Is Music Becoming a Science?

The magic of music is its ability to make us emotional.

We react to musical pieces on a human level.

But now there is a way to quantify these emotional reactions to ensure that every piece of music, good or not, elicits emotion from listeners.

Music & The Science of Emotions

In a new paper, researchers from the University of Southern California mapped out how musical items such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony trigger different forms of brain activity, physical reactions, and emotions.

They also researched how machine learning can use this information to predict how people will respond to a new piece of music.

Music powerfully influences parts of the brain in the auditory complex known as Heschls’ gyrus.

This area responds to pulse clarity and strength of beat.

Changing dynamics, in rhythm or tone, loudness, or the introduction of a new instrument can boost a listener’s emotional response.

In other words, change and contrast is key.

If a song is loud throughout, there’s not enough variation, thus the listening experience will not be as powerful.

Take note, death metal.

Variation is what separates a mediocre emotional experience from a great one.

The more instruments featured in a song, the greater the emotional response.

More instruments signify increased complexity.

Engineering Music To Elicit Specific Emotions

The research highlights how one day artists and composers may be able to engineer a piece of music to generate a specific emotion in audiences.

This technology would be most useful in movie scores where certain emotions such as fear or sadness are needed.

The research is still in its early stages until more powerful machine-learning models predict mental and physical reactions with accuracy.

But these models could be applied to design music to help patients with mental challenges to stimulate specific parts of their brains through music based therapy.

How would you feel if your favourite artists used research in their next album to elicit particular emotions in you when you hear a song?

This could be very useful in pop music, which usually aims to make listeners happy.

This technology could also be useful for playlist generation.

For example a “relaxing playlist” filled with songs to intentionally relax you before bed.

Does this detract from the artistic aspects of music as a whole, turning music into more of a science?

Or is there a happy medium?