Music experiment: Sends shivers down your spine, makes your hair stand up

Oh dear God. I'm ashamed to admit this... but .....

Kelly Clarkson
A moment like this

The part where she takes the chorus up, I think it's called an octave? Plus, I watched the entire season of American Idol and watched her progress each week.
But that part gave me goose bumps and gave me the feels.

I just came across this theory in the last day or so:
Scholar explores mystery of the ‘music-evoked frisson’

I don't have any specific song that does it for me that I can recall right this minute. However, when I hear Spanish Guitar played live, I experience a ‘music-evoked frisson.’

That might give you an interesting place to start.

ETA: How are you analyzing these pieces of music? Are you collecting massive data sets and using some kind of transform (like FFT) to isolate common patterns?

-dex

3:25 - 3:46

a reply to: verschickter
When I was a kid I had this recurring nightmare, nothing much visually I can remember, just a dizzying ominous feeling of death, the end of the world and a metallic taste in my mouth like copper. I remembered that recurring nightmare while awake listening to Samuel Barber's Overture to The School for Scandal, it starts at about 4:21... a bit shocked, goose bumps and all when it happened in my 20's. I was at home in the bedroom listening. It all came flooding back.

If not for Barber's piece, I could've forgotten that recurring nightmare. Why this particular piece and very particular part of Barber's composition, about 10 seconds worth?
Why not Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht, Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, any song from The Dillinger Escape Plan's album Calculating Infinity or any track from the Dark Sanctuary's discography?

a reply to: verschickter

This scene from The Double Life Of Veronique (1991)



Every. Single. Time.

The music is Concerto In Mi Mineur Version De 1798 by the fictional (!) composer Van Den Budenmayer but actually written by Zbigniew Preisner.

I start having frissons when the first singer starts at 0:35 they intensify when the second singer takes over at 0:55 and intensify again when the first singer joins her at 1:13. I keep having them until the second singer collapses and dies from heart failure at about 3:05.

It works to a lesser degree with the music alone but the combined emotional impact of knowing the movie's story together with watching this scene takes it to a different level.

I am definitely not alone as somebody else wrote in their review of the movie:

le watching this scene for the first time I wondered:

Which long dead composer produced this marvellous piece of music?
It literally sent shivers up my spine a dozen times in a matter of seconds!

link

you are describing ASMR, Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response. It is a thing. Despite the youtube variants that cash in on it. Where certain things, sounds, repetitive noises, even movements of another, create a tingle in your spine, scalp, and in some, their entire body. I've felt it my entire life, and only within the last 4-5 years has it been a thing. No one was ever willing to say "Hey, keep doing that, makes me all tingly!" to a stranger, so we never mentioned it, thinking it was only us.

But the many varied ways it has been expressed, it is music that we allow it to be spoken about.

It is, in my opinion, a varied thing. As in, some people can find certain noises infuriating, to the point of extreme anger. Misophonia. Which I also suffer. But the opposite, is a noise, mundane, unintended, repetitive.. which can lull you into a state of bliss.

With the youtube things, it's now been monopolised, monetised and made into a niche. It doesn't work like that. Yet still, some artists can indeed create that sensation. Usually very pretty ladies, with soft whispers and long fingernails. which creates the impression in those who fail to understand ASMR, that it's sexual.. a corruption of it. One chick even cashed in on it, sullied the rest of her work.

I find it best in things unintentional. And the public is very good at unintentional tingles for a weirdo like me

Music, not a lot. Unless I am already emotionally attached to an artist.

a reply to: MaxTamesSiva

You can hear the metallic taste in that. And the ominousness of it.

I had a similar tune, one that would always elicit something. Something I didn't want to understand, both intoxicating yet wondrous. Passing between wanting and letting go. I still find this piece, in that place. And it took me years to find it, only ever hearing it in passing, where the mind wants to know but fate refuses it.

I little update..

The emails begin to trickle in.

I need to change some stuff in the code so it get´s easier for me to extract the image for you to see. Also I need to label the axis (y = frequency, x = time) but somewhere something bad happens because the panel I´m drawing on quits on me with an red X sometimes and the debugger won´t give me the exception. I think it´s in the pain event somewhere.

So I guess the next hours I´m going to debug this because it´s frustrating when you´ve finished the sampling and then you snip the graphic with the snipping tool, the panel quits on you. Currently I have to resample to whole thing when that happens..

It happens more often when a YT video is playing on any screen but is visible.

a reply to: BeefNoMeat
Like I said, those that I have to track down manually are queued until I have more time. I´ll get to it eventually, but the I appreciate the help.

I'd have to say 'Midnight Walker', by Davey Spillane;



From the very beginning,

amazing grace
right at the beginning

a reply to: SummerRain
What's weird about it is after that particular passage, the piece transitioned into something like a positive resolve, which is... kinda pleasant, not like a Wagnerian fanfare of terror with all the trumpets or a string cacophony from Penderecki's threnody.

a reply to: IgnoranceIsntBlisss

I have no idea what this thread is about, but that was funny!!

