We’re Always Singing to Each Other

In a new article in the psychology journal Emotion, Megan Curtis of Tufts University argues that the defining pitch intervals of both sad (“minor”) and happy (“major”) music can also be heard in normal speech. In effect, we’re always singing to each other.

The defining interval of the minor mode is called the “minor third” (think the first two notes of the riff in Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” or Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”) while the major mode is marked by the “major third” (i.e. the first two notes of the melody in the Violent Femmes’ “Blister In the Sun”).

Curtis recorded professional actresses speaking neutral two-syllable phrases (i.e. “Let’s Go”) with various emotional signatures, like “sadness” and “pleasantness.” The actresses typically uttered a minor 3rd (wav) interval when expressing sadness and the major 2nd or major 3rd interval when expressing happiness. What’s more, experimental subjects who listened to the recordings picked up on the cues – they reported hearing sadness in the minor intervals and pleasantness in the major ones.

It’s not clear whether the encoding of emotion in pitch first appeared in language or music. Furthermore, there are no cross-cultural studies on the emotional meanings of musical intervals: a sad interval in the States may be a joyful interval in New Guinea.

The cognitive scientist Steven Brown believes in an evolutionary precursor to language he calls “musilanguage,” which combines the basic rhythmic and melodic elements of music with the functional meanings of words (Brown, 2001). Brown thinks that “musilanguage” could explain both the melodic nature of language and the antiquity and universality of music.

I can’t help but think of a posse of proto-humans wandering the East African rift valley, singing to each other in Sondheimian grunts.

image/Sam McDougle