Emotions to Music

@Philly CS,

harmony isnt used in indian music-i missed it very much at first, it was what i enjoyed most in music, but i survived. what is really funny is when they use electric keyboards that come with those chord buttons and dont know what to do with them-terrible things happen that make my head hurt.
so if the theory is that before the keyboard a single person couldnt do harmony, why didnt it get learned in india after the foreigners introduced keyboards? they have been here now for hundreds of years but no one uses harmony...

@salima,

salima;77362 wrote:

no one uses harmony...

Applying a minor/deficiency on one side of the equation, evokes a major/proficiency to fill the non-sequitur.

Accord contains discord in the set, so what Indians may lack in aesthetic harmonies, they make up for in other necessities.

@salima,

salima;77362 wrote:

so if the theory is that before the keyboard a single person couldnt do harmony, why didnt it get learned in india after the foreigners introduced keyboards? they have been here now for hundreds of years but no one uses harmony...

I play the sitar which supplies a sort of harmony thanks to the 12 sympathetic strings - or through twinning up with a tambura to provide bassy root notes and grooves - though it isn't harmony as in chords traditionally employed.

Westernised Indian music, such as Bollywood songs do tend to use a lot of western-style harmony - but Indian folk and classical music tends to concentrate on drones to form a bedrock of sound and then utilises the wider range of recognised notes and rhythms to texturise the music and individualise the piece. I suspect that Indian classical or folk musicians simply prefer to utilise melodies that sound complex to Western ears in favour of chord voicings due to tradition, mostly.

I'm sure people could do harmony before the keyboard - such as on a lyre or lute (of which the sitar is a sort) but the keyboard really facilitates it in an easy manner.

I think when western harmonies are combined with Indian melody and rhythm you get some very impressive results, such as this:

YouTube - Cornershop - Spectral Mornings 1/2

@Philly CS,

someone once explained not using harmony or justified it by saying (and i mean someone who was a highly accomplished performer of classical indian music) that we can only truly distinguish one sound at a time anyway. and it may be true that when two pitches are played in harmony we dont really hear them as two individual notes but a blend. in indian music, rather than classical, i like the very old traditional music that i have heard played for weddings by those village people who seem not to have been affected by the foreign influence. where i live most wedding music is drums only, but that in itself can be wonderful.

@Philly CS,

If you really want to know what I'm talking about with this post, clear your mind. I found two very sad songs, and I'd like to share them with you all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMx2SKIRkw4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qggxTtnKTMo

Now, think about this. The first one actually brings out emotions through pure sound. That's amazing. The second one, you have to really listen to until the very last second, to know why it's a sad song. In fact, you don't even have to listen to the first couple verses. But they're both really amazing, and I believe they bring out two different kinds of sadness.

The first one brings out sadness that you can control, and you actually kind of like it. It's fun because you can switch in and out of being sad, or at least, that's how it works for that songs relation to my mind.

The second one is a really sad story, and you just feel amazing sorry for the guy in the song.

I know this isn't a great discussion-debate thing, but these songs are great. Please listen to both of them.

@Quinn phil,

Quinn;111098 wrote:

If you really want to know what I'm talking about with this post, clear your mind. I found two very sad songs, and I'd like to share them with you all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMx2SKIRkw4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qggxTtnKTMo

Now, think about this. The first one actually brings out emotions through pure sound. That's amazing. The second one, you have to really listen to until the very last second, to know why it's a sad song. In fact, you don't even have to listen to the first couple verses. But they're both really amazing, and I believe they bring out two different kinds of sadness.

The first one brings out sadness that you can control, and you actually kind of like it. It's fun because you can switch in and out of being sad, or at least, that's how it works for that songs relation to my mind.

The second one is a really sad story, and you just feel amazing sorry for the guy in the song.

I know this isn't a great discussion-debate thing, but these songs are great. Please listen to both of them.

It is interesting. Are sad songs just called "sad" because they arouse sadness in listeners, or are they called sad because they themselves are sad? I don't, of course, mean that the songs themselves feel sad. That is silly. But what I am trying to say is there is something about the music that is, itself sad (a minor key, say)? It isn't sad just because it causes people to feel sad when they listen to it.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;111101 wrote:

It is interesting. Are sad songs just called "sad" because they arouse sadness in listeners, or are they called sad because they themselves are sad? I don't, of course, mean that the songs themselves feel sad. That is silly. But what I am trying to say is there is something about the music that is, itself sad (a minor key, say)? It isn't sad just because it causes people to feel sad when they listen to it.

Exactly. It's musical theory kind of stuff. My music teacher one day before class started, grabbed a guitar and told us all to listen. He told us that's he would only play four chords, (C, F, G, and D). He played them in about ten different ways, and it was amazing. Each time he played it, a different emotion came around. Minors created sadness, majors created open-ness, quite-ness made us want to listen (etc...)

