Perceptions+of+Happiness+and+Sadness+Induced+by+Music

More of the Good Stuff, Called Research By Steven Schaber
 * The Feelings and Perceptions of Happiness and Sadness Induced by Music: Similarities, Differences, and Mixed Emotions**

** To start**, the researcher's purpose is to recreate a quantitative experiment that has been done in the past. Their topic of interest is how different variables of music can affect a listeners emotions. Further, the most relevant work that the researchers have done on this topic includes a test on forty-nine undergraduate students where 55% had little or no musical training.

Continuing on, the research question explored in this article pertains to does playing fast tempo-major mode musical excerpt affect a listeners mood compared to playing a slow tempo-minor mode excerpt of music.

media type="youtube" key="3eIsTQIqSQQ" height="323" width="400" media type="youtube" key="N_bJ_oY_9WE" height="323" width="400" Fast Tempo- Major Mode ** Slow Tempo- Minor Mode ** I can use the results found in this experiment to my final paper that studies the lasting effects of simultaneous audio and video on children of the 1990's playing Sony's title: Twisted Metal 2 Consequently, the characteristics of the sample consists of a worker plugging old Bach inventions into a MIDI interface, manually. The audio engineer then affects each invention by manipulating the software program (Cubase) in order to slow down the 30 second segment, or speed it up.

For example, a participant is selected to sit in an iso booth and wear high quality headphones. They are then subjected to many 30 second tracks engineered by the technician mentioned above. After hearing these tracks, the participant is then asked to select on a scale from one to five, six different answers on how the music made them feel.

Henceforth, the variables measured in this experiment were Gow happy did the music make you feel/ how sad did the music make you feel, how happy did the music sound/ how sad did the music sound, how much did you like the music/ how much did you dislike the music. These variables are aimed to identify the query of perception vs. emotion.

In accordance, two variables that can be measured are the way the subject feels when the music is played to him/her, and the say subject thinks the music sounds when the music is played to him/her. These two ways reflect the subjects actual mood, compared to the subjects perception of the music when it is played to them.

In the end, the data is then analyzed on a scale from one to five where 1 indicates the subject is, "not at all happy," and 5 is indicative of the subject becoming, "extremely happy. the researchers then compiled data, and made quantitative charts to help understand their results.

As a result, the main findings of the study were that the fast tempo-major mode excerpts ranged from about an average of 3-3.5 in happiness in males and females, where the slow tempo- minor mode excerpts fell at exactly a 1.75 average between both males and females.

In addition, the researchers may want to reconsider a new option. Early in the article, they mentioned timbre, and how it may not be indicative of emotion in listeners. However, they use the MIDI preset of voices, and violins to recreate the old Bach inventions. It is almost a known fact that a guitar playing a g minor chord provokes a very different emotion than three flutes playing the notes of a g minor triad.

In conclusion, this article shows me that music is a key contributor to emotions. It also informs me that humans perceive music differently as we do not have a uniform set of perception. The chapter in which I wrote my precis about mentioned that reality is infinite to the number of inhabitants perceiving it,. Having said that, I feel that the recreation of this quantitative study may be trying to unionize a perception for humans.

Hunter, P. G., Schellenberg, E. G, Schimmach, U. (2010). Feelings and Perceptions of Happiness and Sadness Induced by Music: Similarities, Differences, and Mixed Emotions. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Vol. 4 (No 1), 47-56