The Minor fall, the Major lift: inferring emotional valence of musical chords through lyrics | Zendy

Artemy Kolchinsky | Zendy; Nakul Dhande | Zendy; Kengjeun Park | Zendy; YongYeol Ahn | Zendy

AI Assistant Blog Pricing

Home ZAIA Blog

Open Access

The Minor fall, the Major lift: inferring emotional valence of musical chords through lyrics

Author(s) -

Artemy Kolchinsky,

Nakul Dhande,

Kengjeun Park,

YongYeol Ahn

Publication year - 2017

Publication title -

royal society open science

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 0.84

H-Index - 51

ISSN - 2054-5703

DOI - 10.1098/rsos.170952

Subject(s) - lyrics , chord (peer to peer) , valence (chemistry) , association (psychology) , emotional valence , musical , psychology , computer science , literature , art , cognition , physics , distributed computing , quantum mechanics , psychotherapist , neuroscience

We investigate the association between musical chords and lyrics by analysing a large dataset of user-contributed guitar tablatures. Motivated by the idea that the emotional content of chords is reflected in the words used in corresponding lyrics, we analyse associations between lyrics and chord categories. We also examine the usage patterns of chords and lyrics in different musical genres, historical eras and geographical regions. Our overall results confirm a previously known association between Major chords and positive valence. We also report a wide variation in this association across regions, genres and eras. Our results suggest possible existence of different emotional associations for other types of chords.

The content you want is available to Zendy users.

Already have an account? Click here to sign in.

Having issues? You can contact us here

Accelerating Research