What Does This Mean?

I conducted a little survey of around 500 people a little while back. I made a CD that had two songs on it that I'd made, with two "special meanings" that I'd written in mind for them. The first one's special meaning was a happy one to me, and the second one's meaning was a sad one to me. I did not reveal the names of these pieces to my human guinea pigs.

The Road Home.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

Unrequited Love.mp3 - File Shared from Box.net - Free Online File Storage

I had pieces of paper that said:

1: Listen to the 1st piece in it's entirety. What emotion do you think it's trying to convey?

A)Anger

B)Fear

C)Happiness

D)Nervousness

E)Sadness

F)Bitterness

G)Nonchalance

H)Jealousy/Envy

I)Other

2: Listen to the second piece in it's entirety. What emotion do you think it's trying to convey? (Same answers as above question)

100% of people said that the first one was C, and 96% of people said that the second one was E.

What do these results, especially when combined with Robin's, suggest to you? :O

It does help show the contrasting emotional power of music, something that people in the music area realize, but many others do not (especially considering a lot of "popular" modern music tends to be in quite a fixed range of emotions. Not many bands make pure happy music anymore).

Just out of curiosity, what other responses did you get for the second question?

"Just out of curiosity, what other responses did you get for the second question?"

2% said it was bitter sounding, and 2% said it was nonchalant :\ All in all, I'm surprised that the results of my survey were so overwhelmingly correct.

1: Listen to the 1st piece in it's entirety. What emotion do you think it's trying to convey?

A)Anger

B)Fear

C)Happiness

D)Nervousness

E)Sadness

F)Bitterness

G)Nonchalance

H)Jealousy/Envy

I)Other

That's hilarious, you give only ONE possible option that people who obviously recognize the conventions will pick. Your options have to be much more nuanced for this to make any sense, but they're all extreme negative or so in that direction save for one.

How about multiple types of "happyness?" Like say, pleasantness? Relaxation? etc? Likewise, more nuanced ideas of sadness like "depression" or "tedium," etc. Then I bet you would've gotten quite different results, but as it is the survey is meaningless since you are funneling everyone into answering the only possible option considering cultural symbols and conventions.

That's like saying that I made a survey where I showed people a picture of a cow and gave the following options for them to tell me what it was:

1) An airplane.

2) George Washington.

3) A cow

4) A spaceship.

Would anyone be surprised an overwhelming majority picked 3? Not really. Same here.

The results mean nothing, really. Your survey just basically asked people to recognize something they can recognize by and large thanks to cultural symbols we know exist, and they did. Woop.

PS: How the hell does "envy" sound like, by the way? Or bitterness? Those options will never get picked in most cases since people don't have clear symbols connecting them to musical material. No surprise there.

A good experiment would be giving people a set of vague emotions as options and that same music. I bet emotions like "envy" or "Nonchalance" will probably never get picked or the rate they'll get picked in will be as good as random chance results. It gets even more interesting if you ask people to relate scenarios to music, like "cheating on a lover" or "sunset." The fact is, people's relations to emotion and music tend to be only similar in big generalizations (happy music, sad music) but the moment where you start asking for details, things begin to vary wildly. It's like if a song is "funny," and you start asking what kind of funny is it, I doubt you'll get uniform replies.

See where the links are and what the symbols are, that's more interesting than this.

That's hilarious, you give only ONE possible option that people who obviously recognize the conventions will pick. Your options have to be much more nuanced for this to make any sense, but they're all extreme negative or so in that direction save for one.

How about multiple types of "happyness?" Like say, pleasantness? Relaxation? etc? Likewise, more nuanced ideas of sadness like "depression" or "tedium," etc. Then I bet you would've gotten quite different results, but as it is the survey is meaningless since you are funneling everyone into answering the only possible option considering cultural symbols and conventions.

That's like saying that I made a survey where I showed people a picture of a cow and gave the following options for them to tell me what it was:

1) An airplane.

2) George Washington.

