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Frequency and emotional response

Sound Design Asked by oinkaudio on December 10, 2021

I remember that a few months back, someone copied a link to a site that had a great display on the frequency bandwidth and what frequencies affected which emotions and what instruments and or sounds made those frequencies or series of. I was wondering if anyone can remember what the name of the link was and also if anyone has any other resources that chat about frequency and emotional response.

Thanks.

2 Answers

In terms of pure, single frequencies, I would posit that due to the Fletcher-Munson curve, there are simply frequencies that humans are more sensitive to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal-loudness_contour

Therefore it takes less energy, around, say, 3.5kHz to irritate or put someone in pain, than at, say, 100Hz. We humans are simply more attuned to these frequencies by way of evolution for whatever reason. (Theorized examples include certain ranges of frequencies being where much of the energy of babies' cries live at and so on, but we don't fully know).

The question then becomes about which sets (harmonies) and sequences (rhythms) of pitches create which emotions. And that, I'm afraid, is a much more difficult question - why DO humans find music emotional?

Answered by lollercoaster on December 10, 2021

There is a Newman Tempo Chart, which correlates various BPM with emotional feels of music. However I've yet to see a chart that correlates vibration frequency (pitch) and emotional/psychological triggers. That would be pretty cool to have access to.

http://meanspeedmusic.com/2008/06/08/a-thousand-miles-vanessa-carlton-standard-calibrations-charts-james-n-neumann-standard-tempo-scale-applied/newman-standard-tempo-scale-meanspeed-music-co-3/

Answered by Jonny Lo on December 10, 2021

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