Song
& Emotion
When we treat sexual selection we shall see that
primeval man, or rather some early progenitor of man, probably used his voice
largely, as does one of the gibbon-apes at the present day, in producing true
musical cadences, that is in singing; we may conclude from a widely-spread
analogy that this power would have been especially exerted during the courtship
of the sexes, serving to express various emotions, as love, jealousy, triumph,
and serving as a challenge to their rivals.
----
Charles Darwin (1871)
In East Asia, a
majority of popular songs deal with the topic of pain and heartbreak caused by
romantic relationships. These popular songs typically employ a verse-chorus
form. In this form, the chorus contrasts with the preceding verse (or the
preceding transition: pre-chorus) in terms of elevated intensity, which is
achieved through changes in lyrical content, sound level, pitch level,
rhythmic/textual activity, and/or timbral noise (Capuzzo, 2009; Doll, 2011). Further,
the chorus, interspersed between the narrative verses, usually presents the
musical climax and the lyrical point of a song (Davis, 1984).
We conducted a
series of experiments to examine the emotional responses to the entrance chorus
in popular songs. In the first experiment, listeners’ skin conductance
responses (SCR) were used to estimate their arousal level. The stimuli were the
verse-to-chorus progression of fifteen popular songs. As shown in Figure 1, the
average SCR amplitude reached a local maximum at the chorus entrance (Tsai et
al., 2014). We also used brain-imaging technology to explore the neural
correlates of the rewarding processing of the verse-to-chorus progression.
Figure 1. The median curve
of SCR amplitude and the result of statistical analysis (p values of t-tests
comparing the instant SCR amplitudes with the control condition).
I also used brain-imaging
technology to analyze the cultural impacts on song appreciation. Figure 2 shows
the results of functional connectivity analyses (with the seed in the right
posterior superior gyrus) in three listeners during exposure to a lyrical song Myth (sung by 紀曉君). This song mentions the
fading tradition of the Puyuma (the Pinuyumayan, Peinan, or Beinan tribe 卑南族), one
of the tribal groups of the Taiwanese aborigines. Only Puyuma listener’s medial
orbitofrontal cortex functionally connected with the right auditory association cortex. Previous studies have found that the medial orbitofrontal cortex is
engaged during aesthetic appreciation of low-arousal music (Trost et al., 2012)
and responsible for changing decision thresholds that influence whether
information should be expressed in an evaluation (Hughes & Beer, 2012). Our
pilot study suggests that the cultural background may have modulatory effects
on the self-referential mentation during listening to lyrical songs.
Figure 2. The results of
functional connectivity analyses in three listeners during exposure to a
lyrical song, which mentions the fading tradition of the Puyuma. Only Puyuma listener’s
medial orbitofrontal cortex (indicated by the yellow arrow) functionally
connected with the right association auditory cortex.
REFERENCES
Capuzzo, G.
(2009). Sectional tonality and sectional centricity in rock music. Music Theory
Spectrum, 31, 157-174.
Darwin, C.
(1871). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John
Murray. Volume 1. 1st edition.
Davis, S.
(1984). The craft of lyric writing. Cincinnati, Ohio: Writer’s Digest Books.
Doll, C.
(2011). Rockin’ out: Expressive modulation in verse–chorus form. Music Theory
Online 17/3, http://www.mtosmt.org/issues/mto.11.17.3/mto.11.17.3.doll.html
Hughes, B. L.,
& Beer, J. S. (2012). Medial orbitofrontal cortex is associated with
shifting decision thresholds in self-serving cognition. Neuroimage, 61, 889-98.
Trost, W.,
Ethofer, T., Zentner, M., & Vuilleumier, P. (2012). Mapping aesthetic
musical emotions in the brain. Cerebral Cortex, 22, 2769-83.
Tsai, C. G.,
Chen, R. S., & Yu, S. P. (2014). Analyzing the verse-chorus form: schema
shifts and musical rewards in lyrical-slow songs (in Chinese). Research in
Applied Psychology, 61, 239-286.
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2015© 蔡振家 Chen-Gia Tsai