Musical Key Characteristics

The following is a piece that I have found online about musical keys and their believed interpretations.

I have never properly thought of key signature in the sense of its feel, I often write a piece in whichever key I feel to be natural and if it does not provide the right tone will experiment by transposing to other keys. In a sense I guess that yes I have thought about the characteristics of musical keys in terms of how they feel and sound to me when writing but I have not formally looked into this as a research topic and how the characteristics of a key may imply certain things. 

Much of these stem from established themes created in 18th/19th century music that over time have established themselves through our knowledge of these past pieces. 

When composing my practical piece of work, I began in the key of Cminor. Although happy with the feel of the melody, I was not happy with how the key itself sounded in terms of the richness of the dispair that I wanted to create, although I admit that I did play around  with the melody in various keys before further researching the characteristics of keys, it was after reading this piece that I believed B minor to be the ideal key, the 'key of dispair'.

I don't believe that these should be strict rules to stick to as I don't believe one key can some up any one thought, It is however associated with these thoughts through their use throughout the ages so just like musical conventions can be used to further instate a feeling that a listener may instantly recognise. Being that my musical theme is to tell the tale of a characters dispair then why not write in a key that classically concludes the feeling of dispair within its scale.


From Christian Schubart's Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst (1806) translated by Rita Steblin in A History of Key Characteristics in the 18th and Early 19th Centuries. UMI Research Press (1983). 

C major	Completely pure. Its character is: innocence, simplicity, naïvety, children's talk.
C minor	Declaration of love and at the same time the lament of unhappy love. All languishing, longing, sighing of the love-sick soul lies in this key.
Db major	A leering key, degenerating into grief and rapture. It cannot laugh, but it can smile; it cannot howl, but it can at least grimace its crying.--Consequently only unusual characters and feelings can be brought out in this key.
D major	The key of triumph, of Hallejuahs, of war-cries, of victory-rejoicing. Thus, the inviting symphonies, the marches, holiday songs and heaven-rejoicing choruses are set in this key.
D minor	Melancholy womanliness, the spleen and humours brood.
D# minor	Feelings of the anxiety of the soul's deepest distress, of brooding despair, of blackest depresssion, of the most gloomy condition of the soul. Every fear, every hesitation of the shuddering heart, breathes out of horrible D# minor. If ghosts could speak, their speech would approximate this key.
Eb major	The key of love, of devotion, of intimate conversation with God.
E major	Noisy shouts of joy, laughing pleasure and not yet complete, full delight lies in E Major.
F major	Complaisance & calm.
F minor	Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.
F# major	Triumph over difficulty, free sigh of relief utered when hurdles are surmounted; echo of a soul which has fiercely struggled and finally conquered lies in all uses of this key.
F# minor	A gloomy key: it tugs at passion as a dog biting a dress. Resentment and discontent are its language.
G major	Everything rustic, idyllic and lyrical, every calm and satisfied passion, every tender gratitude for true friendship and faithful love,--in a word every gentle and peaceful emotion of the heart is correctly expressed by this key.
G minor	Discontent, uneasiness, worry about a failed scheme; bad-tempered gnashing of teeth; in a word: resentment and dislike.
Ab major	Key of the grave. Death, grave, putrefaction, judgment, eternity lie in its radius.
Ab minor	Grumbler, heart squeezed until it suffocates; wailing lament, difficult struggle; in a word, the color of this key is everything struggling with difficulty.
A major	This key includes declarations of innocent love, satisfaction with one's state of affairs; hope of seeing one's beloved again when parting; youthful cheerfulness and trust in God.
A minor	Pious womanliness and tenderness of character.
Bb major	Cheerful love, clear conscience, hope aspiration for a better world.
Bb minor	A quaint creature, often dressed in the garment of night. It is somewhat surly and very seldom takes on a pleasant countenance. Mocking God and the world; discontented with itself and with everything; preparation for suicide sounds in this key.
B major	Strongly coloured, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring coulors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere.
B minor	This is as it were the key of patience, of calm awaiting ones's fate and of submission to divine dispensation.

Some Music Theory Insight

Here are some notes on the 'Aesthetics of Music' as researched in the book by R.Scruton, 1997.

It was written by Aaron Copland that music has four essential elements: rhythm, melody, harmony and tonal colour, leaving out pitch and instead imports 'tonal colour' which is routed in the character of sound rather than the organisation.

So what are the meanings, features and uses for these terms:
Pitch first of all is produced by and from the point of view of physics, reducible to a vibration. Audible pitches extend from 60beats per second to 3000 or more.

Rhythm has several importan variables in rhythmic organisation.

The beat us the pulse of a rhythm, comparable to that of a heartbeat. The beat must take into account the time signature of the piece of music (number of beats and value per measurement). These beats can be played either as a downbeat or upbeat, the downbeat producing a relatively clear sound, the upbeat on the other hand is clearly heard as a melodic event often providing a 'leading into melody' sound.

Grouping of notes - these may be quavered, crotchet, semi quavered groupings to provide a constant rhythm.

Accent - is a rhythmic emphasis that may fall on or off the beat. The difference between an accented and a non accented note being the level of attack used.

Tempo - how many beats per minute

Simple and Compound rhythm - Simple = 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 2/2, 3/2, 4/8 etc.
Compound = 9/8, 12/8 etc.

Melody is a musical phrase of notes in predominant succession.

Melodies may occur as an accompanying figure that becomes predominant or gradually permeates the the melodic line until it becomes a part of it.

Motifs, phrases and melodies may stand out more or less vividly from the surrounding music not because of their loudness or timbre but simply as the capture the listeners attention.

counterpoint depends on the composers ability to switch our attention from part to part whilst maintaing an even texture.

Harmony is the coming of two or more melodic events or notes played together.

Tonal colour relates to how instrumentation/pitch/notes sound together, how a melody sits between other melodies and how instruments may interact with one another.

Have a grasp of what each of these elements mean and how they may be used on their own and together provides great advantages to a composer. Knowing how a rhythm works enables the tools to manipulate a rhythm without a disjointed motion occurring. Just as with melody, knowing that melodies can sit together in harmony or counterpoint opens up further compositional choices for how the composer wishes the listener to hear the melody, whether that is instantly or becoming a predominant feature over some time.

Bibliography

Here is a bibliography of all that I have researched throughout semester one, this is the same as within my research proposal with a couple added extras. 

Adler, S. 1989. The study of orchestration. 2^nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton and Company.

Blatter, A. 1980. Instrumentation/orchestration. New York: Schirmer Books.

Brown, R.S. 1994. Overtones and undertones: reading film music. California: University of California Press.

Bullerjahn, C. and Guldenring, M. 1994. An empirical investigation of effects of film music using qualitative content analysis. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 99-118.  

Cherry, K. 2012. What is cognition?. [online] Available from: http://psychology.about.com/od/cindex/g/def_cognition.htm (Accessed 14 October 2012].

Chion, M. 1994. Audio-visual: sound on sound. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cohen, A.J. 1994. Introduction to the special volume on the psychology of film music. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 2-8.

Cohen, A.J. 1998. The functions of music in multimedia: a cognitive approach. Proceedings of the fifth International conference on Music Perception and Cognition, August 26-30, Seoul, Korea. Seoul: Western Music Research Institute.

Cohen, A.J. 2001. Music as a source of emotion in film In: Juslin, P and Sloboda, J. eds. Music and emotion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. pp. 249-272.

Davis, R. 2000. Complete guide to film scoring: the art and business of writing music for movies and tv. Boston: Berklee Press.

Dowling, W.J. 1999. The development of music perception and cognition. In: Deutsch, D. eds. The psychology of music. 2^nd ed. California: Academic Press. 1999, pp. 603-626.

Ellis-Geiger, R.J. 2007. Trends in contemporary Hollywood film scoring: a synthesised approach for Hong Kong cinema. [online] Available from: http://www.academia.edu/1163413/Trends_in_Contemporary_Hollywood_Film_Scoring_A_Synthesised_Approach_for_Hong_Kong_Cinema [Accessed 6 November 2012].

Fischoff, S. 2005. The evolution of music in film and its psychological impact on audiences. [online] Available from: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/abloom/tvf454/5filmmusic.pdf [Accessed 4 November 2012].

Gorbman, C. 1987. Unheard melodies: narrative film music. London: BFI Publishing.

Gray, C and Malins, J. 2004 Visualizing research: a guide to the research process in art and design. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Hoeckner, B, Wyatt, E.W, Decety, J and Nusbaum, H. 2011. Film music influences how viewers relate to movie characters. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts. 5(2): pp. 146-153.

Jacob, G. 1982. Orchestral technique. 3^rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Karlin, F and Wright, R. 2004. On the track: a guide to contemporary film scoring. New York: Routledge.

Marshall, S.K. and Cohen, A.J. 1988. Effects of musical soundtracks on attitudes toward animated geometric figures. Music Perception. 6(1): pp. 95-112.

Radford, I. 2012 Music in film: Indiana Jones and the perfect fifth. [online] Available from: http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/22924/music-in-film-indiana-jones-and-the-perfect-fifth

[Accessed 27 November 2012].

Rosar, W.H. 1994. Film music and Heinz Werner’s theory of physiognomic perception. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 154-165.

Selby, S. [no date]. How does music relate to narrative?. [online] Available from: http://www.stephenselby.com/narrative.php [Accessed 6 November 2012].

Sirius, G and Clarke, E.F. The perception of audiovisual relationships: a preliminary study. Psychomusicology. 13: pp. 119-132.

Thayer, J.F. and Levenson, R.W. 1983. Effects of music on psychophysiological responses to a stressful film. Psychomusicology. 3(1): pp. 44-52.

Weis, E. Belton, J. eds. 1985. Film sound: theory and practice. New York: Columbia University Press.

My Experiment - The Flaws

So now the Lit review/Project proposal has been handed I have gone back to look at my experiment  how it is made up and would like to jot down the main highlighted areas that could go wrong with the experiment and general safety procedures that I wish to carry out to cover myself and others.

First and foremost the film I intend to use is to be an indie film, this is so that no person in the audience can have a preconceived idea as to how to feel towards the main character. It also means I may have full permission from the film maker to use their film in an academic environment. Although I am in talks with a couple film makers to use their films, this does not ensure that they fit the criteria that my music needs. Plan B, if I cannot use an independent film will be to use a lesser known film that has been released. Obviously this means that there is a chance that the audience may have already seen the clips used which is not ideal for the test and also means that I may not have full permission to use the film and will have to be used under strict educational use.

I have written that I wish to use 32 people as subjects as to have a wide pool of results. This may be slightly over ambitious. As a fall back, 24 subjects would be a more manageable number of subjects to use and can easily be broken down into three groups of eight.

All people involved in the subject will be sent a form to tell them exactly what the experiment entails, an example of how the questions will be laid out, will state their anonymity throughout the experiment, state the surroundings that the experiment will take place within along with all times for their attendance. The subjects will be ask to respond to this as an acceptance. The subjects will all be volunteers whether they be peers, students, academics or other. Some backup volunteers should also be required incase any subjects do not attend on the day.

The experiment should take place in a controlled environment, the speakers should not be excessively loud and all in attendance should be comfortable and safe throughout the experiment.

This controlled environment is intended to be a projected screen where the audience can all participate at once. If these plans fall through an online version of the experiment will be available with further instructions as to how to view the video and how to use the questionnaires provided.

Before the experiment begins the subjects will be given the questionnaires for throughout the film and given a briefing as to how to fill them out and what each section means. The subjects will be given a brief explanation as to what the film is but should not  be told that it is about a change in perception as this may sway peoples answers.

THE MAIN PROBLEM 

Now the main problem I have found in my lit review was my quantitative research method. I am right in using a quantitative method of questionnaire that can lead to a statistical analysis of the data received but how I stated to use that data is not the most effective way of gaining accurate results.

