Music unquestionably affects our emotions. We tend to listen to music that reflects our mood. When we’re happy we may listen to upbeat music; when we’re sad we may listen to slower, moving songs; when we’re angry we may listen to darker music with heavy guitar, drums, and vocals that reflect our level of anger.
Were you ever asked to name your favorite band or performer? Were you able to rattle off the top five you listened to regularly?
We may not know why we prefer the artists we listen to, except to say that we resonate with or feel the music, or just that they write songs we like.
But we can learn a lot about our emotional selves through our musical tastes.
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I’m an avid fan of playing, listening and collecting music. Music has certainly been a great haven for me to express certain emotions in my mind. While I was reading this article I could easily relate with the first case. I started with heavier genre’s of music like heavy metal and it’s many sub-genre’s like death metal or thrash metal to name a few and they all have impacted my personality greatly. They helped me cope with my anger and bad memories and increase my self-esteem and help me reach to a more peaceful state. Contrary to public belief this music does not make you an evil, satanist or ruthless person but it is a safe way to release the tension and be more calm. After years of listening to this genre and gaining a good understanding of rock and metal music my aesthetics and sense of taste also improved and finally I decided to explore other realms like jazz (which I absolutely love), electronic, trip-hop, world music, dance and yes even pop music. 5 years back I never thought I would even have a liking for anything about love and romantic emotions but now I regularly listen to such subjects and realize the beauty of the themes even if they are sad or melancholic.
What I want to conclude is that music is a very powerful drug and can massively alter your personality and understanding of the world around you, it can open a 100 windows on how you view things especially if you decide to delve in to the more “aesthetic” or more “meaningful” styles of music. Thanks for sharing this article!
i found this very helpful! im writing a research paper on why/how music effects our emotions. i found some great info in this article! I can totally relate to the topic aswell. great job and thanks for publishing this article!
There is a Theory by wich you can explain, why musical chords effects us emotionally. It is called “Strebetendenz-Theory”. You can read it on the link:
http://www.willimekmusic.homepage.t-online.de/homepage/Striving/Striving.doc
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