Music has always been part of all cultures and where there are people, there is music no matter what kind. Its effect is sedative or elicits feeling to do anything that occurs to the one hearing it. This is the power of music.
Scientists from the University of California Berkeley carried out a study on 2500 respondents in the US and PRC (China). The objective of the experiment is to find out all the possible emotional responses, from different musical genres. Testing and analyzing how music strikes feelings, along with how it works concerning emotions elicited.
Emotions detected as subjective and abstract responses to music are the following. Which varied according to the genre the respondents were hearing. They are feeling pumped up, defiance, annoyance, anxiety, annoyed, success, sad, dreamy, beauty, erotic, amusement, and the last is joy. All these emotions are different, just like music genres that were chosen.
One of the leads, Alan Cowen, whose major is neuroscience, different kind of playlist that is based on the emotion from each track. Creating a music library that is not limited just to nay music genre, but something as personal as emotion itself. With such a way of organizing music, it will be something quite different that is more abstract. This study identified a range of emotions that can felt as the listener, hears the music. Emotions are the keystone to base the results and see music as more than an exercise of just listening, but a complicated process to understand too.
Data collected is converted into an interactive audio map, the visitor will not only listen to it. They can move to any part of the interactive recording, see how similar their own emotional interaction. Using technology to sort out, and define the parameters, is another application of AI as well.
The implications of the study have promise when applied to psychological and psychiatric treatment. More useful for music apps to find the best algorithmic programming to optimize it. Utilizing, the right music for a variety of purpose of the clinical and music-related application, give studies like this more value.
For example, the classic jaws score drew fear from both US and PRC subjects. It seems fear was the common denominator felt from the ominous tune when it is a feel-good or bad feeling that was very different. Fear seemed to be a universal emotion felt, but other emotions had different reactions. It is interpreted as valence in psychology when the good or bad feeling is more culture-specific depends on the reaction.
During the study, most participants were level on the emotional impact of anger, feeling annoyed, and joy as symmetrical. Defining arousal and excitement was not the same, arousal is used in the context of calm or feeling stimulations from the music.
In conclusion, music is diverse and very abstract because there is not enough analysis, how it is understood. To set out and discover the emotions felt from music, will help it be more understood and not be abstract. It must be true that music does soother the wild side, as the findings indicated.
Read: Scientists Have Mapped 13 Key Emotions Evoked by Music