The problem lies where I stated that i'd use the mean or average results of data to produce charting evidence of my results. The mean doesn't show a spread of results for example if four people used the rating charts and all though the feeling rated a 1 then the next four people perceived a rating of 7 the average would be 4 which doesn't accurately show the spread of results generated by the audience.

Instead the most accurate way of analysing this data would be through the median, using standard deviation to work out the spread of results and using the interquartile range to further break down the distribution of range.

These methods will be able to show the spread of the audiences results as opposed to one crude average that may not show exactly how the audience responded to the film.

Methodology

Methodology - How I will research and conduct my experiment

The two types of methodology that I am going to use to research and underpin my project are Practice Based and Quantitative research methods. 

First of I must have a firm understanding of contemporary compositional technique, a knowledge of how certain musical techniques work, why they work and how they translate into the film median to cause certain effects. My final project will consist of a short independent film shown to an audience within a screening room. There will be three different versions of the film, one scored with score A, one with score B and the third with no music at all. The musical themes will enter the film at select points where the character on screen is changing and will be composed with an expert analysis of how they will manipulate and impact the audience. 
For pre production purposes and for initial research before the final project is begun, I will compose several small themes to images with pre thought out story lines that can be manipulated to show how a theme may vary. 

The main use of quantitative research will be the implementation of questionnaires to the audience throughout the film screening. After each theme enters the audience will have a questionnaire infront of them with rating scales numbered 1-7. At either end of these scales will be opposing adjectives that will be used to describe the character we see such ass ill tempered and good natured. The audience will be asked to simply draw a line on the scale as to where they perceive the character, the number 4 will be used as an indifference or no feeling. 
By the end of the experiment the scales data should show a shift in perception as to how the audience feels for the lead character. All data will be summarised into tables and charts to show this change in perception. 

The 8 Functions of Film Music

Whilst reading about Cohen (1999) earlier, I stumbled upon his theory that there are eight functions of film music and what film music is for:

Music....

1) Masks extraneous noises

2) Provides continuity between shots

3) Directs attention to important features of the screen through structural or associationist congruence

4) Induces mood when unassociated with a particular focus eg. opening credits

5) Communicates meaning and furthers narrative

6) Through association in memory, music becomes integrated with the film and enables the                             symbolization of past and future events through the technique of leitmotiv

7) Music heightens the sense of reality of or absorption in film perhaps by augmenting arousal and increasing attention to the entire film context and inattention to everything else

8) As an art from adds to the aesthetic effect of the film

These are by no means strict guidelines for the composition of music or how music should impact a film but through the studies of compositional technique and emotive response to film music provides a firm study for the why we use music in film and an understanding of the effect it should be having on an audience.

Psychoanalysis of Music from a young age

Further reading of the development of music perception and cognition (Dowling, J) expands on the ideas that as human beings we already have a firm grasp on the understanding of music as we hear it. The majority of this understanding of musc is carried out automatically below our levels of conscious analysis as we have no time to reflect on every single detail as the piece of music progresses. This is similar to the idea of a languages native speaker, as words are spoken we don't take the time to understand the meaning of those words as we already possess the understanding as to what each word means.

Further more to expand on this is to think of a child's understanding. As a child is learning their native language for the first time, they already have an understanding for a words meaning through the actions and tones of voice used during the teaching process. This is similar in a musical sense, Tests from Cunningham and Sterling (1988) and Dolgin and Adelson (1990) showed that by the age of four, children perform well above the factor of chance in assigning one of four affective labels (happy, sad, angry and afraid) to musical excepts in agreement with adult's choices.

The perception of what we hear is not something that we think about but is something that we have learnt through the knowledge of our life of listening. To establish a character through music means to establish an initial perception of that character and how that perception should sound for the listener to identify.

The Limitations of Film Scoring - Character Themes

The biggest problem in composing themes in film is the short amount of time the composer has to establish a theme for the audience to recognise and get across the point that they are trying to make through the music.

