Joe Moore
7/19/2013
Phil 109
Emotion in Music
I chose this puzzle because I am sort of a musician and I really love music. I think it’s one of my favorite things to do whether playing or listening to music and it is interesting to discuss emotion and music. As a musician I feel like the reason people enjoy music and when I am enjoying it the most is because it causes a person to feel their emotions and to get lost in their emotions and imagination. I think to me the way I feel or the way a song appeals to my emotions. The more I am feeling what the song is saying the more I enjoy it, get out of it, and when I am playing the better I do. It’s like when I am full of emotion laying or singing music I will hit a note or play something I never thought I could. This last Module we discussed many different theories of music, and this got me thinking more about music with and without emotion and what that says about music. I want to go over the three different theories I learned about, and which if any holds the most truth and what I think about emotion in music.
The first theory we learned about is called the Contour and Convention theory of music. It discusses the idea of “convention”, a good example of this would be the horn that is played at a military funeral. Most people have heard this noise played in films or in real life. Therefore if when we hear this sound we think of sadness, death, loss or know that this is what that sound means. It also discusses the idea of “Contour”, which I thought is an interesting idea and that it makes sense. Contour is the idea that some sounds represent the “shape” of a feeling. An example of this would be a fast loud low guitar riff would usually be considered angry, or aggressive. An example our professor used was the example of major and minor chords. Major chords sound full and certain and remind most people of happiness, while minor chords sound dissonant, uncertain, sad, or confused. Something as simple as one sound can cause us to feel, or importantly make us think of an emotion it conveys. So basically something’s remind us of feelings while other things sound like feelings or both together. The important part of this theory is that it believes that a person does not need to feel an emotion in order to understand the emotion a song is trying to say. A person could hear a sound and say that sounds sad without necessarily feeling the sadness of the notes.
The next two theories are very different from the first. They are different because their main belief is that a person does, and does need to feel an emotion of a song to understand what emotion the song is saying. They differ in the way that they believe a person feels an emotion while listening to music. The two different theories are named Indirect Arousal theory and Direct Arousal theory.
Indirect arousal theory focuses on the idea that a person feels emotion through music but not an emotion completely. They believe that when a person hears a song they somewhat imagine themselves as a character of the song or imagine themselves feeling the emotion the song is conveying. An example of this is a person hears a very angry or sad song. The might feel anger or sadness but they’re not completely overcome with anger or sadness. If a person hears a song about someone’s parents dying they will most likely feel sad and involved in the story, but in real life if this happened the sadness would be far greater and less enjoyable. They believe that by imagining this feeling we feel a low level pleasurable version of the feeling.
Direct Arousal disagrees with the Indirect Arousal about how a person feels emotion when listening to music. They believe that a person could be putting no thought into a song at all but still feel the emotion. They believe that the emotion comes before the story, characters, or thoughts. They believe people feel on an instinctual level emotions and feelings and this gives us the state of mind when we listen to music, not the other way around. Theorists of Direct Arousal think that noises give us certain primitive responses such as tension, nervousness, relaxation, surprise, etc. and we feel these feelings when listening to music. Music is a state of emotional tension and emotional release.
In my opinion when dealing with these theories I am not sure if one is more right than any other. I think I have experienced all three of these or a mix of the three. I believe that at times, I am very involved in the emotion and feeling of a song. This could happen when I am not thinking about anything and just feeling the song, or when I am thinking of something specific or what the song is saying. I also think at times I don’t feel the feeling of a song depending on what I am doing or how much I enjoy the song, but still can understand what the song is saying. I think that at times I have heard a song and really felt it and enjoyed it, then after reading the lyrics or, by hearing something I don’t like in it I will emotionally back-off from it. I also think that if I already am in a strong mood or am preoccupied by something I won’t feel the feeling of the song like I would if I was more focused. I think when our defenses are down or we are focused in the song we will feel the emotion more, sometimes it just hits you and you don’t need to know anything about the song. Other times it doesn’t I think it depends a lot on the person, and the environment. I think that I sometimes will feel the feeling of a song and then I will think about what it means or know what it is trying to say. Other time I won’t or I might be feeling a different emotion from the song, because of something that is going on around me or because the song reminds me of something else but I still can decipher what the song means or the emotion is trying to say. I think that people can experience a mix of all of these theories when it comes to music, but I think that music out of all the arts hits you emotionally at an instinctive level more than others. I think this happen because it doesn’t take as much thought or sometimes none to feel what a song is saying because it is kind of acting on you whether you want it to or not, unlike a painting were a person needs to really sit and think about and study it before they can understand its feeling or meaning. I think the more emotionally invested you are in a song the more you will appreciate it and think about it, but this doesn’t mean you must feel the songs emotion to understand what it is saying or appreciate it.
