Tears are Good!
I don't know how often this is true for others, but there have been a few instances in my life when I either listened to a piece of music on a CD or watched a live performance and had an obviously emotional reaction, either the "goosebumps" that people talk about or even getting choked up and/or actually tearing up. I've heard plenty of people talk about these emotional reactions.
In my upbringing I somehow developed the notion in my head that these emotional reactions are not just a good sign that you've written a quality piece of music, but that it's essential to try and get a reaction like this out of some of your listeners. This is another thing that, for some reason, I've become completely snobbish about. There's so much music out there, so many genres, sub-genres and hybrids, so many different artists and bands, indies, soloists, instrumentalists, composers, singer-songwriters, "experimental" composers, rap artists, arrangers, etc. Ironically, most of the music that's out there I'm actually not that crazy about. When I listen to a piece of music, if I don't get some kind of emotional reaction, I don't have much interest in it. But even a genre like rock and roll can generate emotions -- exhilaration, excitement, energy, happiness, a feeling like you want to get up and dance, etc. I also want and expect emotions of some kind when I watch a movie or read a novel -- I expect to feel something. If I don't, I consider the song/movie/novel to be mediocre at best.
Another reaction, which I guess can also be considered an emotion, is simply what I would describe as "perpetual pleasure". I've experienced this in certain musical pieces, such as those from classical music (I remember feeling this when I would listen to Bach as a kid, in my parent's living room). I also remember having this experience when I listened to the opening of Mike Oldman's album Tubular Bells. I found out later that the reason I experienced this pleasure during that particular piece is because it had what I like to call "selective unpredictability," which is something I will touch on in a future blog. In any case, I think my mom or dad was calling me in from the kitchen, but I refused to answer them or leave the living room because the opening of that piece had me so entranced and captivated, that I simply kept my eyes closed and continued bobbing my head to this perpetual feeling of pleasure that I could only describe as euphoric.
Another example of this is when I played the violin in a high school orchestra, in 1995. I remember playing Bach's Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring, and while I was playing the piece at one of our rehearsals we got to the part in the song that has a sort of key change (or maybe a transition into the main theme of the song), and during that key change/transition the hair on the back of my neck literally stood up. This was, as I also found out later, because the transition had what I like to call the "Bridge-Verse Sneak Attack." That, also, is something that I'll touch on in a future blog. Suffice it to say, for now, that I had to put my bow down during the piece and close my eyes, while the rest of the orchestra just kept playing, because I was so entranced by how beautiful the music was.
Having experienced this as a kid, and occasionally experiencing it as an adult, I strive to elicit these kinds of reactions from listeners. The fun part about this is that, in my efforts to compose pieces that bring about these reactions, I refer to a collection of ideas and "tricks" that I've come to learn about over the years. I've decided to share some of these in the next section for those interested in reading about them.
How To Use Music To Elicit Emotions
(Chord + Different Chord = Emotion #1, Other Chord + Other Different Chord = Emotion #2).
The above "formula" I've provided is actually a fairly accurate way of describing, at a very fundamental level, the way you can bring about different emotional reactions from people with music. What intrigues me most about this is that these seem to be universal, and that it brings up a question as to the nature of the human brain, how it hears music, and why/how this music connects (as it clearly does) to the system of human emotions. I am very scientifically-minded in general and therefore very curious, on a neuro-biological level, why people react emotionally to different musical sounds and why so many of these reactions are the same for everyone.
The difference between a major and a minor chord is a perfect example. Why does a minor chord make a person feel "sad"? Why does a major chord make a person feel "happy"? And the most astounding part of this for me is that minor chords make everyone feel sad. Again, it's universal. Why is this? What is it about the wiring of our brains that makes us feel this way when we simply hear three different notes being played at certain pitches? Have you ever met a person who feels "jolly" or "happy" when hearing a minor chord? Neither have I.
I've taken this minor/major chord concept a lot further, and I won't get into every detail about it. But what I've discovered is that there are series of chords and chord progressions that can create different emotions also. I have an on-going list of these chord progressions and combinations, as well as the emotional reaction they seem to evoke in most people, and I use it when I compose. The following is an example of just three items from this list.
Major tonic chord + Minor dominant chord
= Feeling of mysticism and wonder, i.e. a soundtrack for a sci-fi flick
Major seventh chord + subdominant (such as C major 7th (diminished?) + F major)
= Feeling of helplessness, slight sadness, or a "melancholy" feeling
Minor chord with octave + same chord with a sharped 5th in double-octave bass
(such as F or F sharp minor)
= Images/feelings of utter tragedy. (If it's with arpeggios, maybe good for a chase scene in a movie?)
This can be a lot of fun, because you can use these tools to create a story through your music, and in doing so you can deliberately evoke different emotions in people as the story is being "told". If the story behind your music is about someone who broke your heart, you can use the second item on that list, if that's how you were actually feeling. If the song is about a flood, maybe the third item. A group of astronauts exploring a black hole for the first time? Maybe the first item. Just as movies and stories are designed to create a range of different emotions in you while you watch the movie (suspense, sadness, anticipation, joy, laughter, tears, etc,), music needs do the same thing to an audience.
