Emotion and Music

Music is known to be a good connector to and from the subconscious. People can have all kinds of emotions while listening to different types of music. What do you feel while listening to this?


(www.youtube.com...)


Further reading:
www.scientificamerican.com...
psychcentral.com...
brain.oxfordjournals.org...
www.stefan-koelsch.de...

I feel annoyed after about ten minutes.
I played some Ornette Coleman with it. That is a trippy effect.

a reply to: TauNorthwolf

Boring.
Religious chanting from a culture much different than my own or my ancestors.
It didn't stir any emotions in me. That belief system isn't in my blood.
I don't know what the words were, but I don't care. It seems unimportant to even study up on what it is.
Sorry Mate, I tried to make it all the way through.

a reply to: TauNorthwolf

It's difficult to describe.

It sounds like a mix of one person singing an obligatory song of praise, like they are not truly happy to be singing, while another restrains their joy because the song is supposed to be serious.

It feels like a representation of stifled joy or a song of self-deprecation - like a child made to stand quietly while the adults discuss something super duper serious.

And as the song goes on, you can feel the joy leave the one who was holding it in, at which point, he becomes like the proverbial adult: honor bound and without joy.

After coming to the above conclusion, I see that the song is a homage to Buddha, so that might explain why they stifle their joy, why it is like a song of praise without joy: they are trying to suppress their "ego", maybe.

Here try this one and tell me what you feel:


In particular, when all the instruments fuse together and you cannot distinguish them - when the sound becomes overwhelming to the ears, what is that feeling?

a reply to: TauNorthwolf

It's quite familiar to me, since I live in another Buddhist country.

This recording is relatively melodious and restful (at least the 30sec or so I listened to). Sometimes the chanting can sound really discordant and annoying, especially when it's broadcast live to the entire neighbourhood over tinhorn speakers.

When I was a kid my mother and brothers and I lived for a while with my Buddhist aunt and uncle while we looked for a place to stay after returning home from abroad. During that couple of weeks or so, I was woken at dawn every morning by my aunt's tiny transistor radio picking up the daily devotional chant broadcast by state radio. I would lie awake listening to it while the house slowly woke up around me. A pleasant childhood memory.

It was some years yet before I saw the dark side of Buddhism manifest itself. Still an innocent.

At first I get serious , then for me it is boring.

Hmm, it's not for me. But then I've always been into racy, heavy music; so that's hardly surprising. It has always amused me however how 'experts' have theorized about the effects of different genres of music on human emotions, often without taking into account that each person is different. 'Heavy metal causes depression', is my favourite of these myths. Of course recently they decided to look into it properly and found out the exact opposite is true. It helps me, and some others alike, to relieve stress and anger; thus helping us a great deal emotionally.