How Music Touches the Emotions
“Pure music, that is stand-alone music played on musical instruments excluding the human voice, and without words, literary titles, or associated texts connected to it by its composer is often characterized as the expressive art par excellence.” Stephen Davies, Artistic Expression and the Hard Case of Pure Music.
Music can be used in many different ways. There may be something about the lyrics or background instruments that deeply touches you and causes you to listen to it repeatedly. It may trigger certain memories or generate certain feelings. Pure music can be used as a tool to touch emotions more than words. For example, from the composer Joe Hisaishi, I learned how pure music can be used in movies. Hisaishi uses his music to set the tone, characters, and settings in the Studio Ghibli movies directed by Hayao Miazaki. It can be just as powerful a tool as music with lyrics.
When I completed my first assignment for the Making Media, Making Change program offered by HECUA, our Story of Self film, my memories of life in the U.S were what inspired me. I am an international student, and I can remember when I first came to U.S. I was very afraid. I spoke very limited English and few things reminded me of home in this new, strange environment. When I arrived here, I didn’t have friends and family and I felt lonely. However, I knew I had to complete my education goal.
This is for my future and my mother’s hope for me. During the process my mother gave me a lot of support. I hold the support from her, and I try to find fun in my life, and enjoy it. I wanted to share my experiences about how my arriving to study in U.S felt, and how I find enjoyment in my life here. I thought it would be easy to use my own experiences to make my story. I planned to use Observational Mode to serve my story. Observational Mode is sometimes seen as hard to understand, because it doesn’t use voice added to video.
From my own experience I know if I use current music in the video, it will easier for people to understand and hopefully relate to. So I chose pure music with two rhythms: lonely from the beginning, and then hopeful, with a happy ending. I thought: that will make it easy to edit the video. I will make the music to match my story.
The process I use for my own filmmaking is to decide what genre the film is in. You also need to determine what type of emotions it causes the audience to feel. Then the appropriate choice of music to set the tone and setting for the story. For example, you may choose between pure music or pop depending on what fits the best. The song Lovesick by Synthon accurately sets the tone for my feelings of loneliness when arriving in America for the first time. The two different tones in this song are used to first depict my feelings of loneliness then my happiness as I become more comfortable living far from home.
People are under a lot of pressure in today’s culture: the pressure of jobs, family life, school, and having an active social life. Music is one of important media we can use to transfer information. Peace and pure music became popular among modern busy people. Pure music has a relaxing style. It can help people relax, get out of their work and think about their life.
Many people who like to listen popular music overlook pure music because they think lyrics can touch their emotions, and also because they think listening to pure music is boring, because it lacks meaning without lyrics, or they do not understand what it means. However, pure music can be used to set the tone both in the real world and the world of cinema just as well as lyrical music can.
For instance, when studying, quieter music is preferred because noisy music is too distracting. Quiet music can also be used to help relax at the end of a long, hard day.
How can we compare popular and pure music in movies? Some animated movies, such as Disney’s Frozen, use popular songs. In the case of Frozen, there is the song Let It Go. With this song the character Elsa is singing about how she was afraid to use her powers because she didn’t know what people would think of her if she did. Let It Go is the coming of age song where she uses her powers for the first time to their limit, no longer afraid of what they can do. This helps set the tone for her character development. Outside the context of the movie it is still about how rebellion and relativism lead to freedom.
Disney’s animated movies usually have a combination of song and dance elements. The animators design characters that sing and dance in movies. For example, in Beauty and the Beast, the song Be Our Guest features dancing dishes at the dinner table in the Beast’s castle.
However some animations created their theme and story, like Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Miyazaki is a film director and he creates animated classics like Castle in the Sky, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away. He collaborated with Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi to create settings, tones, and characters. Joe Hisaishi use piano and other instruments to compose pure music for the animations. The music creates character development within the movies. This is different from the Western Disney movies that rely on lyrics and dancing to set the tone of the film. Those two different styles of animation depend on the character development and story direction.
Joe Hisaishi’s pure music brings a lot of emotion, and it all has different styles. Joe Hisaishi is very versatile in the way he composes music to match the scenes and as an aide to help us get in the minds of these characters. It is just as powerful and beautiful as using lyrics in western animation such as Disney films. Pure music and movie’s story combined induces certain memories in the viewer. While animation is important the background music is a crucial tool in supplementing to the story and causing certain emotions in the audience.
Further Reading:
Davies, Stephen. Artistic Expression and the Hard Case of Pure Music. Stephen Davies, Artistic expression and the hard case of pure music — PhilPapers, 1 Jan. 1970, philpapers.org/rec/DAVAEA.
Thinkers Incorporated, “What is the Meaning of Frozen’s Let It Go.”
This piece is part of a series written by college undergraduates enrolled in off-campus study programs through the Higher Education Consortium for Urban Affairs (HECUA). HECUA programs offer students a chance to think deeply about the issues that matter most, and we’d like to share a piece of that experience with you. Every student post on the HECUA Medium page considers a theory or reading that intersects with that student’s lived experience. For more information about HECUA programs, click here.