When it comes to connecting these emotional reactions to the ideas, stories or images behind a song, knowing is everything. In my opinion there should be no secrets. I will sometimes blatantly tell people what a song is about before I play it. "This is about a swarm of monarch butterflies, flying chaotically, and teetering behind them is a butterfly that's groaning in pain because it's flying with a broken wing, and it's trying to catch up with the others". Then I play the song. Now the audience will know what the song is about when they hear it.
When people know the meaning behind a song while they're listening to it, their emotional reactions, in my experience, are far, far greater. They can now listen to a song and know that it's about a struggling butterfly, and simultaneously feel the emotions generated by the chord progressions (such as those exemplified above). What many listeners will do in a situation like this is that they will start relating to the situation based on their own life experience. In the example of the butterflies, someone might think: This makes me think of the time when I felt left out, and I was really hurt by it, as if I was teetering behind a crowd that didn't care about me. Boom! Now you have an audience member with a tear in his eye. And tears are good!
Musical Imagery (e.g., A Chinese Bird That Makes You Cry)
In addition to using different chord progressions to evoke different emotions, you can also use chord progressions (and a number of other techniques) to elicit imagery in a person's head. The methods used for doing this is a whole other discussion. But the imagery itself can do two things: 1) It can help generate that "story" in a person's head during the musical performance, and 2) The imagery itself can also generate emotions. Musical imagery can include, for example, different types of weather -- a dark, foggy afternoon on a cold, rocky beach, with a lighthouse standing at the shoreline. What does an image like that make you feel? Gloomy? Lonely? Peaceful? An image by itself can make you feel all kinds of different emotions, without anything really "happening" yet.
I experienced an example of this with a friend of mine when we went to a live performance by the pianist and instrumentalist Yanni, in Sacramento, California, in 2012. I'm a huge fan of Yanni anyway, but a lot of his pieces (if not all) also tend to have very specific meanings and images behind them, which I like. Before playing one of his pieces, Yanni got on the microphone and announced that his next song was called "Felitsa". He then said that the song is dedicated to a woman with this same name. He then paused, and said: "Felitsa was my mother." The poignant part of this statement, obviously, is that he used the past tense, "was". He was obviously sharing with his audience that his mother had passed away, and that he'd written this song for her. Even before he started playing, my friend had become visibly choked up, just by that statement. When people relate to experiences like this, it amplifies the emotion when the song is played. And, of course, this is just another great example of why knowing what a piece is about is just as powerful in terms of emotional responses, rather than just hearing the piece being played. Yanni's piece, "Felitsa", by the way, is gorgeous in and of itself. By the middle of the piece, of course, my friend was in tears. And, again, it's not just because of how beautiful the chord progressions are in that song but also because my friend knew what it was about, why Yanni had written it, and who it was written for. It's the combination of well-written music and knowing the story behind the music that has the potential to bring people to tears, not always just one or the other.
Now, oddly enough, I didn't cry at the performance of "Felitsa". I'm not sure why, since I am undoubtedly just as empathetic as my friend, and have experienced a few very sad deaths in my family as well. But here's the kicker: I cried in the next performance, and that song was about a bird.
Why is this? Why do people sometimes have different emotional reactions to the same song? During the ride home, after the concert, I teased my friend a little about her "waterworks" over Yanni's deceased mother. Her reaction was exactly what you'd think it was. "Whatever," she said. "You cried over a fucking bird!" This made both of us laugh. And, naturally, it left me wondering.
After giving this some thought, I figured it out. Getting emotional over a song like "Felitsa is understandable, when you know what it's about. With regard to the other song, what I was able to deduce was this: it created an image that reminded me of my childhood in Iceland. The song, by the way, is called "Nightingale", and Yanni publicly dedicated the song to the country of China after he had visited there. When the song began, the image of a Chinese nightingale bird emerged in my mind very quickly. I was able to envision it, and the chord progressions in the piece resembled those of "eastern" types of music, which is very fitting for the song. Parts of the melody also resemble an actual nightingale, a bird that is well-known for its musical and pleasing-sounding chirps. The sheer power of Yanni's ability to create this imagery was so impressive to me that I started getting choked up. Then, when I kept "seeing" the nightingale in my mind, I started seeing visions of birds and seagulls that I used to watch while growing up in Iceland. This opened up floodgates to an entire new range of emotions, images and memories of my childhood, both good and bad, that together made me teary-eyed. Again, the variety of life experiences and tastes by different people can sometimes generate slightly different emotional responses.
I did, of course, react emotionally to "Felitsa" too, just not as much as my friend. The concert, which took place in the summer of that year (2012), also took place before my own mother had also passed away. Having considered this, I assume that my reaction would have been much stronger and more emotional if I had heard "Nightingale" after my mom's death.
Either way, I still want to see him perform again. Until then, comments and/or questions are welcome. And, of course, for anyone interested, I put links below to some of the pieces mentioned in this blog post. Don't thank me - thank YouTube :)
"Tubular Bells" opening, Part 1 (Mike Oldfield)
"Felitsa" (Yanni)
"Nightingale" (Yanni)
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