Chords of emotion
Sofia Toso
The research question I used for my personal project is How can I combine different notes and sounds to express my emotions in a song?
Before coming up with a final research question I created 4 questions and then chose the question that would be the more suitable one for my project idea. To relate the global context to my research question I chose Identities and Relationships (who am I? Who are we?). My goal was all about conveying the different emotions in the audience, only using the melody (piano).
​
When composing my song I had to create 4 different sections expressing the 4 emotions I chose to concentrate on (sadness, happiness, anger and fear), the obstacles I encountered when creating the song was that I tended to use the same chords for each emotion while I had to make them sound different. I always had to show my piece to different aged people to see if all receive the same emotion from every section, and if its clear or it if needs more impact.
I researched more in detail how each emotion is mostly illustrated and how it is represented in music:
-
Happiness: Is a state of being where one feels joy, satisfied, enjoyable, pleasure, makes you energetic. It happens when someone's feelings are getting influenced by situations in the surroundings but happiness can also come from inside when someone is feeling good about themselves or good about something that happened to them.
In music the emotion of happiness is played with a faster and staccato tempo (staccato: all notes are played much shorter all after each other), and usually higher notes on a higher key are the best choices for presenting this emotion. Usually played in the major.
-
Sadness: It is a state of being where someone feels unappreciated, insecure, unhappy, pain, confusion, pressure. It's mostly when the surroundings affect the emotions of a being.
This emotion in music is always very slow and deep into the keys there is never a rush when playing this emotion. It has to play with the mind to make people go deep into the music. Has to be played in minor chords.
-
Anger: Is always seen as a violent feeling, can blind someone to respond badly or makes someone feel enraged, it can affect other people and is mostly affected by the surroundings. This feeling is always seen as a negative feeling, always seen as a feeling power, most people want to avoid this feeling since it makes them feel bad.
Anger in music on the piano is played deep and hard into the key, it does not matter if it's slow or fast as long as it's deep in the key it will give the strength of the emotion. Anger has to usually be played with lower keys to give a more darker affect to make the emotion to the listener clear.
-
Fear: Just like anger it blinds someone to see or feel anything but this feeling. Fear is a state of being that usually takes out the worst imaginations of an individual and affects the person when the problem happens or when the person is thinking about it.
Fear in music is hard to play. It usually uses a fast paced and a high pitched one, fear is hard to play since it can sound like happiness, so you have to make a mix of sadness and happiness in one to create a feeling of fear.
In the end I decided to have in the beginning of the song Anger, then fear, after sadness, and lastly happiness. I decided to organize the emotions like this to create an easier end effect and to bring the audience through a story. Someone starting angry, getting scared, getting sad, and then happy again to start the whole cycle.
​
The first steps I took when creating my product was start composing the sadness section. I used the first chord from a famous piece and everything after I composed myself, this emotion took be around 2 weeks to complete and to show to an audience to see if the emotion I play is the same they feel. The after sadness I composed the section anger which was going to be played before sadness. The anger section I mixed with fear, since it depends on someone's point of view which emotion is most appropriate for that section, which in the end took me around 2-3 weeks to complete. The finally for the joyful/happiness section I created a strong start and slowly went softer to end the song, this section took me around 1 - 2 weeks to complete. After I put each section together in order. When playing all together I decided to pause of a few seconds in between anger/fear and sadness, to create more impact when the tone of the music would change.
​
After I completed the full song I went out and filmed myself dancing to certain sections of the song, one section was with sadness and the other was in happiness. For anger I filmed trees moving by the wind and used two videos online of thunder and lightning.
​
After I had all the materials completed all the videos done and music done, I edited it all together. Editing took me a few days to complete since it took a long time to place everything correctly at the right time.
​
For my whole process the only major materials I needed where the piano, a camera/or phone, and for the editing I used a designing software to edit all videos created together.
Criteria created for my product:
