What Makes a Song Sad?: Minor Seconds
What makes a song sad? Sometimes it's the usual suspects: minor thirds or minor keys.
The recent Atlantic article What Makes a Song Sad nicely debunks this mythology.
But let's not forget about the minor second or the diminished fifth for their saturnine effect. Metal bands have a fondness for minor seconds (or even quarter tones) decidedly for their sinister quality. Minor seconds and diminished fifths can also be redolent of machine sounds such as chainsaws. Many printers pulse in a flat-5 interval.
Intervals can have profound effects on mood if used as a foreground element in a song. But if used merely as a key or in a diatonic progression, minor chords or the old shopworn signifier of sadness, the minor third, it really is more of a cultural bias than anything else. The blue note, often applied to the third degree of major scale is in fact an intentional signifier of sadness.
The recent Atlantic article What Makes a Song Sad nicely debunks this mythology.
But let's not forget about the minor second or the diminished fifth for their saturnine effect. Metal bands have a fondness for minor seconds (or even quarter tones) decidedly for their sinister quality. Minor seconds and diminished fifths can also be redolent of machine sounds such as chainsaws. Many printers pulse in a flat-5 interval.
Intervals can have profound effects on mood if used as a foreground element in a song. But if used merely as a key or in a diatonic progression, minor chords or the old shopworn signifier of sadness, the minor third, it really is more of a cultural bias than anything else. The blue note, often applied to the third degree of major scale is in fact an intentional signifier of sadness.
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