Monday, 19 May 2014

A conclusion


My research has been quite succesful. I've found out about many things that I didn't know before yet was yearning to. I now have a good, basic understanding of music psychology and how our brain processes music and I found some new song-writing techniques and musical characteristics that I can use for different purposes

I'm a little bit disappointed that I didn't find more in detailed musical devices that I can use in songs, but I'm also quite content that I have enough information to go off and write a song thats going to make someone sad, for example, or for someone to workout to.

Monday, 5 May 2014

Writing for certain personalities

I don't believe that any science is entirely factual. But, rather it gives us somewhere to start; somewhere to base our knowledge and our own research on. Everything is a matter of perception and we all perceive things differently. Not everyone likes heavy metal music just like not everyone likes classical music. A heavy metal song that arouses one person can put another person on the edge.

Our music taste and preferences differ as we do. Sometimes we like a band or a song that we wouldn't like to admit, but listen to them anyway because it makes us feel happy because it makes us recall good memories. In contrast we might not like a band or a song because it brings bad memories. A basic example of this would be a song that used to be your's and your ex lover's song and now every time you hear it, it reminds you of him/her and how much of an asshole they were to you. 

Because our music taste differs so much we'll never be able to write a song or find a song that will have the same effect on every single person, but we will be able to write or find one that has musical characteristics that provoke similar responses between a select group of people. 

On a similar note, research conducted by Jason Rentfrow and Sam Gosling has suggested that the music that we listen to links to our personality. They found that they could make accurate predictions of other people's personalities just by finding out what their 10 favourite songs were. Furthermore, a University research study, where participants were asked to provide some information on their personality and to also rate 104 different musical styles, showed some interesting personality traits that are linked to these musical styles. Here is a quick overview of what they found people who listen to certain musical genres are typically like:






This finding provides a basis for songs that I could write for certain types of people, and could in fact help me guess by knowing and speaking to people what kind of music they listen to, so that I could then write a song for them or aimed at people like them. For example, if I wanted to write a song for someone who was creative, introverted and was quite laid back I might write a classical song for them, taking characteristics from my other points of research on how to write songs in order to influence said person in a particular way.