Do you "read" emotions in musical pieces?

[bagelriffic]

I often "see" the notes visually, and the color and light change drastcally, kind of like when you stare into a bright light, and you see green for a bit, the same happens to me, but even if I'm not looking into any bright lights.

this is actually something most musicians do, they literally visualize a chord progression, or in my case i visualize a beat or fill relating to the emotional vibe and context. it makes it easier for us to remember where we need to go.

for example; when im playing a song, lets say there is a certain section that involves the double bass pedal, i visualize myself doing the fill before i actually get to it by constructing an image of what i think it would look like if it were a tangible object. i don't recall every nuance about a song before we actually start, it comes to me as a reminder during the song itself a certain amout of time before it needs to happen. the better i know the song the less this happens.

like you when i listen to music now i use the same technique to label different parts of the song, usually like you said soemthing like colors and a partially constructed image of whatever instruments or type of progression is being used.

as far as reading between the lines of music i feel like its not something i can help. its always been easy for me to pick out if an artist is just going through the motions, not something i have control over really. if its sincere its always more powerful to me whether i can relate to it or not.

 

[DevilDoll]

I do. I have always had a very deep almost spiritual connection to music. I feel more emotion in connection to music than I do people. It's almost like I have relationships with certain pieces. So, yeah I "read" emotion in music. On an instinctual level and also on a technical level. I took a class a few summers ago that explained emotion in music and how little intricate details in the piece suddenly shift things. Modulation, accents, accidentals. It's really quite amazing the detail composers put into their work. Quite admirable. What's a shame to see is when a performer takes a composers work and sucks the life out of it. One can be a brilliant technical musician, but if you can't connect to something on a base emotional level and lets that show, then you have just ruined the piece. It's quite painful for me to watch.

 

[bagelriffic]

One can be a brilliant technical musician, but if you can't connect to something on a base emotional level and lets that show, then you have just ruined the piece. It's quite painful for me to watch

couldn't agree more. a musician could use all the right dynamics in all the right places and still fail to invoke the intended reaction, usually this comes of as feeling dry to me.

me and an infp guitarist we're talking about this just the other day and he made the argument that technique inhibits creativity and emotional connections. i think just the opposite, technique is meant as a tool to allow ourselves to communicate effectively what we want to say. if we get hung up on just technique, or just emotions we fail to do the music justice.

this is common among drummers especially who focus solely on the correct way to play something. luckily for me being an infj the emotional aspect of music always came easy and its why i wanted the job im working towards, but bc i was lacking technique i often sped a song up during a crescendo or slowed down during the verse, miss a beat or worse; drop a stick!

but i think a skilled musician uses both to achieve the desired effect, which can be tough bc it can and does feel like walking an internal tightrope, but that's what practice is for i guess.

 

[DevilDoll]

couldn't agree more. a musician could use all the right dynamics in all the right places and still fail to invoke the intended reaction, usually this comes of as feeling dry to me.

me and an infp guitarist we're talking about this just the other day and he made the argument that technique inhibits creativity and emotional connections. i think just the opposite, technique is meant as a tool to allow ourselves to communicate effectively what we want to say. if we get hung up on just technique, or just emotions we fail to do the music justice.

this is common among drummers especially who focus solely on the correct way to play something. luckily for me being an infj the emotional aspect of music always came easy and its why i wanted the job im working towards, but bc i was lacking technique i often sped a song up during a crescendo or slowed down during the verse, miss a beat or worse; drop a stick!

but i think a skilled musician uses both to achieve the desired effect, which can be tough bc it can and does feel like walking an internal tightrope, but that's what practice is for i guess.

It really is an internal tightrope. Being a singer, I can see this from the perspective, but you if you sing from a purely emotional perspective without taking technique into account, not only will you being doing the piece and composer a disservice you can cause serious damage to your vocal chords not to mention your sound will be less than desirable. The other side is singing from a completely technical aspect. While it can be beautiful it's almost like a robot, lacking the one thing that separates them from humans. You have to find the proper balance between the two, and it is very very difficult. Technique requires you to think, until it becomes second nature, if it ever does, and emotion require you to let go of your thoughts and embrace your self. It's kind of hard to do both at the same time. Yet, it can be done.

 

[Gaze]

For anyone . . .

