Feeling Sound

When you start to sit with music, and notice what colors come to you, something stood out over and over. The colors came with a feeling. We often use colors as emotional shorthand: feeling blue, a ray of sunshine (yellow), seeing red because you’re angry, green with envy… common phrases.

But when green was chosen for songs like Express Yourself, it meant bright, nature, happy, joy. Completely contrary to the green with envy.

Flicking through that workbook (from last week) and looking at the colors we’d chosen got us thinking about the emotions. We often reach for music to soothe, to hype, or to give us the push over the edge to cry.

Does music match what we feel, teach us how to feel, or just give a name to what’s already there?

In the name of research and music (as if we need an excuse to listen), we decided to test it out. And, we invite you to do it too; we’ve included two playlists, choose which one you want to experience first.

The easiest emotions to pull from music are usually joy and sadness, so we started there. Instead of asking “What do you listen to when you’re sad?” we flipped it. “What’s the last song that made you cry?” We wanted songs that gave the feeling, not ones chosen because we were already in it.

Before you press play, we’re sorry. But maybe the thing they all have in common is loss, or the sense of it, and it is one of the human truths. We will all experience it to some degree.

The magic for all of these happens in chord changes and the deep notes; they trigger something in us. Add in the tone of the vocals, and your own context?

You can be going about your day, feeling fine, unswayed in any particular way, but hearing the music can push you into feeling something. We’re feeling the sound, or the sound is giving us space to feel something we have somewhere in the background. That’s melodic yearning: emotion stretching itself out across a melody. Loneliness, hope, everything in between, all from a three-minute track. Magic.

So what about joy? Or just uplifted?

A totally different feel, a different everything. The swell, speed, and easy-to-guess pattern all push you forward and up, rather than pull you down.

So how does it work?

Hearing, as a sense, keeps us safe. Some sounds will set us on edge, others will soothe us. Loud bangs are likely to make you jump, while rainfall and birds chirping will bring you calm. The birds’ example is even more interesting when you factor in that birds sing when there are no immediate threats. The familiarity with some sounds can give us a sense of peace, or let’s say, your car is making a clanging noise. This unfamiliar sound could signal that something is wrong, and you’ll worry about it.

There is more research being done every year about the link between music, body temperature, heart rate, and emotion. When we listen to music we enjoy, we get a hit of dopamine, the happy hormone. Easily explaining why you feel good with feel-good music, or music you enjoy.

But it is so much more complex. We process speed, tone, pitch, melody, rhythm, and the vocal aspect. But what about the more complex emotions like grief, sadness, love, and jealousy?

So how does grief sound? Like deep bass? Slow airy vocals? Or does it sound like Eddie Vedder singing Black live as a tribute to Chris Cornell in 2017? And does jealousy always sound like longing, or could it sound like Back to the Start by Lily Allen?

The tempo changes things, too. Slower tempos can often bring melancholy, while faster tempos tend to be happier. However, songs like Pumped Up Kicks on first listen are fun, take the lyrics into account, and you’ll feel something else entirely. Major keys are typically uplifting, while minor keys lean more serious and darker.

We have a couple of mechanisms:

Brain-stem reflex
That jolt when something crashes? Your brain reacting before you think. Sound hits instinct first, safe or not safe. In turn, it sets your heart either racing or relaxing, fight or flight.

Evaluative conditioning
We tag songs with memories. One song might be completely joyful to you, say, the song you got married to, but for someone else, it might remind them of a love they lost. The sound’s the same, the story isn’t.

Emotional contagion
We catch feelings through sound. A cracked voice, hearing a tight voice trying to choke out words, a laugh. Your brain mirrors it automatically. When a voice cracks as we listen, most people will take that emotion on almost instantly.

Visual imagery
Waves, birds, rain. You’re there instantly. Sound sketches scenes faster than words; we bring into it our own experiences of these scenes.

Episodic memory
Every sound is a time machine, and that can be fantastic, but it can also be brutal. Rain might mean peace, thunder might mean fear. It depends who’s listening.

Music expectancy
Your brain loves patterns. It predicts the next beat, and when it’s slightly wrong in the right way, that’s emotion.

Some research shows that for many people, certain notes can trigger feelings of sadness or happiness, but it isn’t universal. Cultural and personal experiences change everything.

And if we know the circumstances surrounding the song, for example, Dancing In The Moonlight, it becomes something else, much sadder. On first listen, this sounds like a dreamy, beautiful late-night beach memory.

The truth behind the song puts a much darker spin on it. (The story comes with a trigger warning, so approach with caution.) These context cues will join the automatic feelings triggered by the music, putting songs in different emotional brackets.

There will always be outliers when the context is added, and that is what makes feeling sound so cool.

So here is your choice, test the playlist and see for yourself the impact of each:

Playlist one, melancholy:

Playlist two, uplifting:

Until next time,