A Guide to Music and Emotion

Believe it or not, you should take some time and care in focusing on the emotion that you have chosen and do your best to make the music match that emotion. Creating this piece of music usually takes people at least an hour or two and sometimes much longer. What you do over that period of time is essentially the same as that of most successful songwriters.

Take the initial abstract melodic idea and try to repeat it. Keep repeating the idea over and over again until it ‘sticks’ or stays in your memory. Experiment, and try to change small parts of the idea to make it better. Don’t make giant leaps, just small steps.

Usually, you should only try to make the small changes, once you have memorised your first idea. While you repeat the idea, experiment with the speed and rhythm. Try it faster, slower or try it like a nursery rhyme. Try repeating sections of the idea in pairs.

Once you are satisfied that you have come up with your best effort at musically describing your chosen emotion, make sure that you have memorized the piece of music so that you can repeat it without difficulty. Again, this is a piece of music with no lyrics that can be played, strummed, whistled or worked out with one finger on a keyboard.

Keep the emotion a secret - tell the audience who are playing the game with you that you are going to show them a piece of music that describes an emotion. They have to guess what the emotion is.

If your audience can guess the emotion, you win, which is obvious in the case of the best birthday songs! If they can’t, then you should try again. A good way to figure out how this works is to watch your favorite movie and take a good listen to the score or background music and notice how it helps to move the story along.

Generally, ‘happy music’ is a universally recognised style, as is sad music. A famous classical composer defined about 26 human emotions that can be expressed musically. He theorised that there is, in fact, a finite number. Only 20 or 30 such emotions have been named. If his theory is correct, the exercise should not prove as difficult as it may first seem as the emotional range is not that big.

This game is most fun if it can be played with four or five people or more. Each person comes prepared with his or her ‘musical emotion’ and the others in the room have to guess what the emotion is. The support or lack of understanding from your audience is the best guide as to whether or not you are succeeding with this game.

Whenever I use this exercise in my classes, I accept the challenge to instantly compose a piece of music based on an emotion suggested by the students. The strangest of all that I accepted was to compose a piece of music based on ‘constipation with guilt’. My music based on that emotion received a standing ovation, so I assume I have succeeded.