3) A cow

4) A spaceship.

Would anyone be surprised an overwhelming majority picked 3? Not really. Same here.

The results mean nothing, really. Your survey just basically asked people to recognize something they can recognize by and large thanks to cultural symbols we know exist, and they did. Woop.

PS: How the hell does "envy" sound like, by the way? Or bitterness? Those options will never get picked in most cases since people don't have clear symbols connecting them to musical material. No surprise there.

A good experiment would be giving people a set of vague emotions as options and that same music. I bet emotions like "envy" or "Nonchalance" will probably never get picked or the rate they'll get picked in will be as good as random chance results. It gets even more interesting if you ask people to relate scenarios to music, like "cheating on a lover" or "sunset."

See where the links are and what the symbols are, that's more interesting than this.

This sounds pretty nonchalant: YouTube - Pink Floyd The Wall - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

This sounds pretty envious and angry/bitter: YouTube - Paramore - Misery Business [with Lyrics] Official Music Video

But my point was simply that you can convey a specific set of emotions in a song, a specific special meaning. That's all, really.

This sounds pretty nonchalant: YouTube - Pink Floyd The Wall - Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb

This sounds pretty envious and angry/bitter: YouTube - Paramore - Misery Business [with Lyrics] Official Music Video

But my point was simply that you can convey a specific set of emotions in a song, a specific special meaning. That's all, really.

Eh, comfortably numb sounds relaxed if anything to me, not nonchalant. Plus here we have lyrics to work with and lyrics can rail any particular emotion automatically regardless of what is actually in the music. Likewise with the second example. The point would be hearing that music without the non-musical implications, like text or title.

As for "specific special meaning," well rob already showed that you can't but this much is obvious. Your survey is also unfit for answering any of these questions because of what I already mentioned.

The truth is that you can only get across very general things to people, like "This sounds happy," but you can't have a song that tells people without the aid of lyrics or anything something like "envy," simply because that convention doesn't exist. It's too nuanced. It's like trying to convey "lust" in music too. Without lyrics/text/title, what would it sound like? What kind of chords would you use? Rhythm?

The baroque affects are a good example of a system of symbols and meanings that people at the time understood. Nowadays if you ask the regular joe if that baroque piece in C minor sounds "Intellectual," they will have absolutely no idea what to tell you. Tons of those symbols fell out of common knowledge.

considering cultural symbols and conventions

The most important thing in SSC's post. If it's cultural, it isn't inherent.

"The truth is that you can only get across very general things to people, like "This sounds happy," but you can't have a song that tells people without the aid of lyrics or anything something like "envy," simply because that convention doesn't exist. It's too nuanced. It's like trying to convey "lust" in music too. Without lyrics/text/title, what would it sound like? What kind of chords would you use? Rhythm?

The baroque affects are a good example of a system of symbols and meanings that people at the time understood. Nowadays if you ask the regular joe if that baroque piece in C minor sounds "Intellectual," they will have absolutely no idea what to tell you. Tons of those symbols fell out of common knowledge."

I agree: I'm not sure if one CAN convey a specific idea musically, just an emotion. I think that's why lyrics are important: they tell the listener where they're coming from.

I agree: I'm not sure if one CAN convey a specific idea musically, just an emotion. I think that's why lyrics are important: they tell the listener where they're coming from.

They're just layers of meaning. I can play a real "happy sounding" tune to footage from world war II and so on, or replace the entire soundtrack of Schindler's list with stuff out of the care bears. The effect is obviously not that the music itself stops being "happy sounding," but the meaning it may have to you through that experience will be much more nuanced. It may be of disgust, of confusion, of interest, who knows.

Practical example:

Oh God...I cannot stop LAUGHING at that Care Bear thing! Too funny! xD That just made my day!

The worst part about cultural perspective is that it's self-reinforcing:

YouTube - Tom & Jerry - Is you is or is you ain't my baby

YouTube - Skeleton dance

I think this means that people are almost always correct when talking about music. lol.