To give you a better understanding, have a look at the picture below. However, a perceptual illusion is not an optical phenomenon, but rather a cognitive *) one. You’ve probably seen so-called optical illusions that use visual tricks to trigger certain assumptions within our human perception. So what happens in those split seconds, when music enters our brain? Music has a lot of similarities with perception illusion, not to be confused with the optical ones. We can barely grasp what happens in those split seconds, making it almost mysterious and powerful at the same time. No wonder it’s sometimes hard to describe our feelings. It influences our thinking, behaviour, brings back memories and turns it into feelings. This process usually takes a couple of seconds, where a sequence of sounds, interpreted by our brain as music, can be the trigger that evokes the emotion, bringing it to the conscious mind. ― Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)įrom a scientific approach, emotions are chemicals released in response to our interpretation of a specific trigger. “Without music, life would be a mistake.” A mix of emotions often fuels feelings, and most of the times, last longer than emotions. Feelings are more “cognitively saturated” as the emotion chemicals are processed in our brain and body.

Which is a clue to the meaning of “feeling,” it’s something we sense. When we say we physically feel cold, we can also emotionally feel cold. Feelings happen as we begin to integrate the emotion, start to think about it and “letting it soak in.” In English, “to feel” is used for both physical and emotional sensations. When we try to express that internal movement, we use words like joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise or love (and even more), which brings up a new question: are we talking about emotions or feelings?Įmotions and feelings are often used interchangeably, but they are slightly different. We can be “moved” by a piece of music, where ‘being moved’ describes our emotional state. The word emotion comes from the Latin word ‘ emovere‘, which means ‘to move, remove, agitate or stir up’. Get ready to stir up the emotions of your listeners.įirst, let’s have a closer look at our emotions. With this blog article, we’ll explore emotion in music and want to give you an insight into some of the discoveries and help you to find ways to apply this to your music-making process. But what makes music move us and stir up our deepest emotions? Which elements of music play a role in this interaction? In the last decades, neuroscience and cognitive psychology studies played a vital role to decipher the mysteries surrounding music and our emotions. Most of us can relate that meeting someone with the same music taste is one of the best things, creating a deeper connection and in most cases, an emotional bond. It’s a way of telling a story, and research shows that music binds us in a way that language rarely does, making it almost a social glue.

And for many people, and even brands, the music they relate to is an extension of themselves. Nowadays, sharing music has become easier, and it’s quite evident that music has taken up an extremely important role.

Facebook introduced the “I’m listening to” option as a status update, and Instagram lets you share your favourite music in your stories. Tinder has a feature where you can share your favourite song, and Spotify has shareable playlists. In the earlier days, we would give mix-tapes (cassettes) to the ones we secretly liked or had a crush on, since words could not express our feelings. Some call it a universal language, while others call it the window to the soul.

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