How would you read the emotion in this piece?:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLXsUP5ONY"]YouTube - Relaxing Classical Music - Zero-Project Disabled Emotions[/ame]

 

[invisible]

i think you can definitely read ideas in music like exactly the same way you would from a book. the ideas can be very deep. i think a lot of classical music is about the nature of divinity. Beethoven i think was often writing about the irrefutable majesty and justice of God that is greater than all pain and suffering. while i think Vivaldi was often writing about the intricacy and perfection of God's creativity.

when i have listened to Mozart sometimes its like he makes extremely clever dirty jokes about things like body processes, sexuality and digestion, that we have to live with. i have sometimes had a strong reaction like "ew, gross!" and "i cant believe you would say that!" and like "i just cant listen to this anymore, its too dirty!"

and whenever i think of Chopin i think of rage. for a lot of people, Chopin wrote the most "relaxing" music. some of his music is about pleasant things, like i think nocturne op 9 no 2 is about being the magic of being charmed, the process of being charmed, as of by nostalgia, or "falling in love". but other parts its like he is writing about frustrated, sardonic rage at the world. sometimes it seems like the artists interpret his music as calm in the way they perform it, when really the content is not calm.

when i listen to Bach, i always think that what he is writing about is music itself.

i love listening to Swan Lake, because i think it is inherently gothic. when you know the story of the ballet, you can see that it is a gothic story, but when i am listening to it i can always hear the gothic genre aspects of it inside the musical forms. everything in there is so strange, conflicted, and grotesque. i think its so surprising that Tchaikovsky was writing modernist gothic music, i dont think its normal to think of it that way, but i really think that he was.

once someone made fun of me for remarking on the comedy in Franck. they thought it was a ridiculous idea that music could be a comedy. i know what i was talking about though!

(im no expert, these are just some thoughts i had, to say that yes, i think you can definitely read complex ideas out of music.)

 

[invisible]

For anyone . . .

How would you read the emotion in this piece?:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLXsUP5ONY"]YouTube - Relaxing Classical Music - Zero-Project Disabled Emotions[/ame]

longing/hope/reminiscence

 

[Vict]

Ditto on that feeling the music concept. There's no interpreting the sound in a rational way.

It evokes something you keep locked away.

 

[Gaze]

I think evoking emotion is different from reading the emotion in the music. Music can make us feel different things or cause us to impose our emotional states on the melody. Reading emotions in a musical piece, however, is about identifying the emotion imbued in it's production and creation. It's often subtle. Just listening I used to think I was taking on the emotions of the artist as they created the song. Maybe I was just reading too much into it, . But sometimes, the feeling that was put into it's writing and creation is so overwhelming that it knocks you upside the head.

 

[Gaze]

I would love to compare thoughts on the emotional content of a piece by Albinoni (who I've never heard of until today tbh) yet am blown away by this particular piece he has written. @invisible or anyone else who may be interested, could you listen to 7:45-10:44 and provide your reading of that section of his classical music piece below. The piece is called Adagio in g minor.

[video=youtube;wLkjMLdLf3s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLkjMLdLf3s[/video]

 

[sprinkles]

For anyone . . .

How would you read the emotion in this piece?:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wLXsUP5ONY"]YouTube - Relaxing Classical Music - Zero-Project Disabled Emotions[/ame]

It's simple and not super dynamic so it's hard to say. It seems peaceful and passive at least, but it's on that fine line between calm and emotionally flat.

The chords are pleasant in a kind of middling way - they're not super bright and joyous, and they aren't quite melancholy either. There's not much variance in the tempo to punctuate or create phrases, and there's little variance in the loudness and softness of the notes, which is really missing a lot of opportunities for subtle phrasing where a little bit of gentle accent or flourish is played with softly, or punctuating a climax with notes that are played with a bit more power.

It's a nice piece but there isn't much there to read.

 

[sprinkles]

I would love to compare thoughts on the emotional content of a piece by Albinoni (who I've never heard of until today tbh) yet am blown away by this particular piece he has written. @invisible or anyone else who may be interested, could you listen to 7:45-10:44 and provide your reading of that section of his classical music piece below. The piece is called Adagio in g minor.

[video=youtube;wLkjMLdLf3s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLkjMLdLf3s[/video]

Adagio in g minor pretty much has everything that the previous Zero-project piece didn't have. There's a feeling of love and longing at first which then turns melancholy, and eventually mournful and anguished. That's pretty much what G minor does in general.

 

[Gaze]

Adagio in g minor pretty much has everything that the previous Zero-project piece didn't have. There's a feeling of love and longing at first which then turns melancholy, and eventually mournful and anguished. That's pretty much what G minor does in general.