I have no particular musical score to share, but a little insight into how music can evoke an emotional response I learned from music theory classes.

Generally speaking, an ascending scale or chord progression can evoke a feeling of elevation or conversely a descending scale can do the opposite.

Atonal harmonies, ie. harmonies based on the whole tone scale or the chromatic scale, can evoke feelings of fear or dread and were considered demonic or satanic harmonies in the past. It should be noted that the major scale and triad harmonies (modes) are very similar to the harmonic overtone series found in nature. This indicates to me that the natural harmony of the overtone series is more soothing to the human emotional response, whereas the atonal harmonies are considered discord or dissonance.

ETA: Because overtones that are harmonically phased will become enhanced, when a three part harmony is perfectly vocalized, a forth phantom voice will materialize.

The major scale contains the corresponding minor scales three steps below the octave of the major scale. If a happy melody is transposed from a major scale into a minor scale, the emotions evoked can be changed in to sadness. For example if the happy birthday song is transposed into a minor key, it becomes ominous and sad versus joyous.

ETA: Another consideration is the base frequency of the music. Standard tuning has "A" tuned to 440Hz, whereas some schools of thought believe that a 432Hz base tuning is more natural and soothing to the human emotional response. I haven't looked much into this theory but here is a quote and a link.

What is 432 Hz tuning? A=432 Hz, known as Verdi’s ‘A’ is an alternative tuning that is mathematically consistent with the universe. Music based on 432Hz transmits beneficial healing energy, because it is a pure tone of math fundamental to nature.

432 Hz tuning

I feel so close by calvin harris... At electric daisy carnival in Las Vegas 2013. Played it extended for like 7 minutes, thousands of fireworks going off. Surrounded by my best friends.

Above & beyond- a thing called love. Also at EDC, we were uh, under the influence of psychedelics, but during the song i got this warm rush run over me, my friend looked back at the same time with that look like, Yo you feel that? Yup wtf was that. Getting the chills writing about it

Pompeii-(audien remix) a month after my mom died I heard this at mysteryland and started bawling my eyes out, yet felt so good.

Odesza this year at minus zero in Vermont, it was snowing and a million lasers were going off it was so beautiful. Cried 2-3 times, probably the best I've ever felt in my life. Please check this out m.youtube.com...# i shed a tear every time i watch, just thinking of the way I felt during it, i have watched over 300 times and just got chills and emotional.

Cool subject and several songs came to mind immediately, some parts from childhood that stuck with me to this day such as:
-Hendrix All Along Watchtower Slide part of solo 2:00-2:15 I notice slide guitar has a chilling effect at times in general
-Fly Like An Eagle 3:15 - 3:35 overall ambience and lift
-Doors, Riders In The Storm 4:28 - 4:36 the keyboard run
-In The Air Tonight intro, 0:0 - 0:14 ambience
-Band On The Run guitar bridge - 2:15 - 2:20

Female vocals give me da chills too, especially Sarah McLachlan
-Arms of the Angel 1:01 - 1:26
-I Love You 1:34 - 2:06
-Edie Brickell Air of December 2:05 - 2:12
-Edie Brickell Circle 1:44 - 1:50
-First Aid Kit Cedar Lane 3:44 - 4:02

Other vocalists
-Jeff Buckley Hallelujah 5:57 to end, that high note fade out
-Temple of the Dog(Chris Cornell RIP)Times of Trouble 0:21 -0:56 voice and ambience

Instrumental/vocals
-Pink Floyd Breathe 1:30 - 1:57 and 2:30 - 2:42
-Zeppelin In the Light Intro 0:0 - 1:37 crazy ass keys and delay

1:32 - 2:18 I guess just analyze the first eight bars after 1:32 though...

Still gives me the chills after all these years...

Not the best audio quality I'm afraid.

a reply to: verschickter

It sounds (no pun) like a very interesting pursuit. I didn't realise the 'goosebumps' and 'frisson' (thanks oriondc) were only felt by half the population as I had assumed, through experience, that everyone gets it from time to time. Three types of music seem like good candidates to look into due to their well established 'uplifting effects.' Classical music is a no-brainer and it's been tickling people's senses for many decades in concert halls. The other two are rock/metal and some of the best club music.

'Big tunes' in clubs have been creating euphoria for masses of people, but they're not all as famous as some of the legendary rock classics. Here are 50 greatest guitar solos and the Top 10 (or so) are probably enough. Tracks like Stairway to Heaven and Lynyrd Skynrd's Freebird have solos that have moved people for 40 odd years and more.

There's been a few this year and the one that pops in my mind first is a combo by Dirty Three and Nick Cave. The violin guy hit all my buttons and created a visceral, emotional response that included 'frisson' for the first few times I played it.