Human perception and emotional reaction to musical tones??...lame tital but an INTERESTING question

Ok....

This is gonna be a rubbish post, (because im quite tired and want to get this down), but (i think) a VERY interesting question.

I was just playing my guitar and letting my mind wander as i usually do, and i was thinking about the "sound" of the notes and started concentrating on my "perception" of these notes........

This got me thinking......

At WHAT level do we percieve these notes and there quality, in the way they make us feel....with regards to mood, minor notes sounding "sad" against the major notes sounding "happy".

I am a great follower of bruce cathie, john keely, Cymatics etc., so i have an understanding (or some may call it a point of view) of geometric wave forms and thier affect on the human concsiousness.

But what is it about that collection of frequencies (minor/major notes) that makes us respond in an emotional way.

I did a silly experiment......i "moaned" in disappointment to myself , and then sighed in satisfaction to my self and said "yes" in a positive manner.

I realised that, against eachother, they sounded Minor and Major respectively.

So is our perception of music/tones governed by the evolution of a universally "agreed" selection of tones designed for social interaction.

If anyone has the answer, that would be GREAT!!!

if not, i would appreciate ANY ideas our dilligent ATSers care to offer

PEACE my friends

[edit on 7-3-2007 by Anomic of Nihilism]
Edited to correct my inevitable mistakes

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My apologies for misplacing this thread.

MODS.......

Ive been abit of a door-Knob, can someone move this to the correct forum...

Thanx

Sorry again

I found this little snippet of information, certainly seems to be a hard topic to look up, s'pose yer just have to know what "key" words/phrases to type in.

Fragments of classical music were submitted to 80 subjects, 40 children 9 to 10 years old and 40 adults 19 to 29 years old who were divided into eight groups of ten, to induce feelings of happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. The task required linking each piece of music to one emotion, identifying at the same time the intensity of the emotional response on a scale of 1 to 3. The goal was to study how gender, age, and exposure or expertise related to emotional perceptions of music. Analysis showed (a) experts in music and nonexperts ascribed similar emotions to pieces of music, (b) there was no difference in emotional response to music by gender, although women linked to music stronger emotions of anger than girls, (c) children perceived greater feeling of happiness in music and less feeling of anger than adults, and (d) emotions of anger and fear in music were often confused with one another.

SOURCE

Musical tones can play a big part in our moods. I myself play guitar, drums and piano. I also think it can be vice versa as when im feeling down i find myself playing the blues in a slow sad kinda way without even thinking about it.

However musical tones do play a big part hence TV advertisments, Movies etc etc. Companys use quite a lot of time getting the song, tune, tone just right to affect you in the same way as they are projecting on the screen.

Noise can be just as captivating as visual to our inner mind and i suppose we are all actively listening even when we think we are not.

I had a good program on tones that really do affect moods etc ill see if i can find it and you can try them yourself

Here it is. It can be downloaded within a minute free of charge

have a good set of headphones on as its best in stereo and listen to some of these and see how they can affect moods/feelings etc

www.bwgen.com...





[edit on 7-3-2007 by thesaint]

Hi there Saint...

Would you by chance be talking about the Brain Wave Generator?

I have played around with this quite abit, had some very (i say "some",but it was more "one" significant one,with a few littler ones here and there) interesting exeriences with that, AFTER i learnt to not find some of the tones extremely distracting.

If its not that of which you speak, i'd be very interested to know what you are talking about.



[edit on 7-3-2007 by Anomic of Nihilism]

same time writting post

Yeah, that stuff is very interesting,

But what d'you reckon the "universal agreement" is that means I could play the same piece to a MILLION (obviously without exaggerating) people on this earth, they would all be able to percieve wether it was a happy or sad tune.

Strange when you think that it is meerly a wave frequency, that we would need by design, a recognition of notes to induce an emotional responce.

Does this meen that the concept of music and/or the "structure" of music is/was somehow "built-in" to our evolutionary path?