When we are looking at character themes we are looking at complex pieces of musical composition. Brown.R.S. 1994 points out the theory that music doesn't just reveal feelings of love, passion etc. for someone but puts us (the audience) into that individuals position to be directly presented emotive information through our understanding, grasp and knowledge of those feelings without having them put through someone else in front of us. Basically the thought that we understand the emotion evoked through the music we hear directly and not though the character on screen pushing those emotions onto us.

So how can such complex ideas be limited to mere seconds of musical composition?
Of course there are many techniques in composing both in the contemporary world as well as the classical. We look at Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, Colour and Instrumentation as our tools of creation. We can add dissonance, atonality, polytonality, bitonality, modal and chromatic melodic writing amongst other tools to add tension, drama and individuality to a piece. But that doesn't answer the question of how we evoke intense feelings within such a short space of time.

Brown goes on to explain the use of classical compositional style within character themes. That themes can be trimmed into motifs, invention of appropriate rhythms and finding convincing harmonic contexts for the material that won't even see the traditional eight bar phrase found in songwriting.
Brown goes on to say great musical themes can be written without a traditional melody. Instead relying strongly on the instruments used, the harmony created and the rhythmic colour. In contrast to this however some of the best and most recognisable character themes are lone, three note melodies on a single instrument.

So once again we ask; How can we evoke a powerful emotional response in our viewers that is truly believable to the characters on screen through a single theme?

So far through my reading and researching of this there is no correct answer. There seems to be no formulaic approach to writing a character theme. Some are influenced by one thing, others by something completely different, it seems to come down to the individual composer, their knowledge of musical theory and practice, their knowledge of the film they are scoring for and their own personal relationship with the music they are creating with the theme they are getting across. I will continue to study this area to see if I come across a tight pattern to theme scoring, how we establish something huge in a minuscule period of time, until then it is my own knowledge of character narrative, music and how music is made that will aid me in my own compositions of character themes.

Film Music and Opera

I have been trying to research the history of film music and where the idea of music as an emotional stimulus as opposed to the covering of silence came from.

The big tie here sees classical music and more predominately, opera showing clear narrative driven music to enhance and engage the story at a heightened level of characterization. "Overtones and Undertones" a book by Royal. S Brown quickly recaps on the relationship between Wagnerian opera and it's common traits found in todays film scores.

Wagners compositions are widely recognised for their use of characters themes and leitmotifs that are now a staple of association with characters and themes in film today. Wagner was able to take a character such as Gutrune in his opera "Der Ring des Nibelungen" and use a theme to associate that character with the music.
These themes that represented not only characters but emotive feelings and conflicting views within the story are more important for their immediate emotional impact and in their relationship to the dramatic structure of the opera than they are to the underlying musical structure (Brown,R. 1994).

Wagner didn't invent the idea of putting music to film but he produced compositions for story that didn't just enhance the story but embodied the story, captured the characters within the story and developed their feelings into music for the audience to understand and feel that they knew who the characters were and how they felt. 

The Psychology of Film Music

I have looked into a lot of reading on film music, how film music in constructive, how character themes can be established and how music is different in film than say a stand alone composition but what I have not fully looked into that I need to understand is the psychology behind film music and how an audience relates to characters and how music can be used to gain an emotive response from an audience. 

One thought that I enjoyed reading was that people don't go to the cinema or watch movies at home for the experience of realism (Fischoff, S. 2005). He goes on to add that "Music adds something we might call heightened reality or supra-realism". The thought is that in reality we don't live our life with underscore. When we feel terror or we feel scared or sad we know the feeling, we ourselves feel that feeling and know how it feels. In film we don't know how the character feels as we aren't that character. To elevate the realism of what we see on screen, music is used to tell us how that character feels and how we should be feeling for them. 

In advertisement "Hidden Persuaders" are often used to make us (the consumer) believe that we need that product and we must feel a certain way about that product to make us want to buy it. This is the same idea in film music. We are to believe in what we see on screen and buy into the feelings that the character is feeling. It isn't just enough to see that the character is scared of the dark, a cleverly composed piece of music can suddenly put us in the characters shoes and remind us that we have felt that feeling and we can feel it with them, we share the experience with the fictional character that we see before us. 

