Songs that helped us through the Corona
 

 

Can Music Transmit Cross Modal Associations?
 

 

Arabic musical modes (Maqamat) and their associated emotions

 

We have collected over 2500 links to songs and pieces people shared with us as the song/piece that helped them through the first Corona lockdown

What are the characteristics of these songs? What textual themes recur in them?

Do they have any special musical characteristics?

Can they be associated with age? Gender? Resilience? 

 

Though auditory sensory information plays a key role in the making of, and listening to music, a full appreciation of music also relies heavily on real or imagined visual, tactile, and kinesthetic sensory information. Thus, we might talk about a rough or dark tone, a rising melody, heavy walking bass notes, or the sharp shrill of the clarinet high notes. Specifically, if we view music as a form of communication, the ability of the composer/performer/improviser to transmit a rich palette of sensations, or even concrete images, is very much rooted in cross modal associations.  Therefore, a better understanding of cross modal associations in music provides for a richer understanding of the listening experience and has important ramifications for music creativity.

What is the mapping between visual size, brightness and sharpness and musical parameters (pitch, intensity, timbre, roughness, articulation, density)? 

Can these dimensions be consistently transmitted from improvisers to listeners? 

What other possibly more idiosyncratic musical devices support this communication?

How do composers treat words associates with these dimensions?

 

 

Almost all music cognition studies have been carried out with Western listeners and music. We wish to extend our understanding of the power of music to elicit in us strong emotions to a musical system which has a very different aesthetics and structure than the Western one, yet shares with it the idea that different musical scales can convey different emotions. 

 

How would pieces written in this tradition be emotionally experienced by listeners familiar and non-familiar with this system?

Are the emotion labels we have been using in research in the West relevant and comprehensive for such a study?

What other components besides the scale contribute to the perceived or felt emotions?