If so, how? Was is some how percieved by nature that that is the next "necessary" step in social and CULTURAL interaction, evolving from "howling" together as Apes.

And if so, why does EVERY human recognise tones with an EMOTIONAL reponce.

It suggests to me that it is somehow linked with our Basic "entonement" when we speek.

I cant really think of another reason for its "abstract" existence, and yet its not so "abstract", as "emotions" are chemical and therefore PHYSICAL reactions to a medium which is osillating at specific frequency.



[edit on 7-3-2007 by Anomic of Nihilism]

I dont know how to put it technically but i believe all matter including us humans are billions and billions of atoms/molecules vibrating at certain frequencies. Obviously we humans are vibrating at a different frequency to a lump of iron or a blade of grass. Therefore i believe its not the musical tone but more the vibration within that tone that alters our vibration of matter.

If its a comforting mix of vibrations then we feel good and if its a total Positive/Negative mix of vibrations we can feel bad as it alters our vibrational structure.

Its sort of going out on a spiritual thinking mission explaining it that way but i suppose thats where "Being in tune with your surroundings" comes into things

Ever heard of the "devils interval" C_F#?
This is interesting.........


www.lightbridgemusic.com...

I too play and believe that we are hard wired to react to certain frequencies.

My band has driven an audience into a trancendental frenzy with the right combinations of power chords and tribal rhythms.

Edited to add...
The Devils Interval eh, VERY interesting, thanx for that, a nice read before i go to bed.Another interesting snippit of info is that: The CORRECT mathematical note of (A) is 438Hz, this was changed to 440Hz in the late 1800s(80s or 90s) by the French scientific union..something or other(cant remember what its called....the one that hold the wieghts apon which all others are measured)....
....This was due to Oprah singers "shredding" thier vocal chords on the 438Hz (A) note. Powerful stuff. It is also interesting to note that in the Great Pyramid, the Kings chamber is tuned to the key of MATHEMATICALLY CORRECT 438Hz, and the Coffer resonates at the MATHEMATICALLY CORRECT 349Hz (F), they new ALOT about Cymatics in those days, and without ANY of our fancy modern equipment




to Saint...
.... can i just say that i think you and me are deffinately on the same "wave length" (please forgive the unavoidable pun ) with regards to how we percieve the nature of existance.

I came across a very interesting site that ill post later when ive find it, that showed the equivalent frequency of sound to light/colour.

i think the its something like 7^14 octaves up is where you reach the equivilent "colour" frequency, I think red is F#, Green is middle C etc.

Perception is a VERY powerful thing.

I can understand a colour have an emotional effect due to life experiences...

Red to hot
Blue to cold
yellow to summery
etc. etc.

and i know we also have abstract emotional responses too colours, such as

Red to Angry
Blue to calm
Pink to PUKE...(sorry, couldn't resist )

But what are our life long, and even GENERATIONS long experiences that govern our perception of music.

with colour we have PHYSICAL experiences (most of the time) to compair these to, but SOUND does not come from a physical experience, it CREATES a physical experience wich is an emotional responce, (kinda goes with idea of WAVES/vibrations being what "sculptures" reality).

But in our experiences through life, we dont "hear" a minor pentatonic scale and then something "sad" happens, or here a major chord and the sun comes out.

So theres the thing, what makes every human grow up with the same emotional perception of tones/notes without the need for experience, unlike the "Red to Hot" senario.

Interesting topic, deffinately seems to touch on the nature of reality, in perticular our PERCEPTION of that reality,SEEMINGLY pre-designed for our "interactions" with eachother? Or maybe designed for musical appreciation, which would be evolution jumping "ahead" of its self....which suggest an "all pervaiding consciousness" at work.....

Anyway, im going to bed now, but ill do some digging tomorrow and post my findings.

Anyone e;se have any ideas, feel free to chuck 'em in

PEACE

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