Experimental Study On The Influence Of Melody And Lyrics On Emotional Experience

Music and language are unique phenomena that,in evolutionary terms,are only present in the human species.As an important means of human communication,the relationship between language and music was proposed by Darwin as early as 1871 on the origin of music and language.Philosophers and theorists since Plato have proposed that the expression component of music also includes its acoustic parameters and phonetic emotional sound similarity(Kivy,2002).This view has also been confirmed in subsequent studies.Some studies have found that there is a relationship between phonetic emotion and the "music" factors of speech,such as pitch,rhythm,intensity and timbre(sound quality)(Ladd et al.,1985).Stone&scherer,1999,2000).According to numerous studies,the influence of music and language on emotion is indisputable.As an art form combining music and language,what is the relationship between the influence of melody and lyrics on emotional experience in songs?Do individual differences influence the emotional experience of melody and lyrics in a song?In view of the above problems,this study adopts the behavior experiment method,through a preliminary experiment and two formal experiments to discuss.The purpose of the preliminary experiment is to select music materials and select the subjects for the subsequent formal experiment.Experiment 1 explored the influence of melody and lyrics in different emotional songs on emotional experience,and whether there were individual differences in the influence.The subjects were from different majors.Experiment 2 explored whether there were differences in the effects of different emotional sensitivity subjects on the emotional experience of melody and lyrics in different emotional songs.In this experiment,happy and sad songs,two types of basic emotions,were selected as the experimental stimulus materials.The evaluation of basic emotions was mainly based on subjective reports.In this paper,a single measurement method was adopted.Music material selection and two formal experiments used Likert 5 scale as the emotional measurement tool.Individual measurements are easy to understand,construct,and organize.The results of experiment 1 show that :In happy songs,there are professional differences in the influence of melody and lyrics on emotional experience.For music major subjects,melody has a great influence;for literature major,lyrics have a great influence;for other major subjects,melody and lyrics have a similar influence;In sad songs,the influence of melody and lyrics on emotional experience is not different from that of individual professional background.For the three professional subjects,the influence of lyrics is greater.The results of experiment 2 showed that:In the two types of songs of joy and sadness,the interaction between lyric(no lyric)melody and emotional sensitivity was not significant,the three subjects had emotional sensitivity levels,the level of emotional arousal with lyric melody was significantly higher than that without lyric melody.Therefore,in the two types of songs,the lyrics have a great influence on the emotional experience of emotionally sensitive individuals.