is independent of culture. Even as a Chinese (albeit a Western educated one) I can pick up all the emotions of Bach, who has probably never met a Chinese person. It's as universal as smiling. All cultures mean the same thing when they smile. And even dogs respond to music.

This is a famous Japanese melody from the Edo period. It is based on the Japanese pentatonic scale, so it would sound completely foreign to anyone used to the Western chromatic scale. Someone like @dualazmak or @kawauso would know it very well. I would be curious what they think of that piece, and compare it to what you think. "Sakura" means "cherry blossom". That tree does not bloom at all except for a short period in spring. If you wrote music about that, what do you think you would emphasize?

Here is another one, a Malay "kompang" drum with a "Canang" (pronounced "chanang") gong accompaniment. Sound like a celebration to you?

 

[RexrothPigeon]

That tree does not bloom at all except for a short period in spring. If you wrote music about that, what do you think you would emphasize?

I've probably read over 100 poems about cherry blossoms, and it turns out there are a lot of things they can emphasize and a lot of emotional responses they can evoke even if the most obvious thing (the rarity and ephemerality of life and beauty) is the one being emphasized. And poems, which use words, are a lot less abstract than even the most literalist music.

So I've landed on the view that beyond the most ham-handed, explicit emotional signals (I AM SAD NOW...NOW I AM ENRAGED...NOW I AM TRIUMPHANT), music is intractably polysemic and ineffable, which is great, otherwise it would be reduced to little more than a less-efficient alternative to words.

 

[Newman]

I think the above discussion about note sequences evoking emotion needs a caveat: it's talking about intention.

Wildly optimistic to say it will evoke. The individual response will be personal and very context-dependent.

Being told about the intention before listening to a selection, as per the video linked in post #2310, introduces an element of psychological suggestion that helps to create the predicted emotion, no matter what effect the music may have had without the priming.

Clearly there is jovial music and sad music and it would be rare to get them back to front, just like actors can cry or laugh with broadly different responses. But the audience is not on an emotional string.

And I assume this is being raised because there is some connection being made to what emotions audio gear can transmit, or amplify, or impede? If so, I would need to be persuaded of its existence.

cheers

 

[Ropeburn]

I think the above discussion about note sequences evoking emotion needs a caveat: it's talking about intention.

Wildly optimistic to say it will evoke. The individual response will be personal and very context-dependent.

Being told about the intention before listening to a selection, as per the video linked in post #2310, introduces an element of psychological suggestion that helps to create the predicted emotion, no matter what effect the music may have had without the priming.

Clearly there is jovial music and sad music and it would be rare to get them back to front, just like actors can cry or laugh with broadly different responses. But the audience is not on an emotional string.

And I assume this is being raised because there is some connection being made to what emotions audio gear can transmit, or amplify, or impede? If so, I would need to be persuaded of its existence.

cheers

That's the thing. When we're talking about musical structure itself, then the measurable audio reproduction quality really takes the backseat. If it's the chords and harmonies triggering the emotions, you can play a piece on a phone or any crappy speaker, even make it c64 music format - the musical structure itself will come over perfectly even with rather bad quality. There's a lot of metal in chiptune format for example, made with trackers, very technical and limited method. Or the original Doom soundtrack. That's famous for rocking hard , even when played on a silly sounding Soundblaster FM synthesizer.

Of course "the sound makes the music" is true at the same time. And that's very individual indeed. Difficult to even figure out general tendencies. Tastes and listening habits differ a lot.

 

[IPunchCholla]

Smiling is complicated.

Edit to add:

Roland Barthe’s Death of the Author is still, 25 years after I first read it and 60 years after its publication one of the most problematic (in the best way possible) pieces I’ve read as an artist.

 

[sqrl]

The emotion post was made about 5 years ago** Some post necromancy going on here.
**as was the "we need more slack" post.

Emotional lead wire. Enameled overseas 90-110 year-old wire, 70-80 year-old vintage pine resin solder, polished with tamahagane blades (used for Japanese swords).

Do you just listen to sounds? Or do you listen to the music carved onto your records?

 

[fpitas]

Emotional lead wire. Enameled overseas 90-110 year-old wire, 70-80 year-old vintage pine resin solder, polished with tamahagane blades (used for Japanese swords).

Gosh! They sure didn't teach us about all that stuff in engineering school

 

[Ropeburn]

Gosh! They sure didn't teach us about all that stuff in engineering school

Those silly engineers and so called smart and educated people, always dismissing the emotional impact of various materials. So narrow minded!