Music has long been used as an effective means to express various emotions. Aside from tempo’s use in depicting feelings, other aspects such as melodies, timbre, harmonic structure and dynamics also help music convey feelings effectively.
Voxel-wise paired t-tests showed in our experiment that listening to sad music led to more profound mind-wandering than happy music, leading to increased activity in DMN nodes such as vmPFC, PCC and pIPL.
Modes
Music can evoke powerful emotional responses in its audience. Studies have demonstrated that certain pieces can cause feelings of both sadness and happiness in humans, with different modes of music serving to trigger these effects in specific songs. A song’s mode refers to its melodic structure and harmony – for instance in Western classical music this typically means tonic minor and major scales, chromatic scales, diminished scales – although these modes may also be found in jazz and other contemporary styles of music.
Low-pitched music played quietly can sound either fearful or happy depending on its timbre, tempo and mode. Participants in the present study were asked to relax while listening to short musical pieces with either sad or happy tones; sad music led to greater mind-wandering than its happy counterpart, in line with prior research33 regarding spontaneous cognition and music that revealed increased mind-wandering when external emotional stimuli are presented.
Experiment 1A suggests that increased mind-wandering during sad music may not simply be due to lower enjoyment levels; it may also reflect increased activation in core nodes of the DMN. Therefore, future research on music and spontaneity should investigate whether certain cognitive indices (e.g. meta-awareness) can be tied back to DMN activity to discern between effects of arousal and emotion on mind-wandering.
To further examine the role of arousal in our findings, we conducted Experiment 1A again with a smaller sample size. Here participants rated their experiences of mind-wandering and meta-awareness while listening to sad or happy slow music pieces with matching beats per minute but differing tempos; results demonstrated how emotion combined with tempo has an influence over mind-wandering; in particular a greater amount of mind-wandering occurred with sad than happy slow music pieces.
Tempo
Tempo is the speed at which music is performed, measured in beats per minute (BPM). Tempo can have an influence on the emotional component of songs; however, melody, timbre and harmony also impact how one perceives songs; for example a slow-paced melody can still convey sadness if played at an appropriate tempo to express what’s needed in its lyrics.
Studies conducted in the past have demonstrated that musical pieces characterized by fast tempos and major modes increase levels of arousal and happiness while those composed in minor modes decrease them; this led to what has come to be known as the “arousal-mood” hypothesis, which states that composition mode combined with tempo leads to different emotions being experienced during listening sessions.
The Arousal-Mood Hypothesis attempts to explain why people like certain genres of music more than others. But, according to this research, other factors, such as tempo, may also play a part in people seeking variety when selecting music for themselves. Furthermore, experiment results demonstrated how Arousal Level modifies this relationship between background music tempo and mind-wandering.
Experiment 1A suggested that music with a slow tempo was associated with higher levels of mind-wandering than happy music of equal tempo. To verify this theory, we repeated Experiment 1A by having participants listen to happy and sad music matched for number of beats per minute but differing in tempo while rating their level of mind-wandering and meta-awareness. Furthermore, we provided an additional control condition in which participants simply listened to 10 minutes of silence – our results revealed that slow sad music produced greater levels of mind-wandering than happy slow music as well as no music condition conditions. Results confirmed this finding.
Timbre
Timbre is one of the key musical characteristics that express emotions through music, and is one of the key ways in which instruments convey them. Timbre refers to an instrument’s unique sound; for instance, piano and trumpet both may produce the same note, yet their timbres differ dramatically; for example a piano has more delicate and brighter tones while trumpet has louder tones with deeper tones; this gives each musical composition its individual identity.
Timbre can be controlled by altering either its frequency composition or pitch, musical instruments can produce various timbres by playing them using different techniques; for instance, playing flute produces softer high-frequency frequencies than brass instruments do, and thus is used more commonly as an emotional trigger than brass instruments are. Timbre influences emotions as much as harmonic structure or rhythm do when considering emotional impact of music pieces.
Musical timbre can also be known as tone quality or tone color and can be described by words such as dark, harsh and smooth. Psychoacoustic tools such as spectrograms and timbre analyzers may also help analyze its characteristics.
Huron and colleagues conducted several questionnaire studies to investigate the role of timbre in emotion perception. For Study 1, graduate music students were asked to assess 44 instruments’ ability to evoke sadness using knowledge and past experience; researchers also had them rate which acoustic features they thought best communicated emotion, such as playing notes slowly or quietly, bending pitch intervals, “mumbling” sound effects or producing lowest pitch pitches.
Harmony
Harmony is a musical term that refers to the combination of different sounds played at once, such as voices or musical instruments. Harmony plays an essential part in music as it creates emotions ranging from tranquil and soothing to energetic and intense; additionally it helps add structure and structure a piece of music.
There are various forms of harmony, including parallel and oblique forms. Parallel harmony repeats identical notes at an equal interval while oblique has differing intervals between notes; both structures help add texture and depth to pieces of music, depending on rhythm, tempo and key considerations.
Harmonies are used as an effective way of building tension, creating drama and cultivating emotion through music. Acoustic songs with clear voices or instruments allow this effect to shine especially effectively; additionally, when performed as part of a group effort by several individuals they can also foster feelings of unity and togetherness that transcend genre distinctions; from classical to pop harmony can be found all across genre boundaries.
Harmony is the blending of simultaneous sounds with differing pitch or quality to form chords in music, whether performed by voices or musical instruments, that evoke a wide range of emotional responses and can even be found in religious music such as church hymns. Harmony has long been linked with ancient philosophy such as Stoicism which emphasizes living in accord with nature rather than trying to control it.