Write to Express

Conveying one's emotion is one of the goals of a composer when he's writing a piece of music, and listeners tend to say that a music is great if they can relate about the motif of the actual piece..

I wanna ask for your smart ideas on what chords can convey a particular feeling (e.g. chords on minor modes, borrowed chords/phrase create darker emotions on music).

How about chord with preparation and resolution? (The difference between the suspension and retardation's resolution) Chord with five tones? (A triad with suspended 9th and 4th, 2nd and 7th) And others..

I found hard times trying to hit what I want to express whenever I am putting harmonies on a certain melody. I try to use different chord combination but didn't have a smooth flow when I'm about to hear it.

Any hand on this? Thanks.

What reasons would you have to believe that these chords bear any more "emotion" or "feeling" that those associated through society/media or our personal experiences?

If you play an A minor chord on someone who listens to an A minor chord everytime someone dies, they'll take it as sad, while if someone listens to an A minor chord everytime something good happens, they'll take it as happy. And a person from india who hasn't been exposed to western classical music will not think of it either as sad or happy. Or someone from china or japan. Or africa.

So what exactly are you looking for?

Sorry but I don't think anyone can help you hear. If there was a concrete list of dos and don'ts in music then it would be much easier to write. There are no objectively "sad" or "happy" chords. Hell, even a standard minor triad, which is often reffered to as "sad" I don't find sad at all personally.

You simply have to experiment with different chords and voicings and find what you like and don't like. And it would probably be best if you got over the somewhat limited view of "emotional" chords. There are plenty of chords I find to be beautiful that don't seem to convey any strong sentiment whatsoever. If for music to be "good", it has to express emotion then you're denying yourself a lot of music.

Hindustani music does have affects connected to scales, and I'm sure you could use Nanda/Anandi (SGmPDNS' ascending, i.e. the major scale) as "joyful," so there's a bit of cross-cultural similarities there (Nanda)

But you're totally right.

major ≠ happy; minor ≠ sad. music is not a direct analogue for anything, use your own judgments.

I doubt I'd understand many of the "feelings" behind raga scales or any other music that I am not used to/grown up with.

And even if you "use your own judgements", where is that going to take you? If I think that Am is sad, and I write it having "sadness" in mind, and someone else listens to my music and thinks of "happiness", how well have I communicated? How much better have I communicated if I have no idea what that listener thinks, or that listener has no idea what I was thinking before I was writing it? What if the listener thinks that this piece expresses happiness very very well. Have I communicated well? Have I expressed myself well?

:x

You know, there's a lot more to music than just its parts, it's the sum of those parts and the creation of gestures which makes the music happen and conveys whatever it is you happen to want to convey. A major triad sonority played at pianissimo on the middle register of the piano can still convey an image of rest, possibly even sadness depending on the context. You could use the same major triadic sonority, have it played by the chicago symphony brass section with a big timpani flourish, and it sounds brilliant and triumphant.

...[the music] conveys whatever it is you happen to want to convey.

The music conveys nothing, it evokes everything.

No one can make me feel something through music. What I mean is, no one can force upon me a specific emotion (i.e. sadness). Juji's nailed it, and touched on the point that we will all have slightly different reactions to any musical stimulus. We've all had vastly different life experiences - musical or otherwise. What sounds sad and forlorn to you may be powerful and uplifting to me.

...

A major triad sonority played at pianissimo on the middle register of the piano can still convey an image of rest, possibly even sadness depending on the context. You could use the same major triadic sonority, have it played by the chicago symphony brass section with a big timpani flourish, and it sounds brilliant and triumphant.

True, musical context can effect its perception...BUT, it's still going to be wildly different from ear to ear.

you should try to "picture" the harmony in your head first before writing it down.

trust me, i understand the feeling you get when you play what you wrote, and the harmony sounds NOTHING like what you expected.

you should try to "picture" the harmony in your head first before writing it down.

trust me, i understand the feeling you get when you play what you wrote, and the harmony sounds NOTHING like what you expected.

That's what ear training is for. Anyone with a decent undergrad training in music should be able to recognize all sonorities used in common practice music, understand the progressions etc etc etc. These are things younger students struggle with, I understand, I suggest doing transcribing and other sorts of listening exercises as much as you can. That's one thing I did that helped develop my ear in middle and high school. I was transcribing recordings and whatever else I could from 7th grade.

I'm agreeing with y'all. Music can't convey anything, so if you have an organizational plan based on emotion, that's fine, so long as it makes sense to you, the composer.

I'm agreeing with y'all. Music can't convey anything, so if you have an organizational plan based on emotion, that's fine, so long as it makes sense to you, the composer.

The thing is, when more "immature" musicians say "emotion", they mean this swooping, histrionic Germanic outpouring. I don't know why it doesn't occur to people that there are MANY kinds of emotions. Not just what you hear and/or feel when you listen to a Brahms symphony (for the record, that's not a Brahms bash, since I love Brahms....but now there are going to be 10 posts lambasting me for saying Brahms sucks, even though I never even used that word)

Well... I believe that music can generate certain emotions and feelings in people. But an A minor chord is always going to be just that. It's just a chord. In order to "generate" emotion you need to focus of the chord progression. One chord ain't gonna do it.

