HOW DO YOU MAKE SENSE OF THE EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF MUSIC? Please also include your faith or non-faith tradition.

Question

These are some interesting theories. Personally, I think it is partially, at least, a combination of association (a sound reminds of an earlier experience), socialization (we've come to think socially of major chords as happy and minor chords as sad), and an essential rhythmic and tonal connection between ourselves and our world that music recapitulates.

However, I'm not allowed on Y!A to answer my own question, so I'll let the community have a chance to take a stab at it.

Answer 1

I think it affects our subconcience.

I am a Pagan-ey type person.

Answer 2

I think we associate music with emotions and situations. This happens both consciously ("the song that was playing during our last spring break in high school") and subconsciously ("a melody that sounds sort of familiar, but I can't place exactly where"). This is why theme songs to classic movies are so moving. We've tied the emotional ups and downs of the movie to the music.

Really emotionally impacting music evokes a sense of familiarity, while at the same time being novel enough that you don't expect what's coming, and it doesn't sound exactly like something else. It's more of a -- this tune somehow reminds me of my grandmother, or a dangerous situation, or driving late at night with my friends -- type of response.

Answer 3

This may sound pseudish...

It ultimately sources from conversation, I think. So one's mother uses soothing tones, people modulate their voices to make things interesting, speak louder to emphasize .. emotions are expressed through speech affecting the listener.

There can be beauty in a voice that affects.

I think music builds on this, using the emotional elements of speech, allowing multiple instruments and sounds with a wider range of possibility than speech. It also drops non-emotional content of an informational sort - if the voice is like an elegant and functional building, music can drop functional issues and just be elegant etc.

Answer 4

Gospel music evokes a sense of joy and sadness that taps into your very soul. Its a very humbling....somber...thankful genre of music whose purity comes through in that... it really doesnt matter,if the person can sing. They can sound like a stabbed parrot but when you hear...

Lord, I'm available to you, my will I give to you
I 'll do what you say do, use me Lord.
To show someone the way and enable me to say.
My storage is empty and I am...
Available to you.

it will strike a chord in your soul that drives you to joy and pain at the same time...Why?* I think because whether your conscious body acknowledges it or not, your spirit is hearing something that it identifies with...which is a longing to be one with God.

Answer 5

for me it's the vibration of the music. I don't mean that loud booming stuff that sounds like no music but the vibration from the notes. The notes and the way the weave together to make the melody.

Answer 6

I don't try to make sense out of the impact music has on me.

I just let it take me where it will when I need it. I let it hold the wonderful memories that so much music has for me.

Music touches all our senses in a profound way.

Answer 7

It may sound corney but I like to think that we can't say with the mind what we feel with the heart. Music is the connecting bridge.

I am agnostic.

Answer 8

My son was telling me about studies which show music cause a physical reaction which requires a mental response. It literally calls to us. I don't know more about this, but music certainly is universal.

Answer 9

Art is what makes us, as a species unique. Our imagination is limitless.

Music plays upon that part of our brain and influences our emotions in such a way.

Answer 10

Music is vibration and so are we, so it stands to reason that it affects us emotionally. As for my faith its Universal, in that I respect all religions and am open to all.

Answer 11

Music touches us deep within our psyches. It affects us profoundly.

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast."