Pitch Height and Emotional Response in Musical Pieces

Abstract

The current research looked at the relationship that exists between the mode of a musical piece, its pitch height, and the emotions conveyed to the listener. It was hypothesized that when transposing a minor mode piece downwards in pitch, there will be more frequent reports of negative emotions from the listeners, and when transposing a major mode piece upwards in pitch, there will be more frequent reports of positive emotions from the listeners. In order to test this hypothesis, 22 subjects listened to various musical clips that were major, minor, or atonal. Each clip was edited through Ocenaudio to create two versions of each clip separated in pitch height by one octave. Participants rated each musical clip for the intensity of fear, happiness, and sadness that it communicated. It was found that there was a significant main effect of mode and pitch for each emotion, as well as a significant interactions between pitch and mode for all emotions except sadness.