In the film "Amelie" (2001) music is used to capture Amelie's moods in a more effective way than the dialogue can put across. The psychological thought behind this being that it is "more emotively evocative as music goes directly to the brains emotional structure (the limbic system) bypassing cortically based cognitive mediation" and the acknowledgement of perception. In relation to this psychologist Rudolph Arnheim argues that "brains are hard-wired to associate certain sounds with certain moods" 

Music can subconsciously speak to the audience in a way that the reality of the visual or underpinning silence is unable to. Yes we can see the feeling of desperate despair or of all out rage but it is music that allows us to connect with that feeling and allows us to feel what the character is feeling especially when it may not be directly obvious. 

Murch (Chion, 1994) talks of a phenomenon that he calls Conceptual Resonance between image and sound, where the sound makes us see the image differently and then this new image makes us hear the sound differently, which in turn makes us see something else in the image and so on. 

As previously stated if an on screen character is crying, our perception of how they feel will be sadness. It is music however that makes us feel what they are feeling, it allows us to feel the characters mood, thoughts and feelings without having to see the character crying, we can feel their inner struggle through the delicately composed music depicting that character. This is why I believe I can change an audiences perception of a character over time through the use of music, the music heightens the reality of what we see, it is not just a companion to a visual but is the heart of the visual.

Aims and Objectives

The following are my proposed aim and objectives:

Aim

Analyse musical themes as a narrative device in film and investigates through the use of demonstrated compositional technique, musical themes and professional practice whether a viewer’s perception of a character can change over the course of a film.  

Objectives

Examine the use of compositional technique of music used in film and produce practical evidence that these techniques can be replicated through examples of stationary and moving image. 

Understand and investigate the historic background of character themes and determine how they may be established and manipulated. 

Explore the psychological and emotional impact that music can have on a listener and understand how music can create and develop a perception of an image. 

Compose multiple musical theme variations for a short film clip that establishes a character before manipulating the viewer’s perception of that character. 

Using quantitative research methods on an audience, analyse how efficient music is in changing perception and whether music alone can change how an audience responds to that character. 

Music and Emotive Response - Example of Experimentation

Here is an example of a psychological experiment into a viewers emotional response in relation to music in film found in a Journal titled: "Film Music influences: How Viewers Relate to Move Characters" 2011 by Hoeckner, B, Wyatt, E, Decety, J and Nusbau, H.

The authors state that music can be used as a narrative device for the audience to establish a relationship with screen characters based on "a reliable access to the characters state of mind, an understanding of the context of the characters actions and having morally evaluated the characters on the basis of this knowledge".

The authors go on to conducting their own experiment to find if viewers perception of a character can change depending on the style of music used to describe their emotional state. 

The experiment was tested on 3 groups of students, these groups making up a total of 36 people. They were shown 38 short (less than one minute) clips of non commercial film, these were each scored with their own original piece of music either from the thriller genre or a melodramatic piece, this being for the viewer to relate to the character on a sad, provocative emotional state or in a possibly more angry and pulsating feeling. ten of the 18 clips were filler clips that were not a part of these genres. No clips included sound effects other than any ambient enviornment noise that was recorded whilst filming.

The test subjects were given seven point scales to judge their thoughts on the clip. These judged areas of likeness of the character and certainty of the emotion felt by the subject. After the clips were shown they were further asked what it was they believed to have happened during the clip and what they thought the character was feeling during the clip. 

One of the groups were shown each clip with no music. 

The end result in a nutshell was the thought that melodramatic music spoke to the audience in the most emotion provoking manner. 

The reason why I have included this in my blog is to highlight a method of testing emotional response to film as this is something I will have to do during my honours project, how will the audience react to a change in my character, does certain music work better to change an emotive response and can the audience pin point both how they feel as the test subject but also how the on screen character is feeling and does this aline with how I want the audience to perceive that character at that specific point of film.