Brain and music researchers have discovered two reasons that sad songs can make us cry: One is they make us feel less alone; two, they can help create feelings of nostalgia for years gone by.
Huron and colleagues asked participants to assess 44 instruments’ ability to convey sadness using several acoustic features, including how easy or hard it was for each to produce a dark timbre, and what its lowest pitch could go down to.
Composers Use Mood Techniques
Music can evoke all manner of feelings, including sadness. Researches have discovered that various musical techniques can make songs sadder, including key, tempo, timbre and lyrics. Some effects may be more noticeable than others but each effect contributes to creating the overall atmosphere in a piece of music.
Minor keys tend to sound more serious and depressing than major keys; slow tempos evoke feelings of melancholy or regret; while lyrics have the power to influence how sad one feels about their song.
Composers employ these methods to craft music that has the emotional impact they desire, while other techniques help create contrast in their compositions. An all-loud or all-soft song may become repetitive over time; by contrast, one that contains elements from both sides sounds more interesting and meaningful.
Composers frequently use key changes to alter the mood of a song. A shift can sound like completely new melody – for instance, French folk tune “Frere Jacques” can sound both upbeat and mournful depending on its key setting; so composers may alter its key in order to change its feel.
Tempo and timbre are also effective ways for composers to convey emotion, with fast tempos associated with energy and excitement, while slow ones evoking somber or reflective feelings. Brighter tonality indicates happiness while darker ones could invoke sadness or fear.
Composers also employ lyrics as an effective tool. Sad lyrics can evoke various feelings such as anger, despair, and grief – including some of the most famous songs ever written such as Mozart’s Funeral March written as he knew he was dying of terminal illness.
Huron and colleagues conducted a recent study, in which undergraduate students evaluated instruments based on various acoustic features to gauge their capacity to convey sadness, such as whether it could easily produce low pitches, be made mumbling-sounding or have a dark timbre. According to this research, pitch-bending, mumbling and dark timbre accurately predicted an instrument’s sadness capacity.
Composers Change the Key
The key of a song can play an enormously influential role in its emotional atmosphere. Many composers employ different keys to evoke different feelings; for instance, slow minor keys tend to elicit sadness while major keys have more upbeat tones. Chord progressions and rhythm can also impact its mood; for instance, Frere Jacques can sound either happy or sad depending on which key it’s played in.
Musical genres tend to reflect one’s emotional state, so it comes as no surprise that certain songs tend to be more melancholic than others. Emo music, for instance, has long been considered sad due to its emotive lyrics and chord scales. Other styles that can also be very melancholy include folk, blues and classical.
Huron and colleagues conducted their study by asking participants to evaluate, through questionnaires, how often each of 44 instruments were being used to communicate sadness. Furthermore, participants were required to rate each instrument’s acoustic features — such as how easy it was to bend its pitch (i.e. play small intervals) and whether its sound reminded them of someone mumbling; also how low its lowest pitch could go.
Pitch-bending, mumbling and dark timbre were found to be highly associated with sadness capacity; because these three features correlated closely together, Huron and colleagues suggest they measure one underlying factor. Furthermore, all these features were associated with low energy which is considered one core feature of sadness in both speech and music.
Huron and colleagues may have chosen an insufficient method of investigation as their questionnaires invited participants to judge how often an instrument was being used to convey feelings of sadness, so the acoustic features they chose may not have been as reliable as other measurement techniques.
Composers Change the Tempo
Listening to music has the ability to alter our emotions; slower tempos are known to induce feelings of calmness and relaxation while faster ones can leave us feeling excited or agitated. Many composers choose slower rhythms when writing sad songs in order to create more melancholic atmospheres.
Timbre, key and loudness have all been shown to influence emotions through music, but tempo remains one of the primary means composers use to convey them. For instance, French folk song “Frere Jacques” sounds very upbeat when played in major key; however when performed in minor key it becomes significantly darker due to major keys’ tendency toward happiness while minor keys tend towards anger.
Huron and colleagues conducted a questionnaire study in which participants rated 44 instruments’ ability to convey sadness. After analyzing their results, they discovered that pitch-bending, mumbling, dark timbre, and lowest pitch were most strongly associated with an instrument’s perceived capacity for conveying sadness; their high correlation suggests they measure one factor underlying low physical energy levels.
However, this explanation is flawed: low physical energy is at the core of sadness as an emotion; secondly, it is difficult to imagine how the acoustic features measured by Huron and Anderson could capture this aspect. Therefore, future studies must investigate instruments’ capacity for conveying sadness using controlled sound examples and computational (music information retrieval) approaches.
Composers Change the Lyrics
Composers writing music sad fast mehrab often employ multiple techniques to craft emotive pieces. For instance, they could change keys, slow the tempo down or add more instruments for an ominous atmosphere – not forgetting lyrics which may add another level of interpretation of the piece.
Listen to both versions of “Frere Jacques.” One is quick and cheerful while the other sounds sadder and darker – which one makes you more emotional?
Researchers are studying how sad music can provide relief. They’ve discovered two primary strategies through which music can make us feel less alone and more understood.