A
project at Glasgow Caledonian
University has revealed that music
and the emotion it conveys could help people manage physical
pain and could also treat depression.
With
the use of audio engineering and music psychology, the project takes
a closer look at how music conveys emotion and how it can be used to
help people through difficult emotional and even physical times. Dr.
Don Knox, project leader, was responsible for the audio engineering
while Raymond MacDonald, Professor of Music Psychology at Glasgow
Caledonian University, was responsible for the music psychology
aspect of the project.
"The
impact of a piece of music on a person goes so much further than
thinking that a fast tempo can lift a mood and a slow one can bring
it down," said Knox. "Music expresses emotion as a result
of many factors. These include the tone, structure and other
technical characteristics of a piece. Lyrics can have a big impact
too. But so can purely subjective factors: where or when you first
heard it, whether you associate it with happy or sad events and so
on.
"Our
project is the first step towards taking all of these considerations
- and the way they interact with each other - on board."
During
the course of this research, a panel of volunteers were asked to
listen to pieces of contemporary popular music that they have never
heard before, and then were told to assign
each song to a position on a graph. The graph contains one
axis that shows the type of feeling that the music piece
"communicates" (negative or positive), and the other axis
measures the activity level or intensity of the music.
"We
look at parameters such as rhythm patterns, melodic range, musical
intervals, length of phrases, musical pitch and so on," said
Knox. "For example, music falling into a positive category might
have a regular rhythm, bright timbre and a fairly steady pitch
contour over time. If tempo and loudness increase, for instance, this
would place the piece in a more 'exuberant' or 'excited' region of
the graph."
Knox,
MacDonald and their team are hoping to create a mathematical model
that explains music's ability to convey emotion, and eventually use
this to create computer programs that are capable of
recognizing music
that will fit an individual's needs, such as music that would be
helpful to regulating a person with depression's mood, or calming
those with physical pain. They hope to have these computer programs
developed "within a few years," and can see it leading to
the use of individually-tailored music prescriptions from doctors.
"By
making it possible to search for music and organize collections
according to emotional content, such programs could fundamentally
change the way we interact
with music," said Knox. "Some online music stores
already tag music according to whether a piece is 'happy' or 'sad.'
Our project is refining this approach and giving it a firm scientific
foundation, unlocking all kinds of possibilities and opportunities as
a result."
This
research was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences
Research Council (EPSRC).