It was really cool, and I believe that music may be on an equal with words in terms of bringing out emotion, in some circumstances.

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;111101 wrote:

It is interesting. Are sad songs just called "sad" because they arouse sadness in listeners, or are they called sad because they themselves are sad? I don't, of course, mean that the songs themselves feel sad. That is silly. But what I am trying to say is there is something about the music that is, itself sad (a minor key, say)? It isn't sad just because it causes people to feel sad when they listen to it.

I don't understand. What would it mean to say that the music was sad, except that it invoked sadness upon listening to it?

@Quinn phil,

Quinn;111103 wrote:

Exactly. It's musical theory kind of stuff. My music teacher one day before class started, grabbed a guitar and told us all to listen. He told us that's he would only play four chords, (C, F, G, and D). He played them in about ten different ways, and it was amazing. Each time he played it, a different emotion came around. Minors created sadness, majors created open-ness, quite-ness made us want to listen (etc...)

It was really cool, and I believe that music may be on an equal with words in terms of bringing out emotion, in some circumstances.

But I was wondering not about the emotion brought out in listeners, but about the music itself. Can the music itself be sad music without reference to how it makes listeners feel?

@kennethamy,

kennethamy;111106 wrote:

But I was wondering not about the emotion brought out in listeners, but about the music itself. Can the music itself be sad music without reference to how it makes listeners feel?

Oh yeah.

Say you had a banjo playing off tune chords, and I guy making silly noises in the background. And every five seconds he would yell "YEEHAW!" But the guy singing is singing about some stuff like, "I set my baby down on the counter table; he climbed into the blender, didn't know he was able; I put the food in, and it all seemed stable; I pressed the on button and went to go watch some cable.

A baby died in this song, but if I were listening to it, I'd be 'lmao'ing. If it were a true story though, imagine the father looking into the blender, seeing his babies insides trifled. Seeing his baby dead. It's a sad song, but it doesn't invoke sadness upon hearing it.

@Quinn phil,

Quinn;111108 wrote:

Oh yeah.

Say you had a banjo playing off tune chords, and I guy making silly noises in the background. And every five seconds he would yell "YEEHAW!" But the guy singing is singing about some stuff like, "I set my baby down on the counter table; he climbed into the blender, didn't know he was able; I put the food in, and it all seemed stable; I pressed the on button and went to go watch some cable.

A baby died in this song, but if I were listening to it, I'd be 'lmao'ing. If it were a true story though, imagine the father looking into the blender, seeing his babies insides trifled. Seeing his baby dead. It's a sad song, but it doesn't invoke sadness upon hearing it.

I was really talking about the music, not the words.

@Philly CS,

What do you mean then? How could the music of a song be sad, barring the idea that sad songs invoke sadness on other people?

@Quinn phil,

Quinn;111112 wrote:

What do you mean then? How could the music of a song be sad, barring the idea that sad songs invoke sadness on other people?

Well, that's exactly what I was asking. I'll give you an example from the kind of music I am familiar with. Tchikowski's 5th symphony, which is in a low minor key, and the music itself yearns and cries. Or so it seems to me (and others who comment on it). It seems to me sad music apart from the emotions it invokes in people.

@Philly CS,

Philly_CS;62672 wrote:

An interesting question sprang up into my mind just the other day while I was listening to some music. It seems like a given fact that music can induce emotions within the listeners. However, combined with various packets dealing with metaphysics and some pieces of knowledge I had of the mind, I had quite a difficult time trying to figure out why we feel the way we feel when we listen to music.

So, the basic question boils out to this: Where do you think the emotions we get from listening to music come from?

Notice how the sound of nails scratching the blackboard can make everyone in the classroom just drop. Also notice how jazz music seems to appeal to a certain kinds of people while it repels the other ones. Why and how do you think the same genre, the same song can elicit different reactions?

I've become interested in this subject, and found some interesting recent neurological research on the web. However, I was surprised to find that current research on the effects of music has led far beyond emotions and moods.

Neurologists are using objective scans to ascertain how music stimulates different areas of the brain. Music has recently been successfully used in rehabilitating stroke patients who previously could not speak or walk, patients with Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, and some with brain injuries. Not to mention, of course, moods, emotions, and mental illnesses including schizophrenia.

In some cases, brain scans indicated that when some critical neural pathways were traumatized or destroyed, music could sometimes stimulate neurons in other areas of the brain and create an alternate pathway for the critical neural transmission. In at least one case, neurologists were surprised to find that an area of the brain stimulated by music was actually able to assume a lost function normally handled by another part of the brain (which had been destroyed).

Music's neurological and psychological effects on the brain are becoming real hot-spots for research. It boggles the mind to think of the possibilities, and the degree to which music can affect us in so many ways.

rebecca

@Philly CS,

Emotion is tied to all of our senses. It comes through taste, touch, smell, and what we hear. I think emotion is a spirit. It is subjective by how we process it through our memories and personal opinions.

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