So, regardless of the song, the tone of G minor will naturally have that feeling of longing? I am wondering if this heightens or lessens my enjoyment to know that it's simply timbre of the note that creates that effect rather than something chosen by the composer because of the feeling he or she wanted to express in that song. Reminds me of the earlier argument of some in the thread who were discussing the importance of not ignoring technique and focusing only on the feeling. If you have a feeling you want to convey, but you don't have the right notes to convey it, then the song won't have the same impact or effect I would guess.

 

[sprinkles]

So, regardless of the song, the tone of G minor will naturally have that feeling of longing? I am wondering if this heightens or lessens my enjoyment to know that it's simply timbre of the note that creates that effect rather than something chosen by the composer because of the feeling he or she wanted to express in that song. Reminds me of the earlier argument of some in the thread who were discussing the importance of not ignoring technique and focusing only on the feeling. If you have a feeling you want to convey, but you don't have the right notes to convey it, then the song won't have the same impact or effect I would guess.

Feeling will come across in technique. The key just helps it a lot (and is a choice which is based on the feeling of the composer as well)

Feeling and technique actually go hand in hand because one cannot be expressed without using the other. We can be more or less mindful of technique, but it's literally impossible to play without it because the very act of playing necessitates that you're using a technique of some kind (though it might be solely intuitive and not entirely mindful)

This is why MIDI for example is hard to make sound good because it typically is very quantized, unless it's coming from an actual person playing on a keyboard. In a lot of old MIDIs the notes are all evenly spaced and often of the same volume so there's no humanity in it and therefore no actual emotion nor technique i.e. it is flat and blah playing, just doing the notes exactly and nothing more.

 

[sprinkles]

[MENTION=1669]pics[/MENTION]

Also here's a good example of where technique really shines and speaks a lot and the notes are actually more of a complement to the technique.

[video=youtube;T2LIJb6O9KM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2LIJb6O9KM[/video]

 

[Pahndi]

7:45-10:44 I feel sad, lounging around. Wonder what if.. But slowly someone walks up to my door. I ask who is it? It's hope. Hope says don't be sad, lets go out. But I respond, I'm just not feeling right. Come on, lets gooo! Then out of my remorse force myself out to walk. Few seconds go by and I'm feeling slightly better. things are not so bad as it seems. I'm still feeling suppressed but it's better with you here. I Take my time and listen to the birds. I break down and cry and realize how much I've missed since I've shut down. I've kept away from everything holding me back just so I could notice with you the same small beautiful notes of this.

 

[Gaze]

@pics

Also here's a good example of where technique really shines and speaks a lot and the notes are actually more of a complement to the technique.

[video=youtube;T2LIJb6O9KM]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2LIJb6O9KM[/video]

Beautiful technique. Such rapt attention is paid to the playing of every single note that you can't help but feel every movement as a result. So, yes, in this respect, technique shines but it shines because excellence in playing makes you feel everything she plays.

 

[BrokenDaniel]

Ime, isolated chords, and also progressions, evoke very specific emotions, and images. However, it's a tricky thing and i don't see any need to get hung up on that and try to discern it that much, it's too subjective, but yeah, every note and well done piece of music haves it's own trademark.

 

[Erlian]

Not music an sich, but most of the music I like have a memory attached.

Music I heard in a certain emotional part of my life always carry that emotion with them.
Soundtrack music is the easiest, I'll remember what happened at that point in the movie, game or serie and that emotion sticks.

So, no if you give me a piece of music I don't read the emotion. I don't think I've ever consciously tried, now you mention it.

 

[heiots]

I would love to compare thoughts on the emotional content of a piece by Albinoni (who I've never heard of until today tbh) yet am blown away by this particular piece he has written. @invisible or anyone else who may be interested, could you listen to 7:45-10:44 and provide your reading of that section of his classical music piece below. The piece is called Adagio in g minor.

[video=youtube;wLkjMLdLf3s]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLkjMLdLf3s[/video]

The violin starts off like a cry, or a gentle pleading of a little sweet soprano (the kind meant to die in those tragedies). It's melancholic, but subtle and clean. Plaintive might be the word. When the strings come in full force with the organ underneath, it builds to this heart-wrenching, intense sadness in minor. The chromaticism adds a lot of tension, and it feels like a knife driving into the heart, like a lover dying.