Everyone here is right. Music is a lot like literature. It can be interpreted in any way the listener wants to. But to say that music can't generate emotions is pretty extreme. Personally I don't like a lot of music because they do nothing to me. There is music, however, that moves me BIG TIME! Sometimes it may take me several times to listen to a piece before I "feel" anything. Personally, soundtracks do the trick. (Some soundtracks I haven't even seen the movie to.

James Newton Howard... Listen to some of his work I bet you will be moved!

Well... I believe that music can generate certain emotions and feelings in people. But an A minor chord is always going to be just that. It's just a chord. In order to "generate" emotion you need to focus of the chord progression. One chord ain't gonna do it.

Everyone here is right. Music is a lot like literature. It can be interpreted in any way the listener wants to. But to say that music can't generate emotions is pretty extreme. Personally I don't like a lot of music because they do nothing to me. There is music, however, that moves me BIG TIME! Sometimes it may take me several times to listen to a piece before I "feel" anything. Personally, soundtracks do the trick. (Some soundtracks I haven't even seen the movie to.

James Newton Howard... Listen to some of his work I bet you will be moved!

I respect nothing about this post

One chord ain't gonna do it? Hmm, tell that to Beethoven....or LaMonte Young...they seemed to do just fine. But you're the genius right?

Everyone here is right. Music is a lot like literature. It can be interpreted in any way the listener wants to. But to say that music can't generate emotions is pretty extreme. Personally I don't like a lot of music because they do nothing to me. There is music, however, that moves me BIG TIME!

I think the statement was not that music doesn't (or can't, that's more accurate) produce emotion, it's that music can't produce reliable emotion. In that, you can't depend or expect music to produce the same emotion in ever listener - the listener, in their interpretation of the music, will associate certain musical ideas with their own independant set of emotions.

What I'm more worried about is this statement:

Conveying one's emotion is one of the goals of a composer when he's writing a piece of music

Is that really true? Can you say that all composers want to convey emotion when they write music? I don't think so. There are so many different reasons why one could compose.

Many composers only wrote music because it was their job - sometimes they were inspired and conveyed emotion, and sometimes they wrote music because they needed food on the table.

I mainly write music for myself. I want to create something that (I think) is beautiful, and I want it to last forever. I'm not trying to convey any specific emotion or express any idea when I write, I just want it to sound nice. To me. I'm happier if other people enjoy it because I like recognition and praise, and it's nice to think that other people like one of my creations, but I very rarely sit down and think, 'You know, today I'm going to write a piece of music that's going to make the listener cry.' You know what I mean?

~Christian

The music conveys nothing, it evokes everything.

Succinctly to the point. Beautiful!

Succinctly to the point. Beautiful!

:) Thank you! I was beginning to think no one read my post.

I respect nothing about this post

One chord ain't gonna do it? Hmm, tell that to Beethoven....or LaMonte Young...they seemed to do just fine. But you're the genius right?

Greg Smith... I apologize if I've affended you. I just thought this was a place where many people of the same interest could share ideas and opinions without being ridiculed for those ideas and opinions. I never said I was a genius. Trust me... I'm not!

But if an orchestra loaded up on stage and simply played one chord that lasted two seconds then exited the stage, would you get anything from that? I'd be a bit confused, personally.

One chord ain't gonna do it? Hmm, tell that to Beethoven....or LaMonte Young...they seemed to do just fine. But you're the genius right?

I think his intention here (or at least as I read it) was that a single chord conveys little emotion (or at least universal emotion) without context. A minor chord will sound like a million different things to a million different people, but when put in the context of a piece, the intended effect will become more clear. A climax is only a climax when it has a build up, a tension, followed by some sort of resolution. But then again, more modern music can screw with these principles.

There are a million different ways to argue the semantics about it, but ultimately I have to agree with Robin, music does not convey, but evokes.

Greg Smith... I apologize if I've affended you. I just thought this was a place where many people of the same interest could share ideas and opinions without being ridiculed for those ideas and opinions. I never said I was a genius. Trust me... I'm not!

But if an orchestra loaded up on stage and simply played one chord that lasted two seconds then exited the stage, would you get anything from that? I'd be a bit confused, personally.

Don't mind Greg, he's just a curmudgeon :)

But you just answered your own question: you felt confused. And if the program and austerity was all there, that would most probably be the point. It's like the 4/4 in one of my Minatures, a sort of a "$%@# you."

A number of rock and punk bands do this all the time. Rage Against the Machine, toolboxes though they be (though I really like a lot of Tom Morello's work in that band), did this a few times.

I think that there are a lot of different types of emotions, and more importantly, states of being. Apathy is one - if music fails to affect you at all, that in itself is an event. The lack of caring or the lack of mood is one state of being that one can be in. It's sort of a Catch-22 in that respect; if music moves you, then it moves you; if not, then it's still affecting you, even if you don't want it to.

I don't know if that makes sense I'm pretty tired.

Hmmm.. I didn't thought that I'll get a lot of replies from all of you.

Saying that one of the composer's goal is to convey emotion is just an opinion. Now, I think I'm starting to undrestand how music really works. Ya, you're all right---a composition, may sound great to a person, while may sound just like noise to another. Not everyone may appreciate a single piece of music. And not everyone may have the same thought/response on a particular composition.

I'll continue to read all of your discussions here. Believe me, I won't say all of your names one by one, but if I'll have the opportunity to thank all of you personally, I will. Thanks a lot. :thumbsup: