Tone of voice in emotional expression and its implications for the affective character of musical mode

Background in musicology. Although musical “mode” may be used to refer to a variety of different concepts, a simple definition is: a collection of tones and tone-relationships used to construct a melody. Using this definition, it is clear that associations between specific modes and emotions are formally documented and widely disseminated in a variety of musical traditions. Despite this rich cross-cultural history, the reasons why we perceive certain modes as best-suited for the expression of particular emotions remains unclear. Background in Perception Science. Experience gathered over phylogenetic and ontogenetic time has prepared the human auditory system to rapidly associate various patterns of acoustic energy with their significance for behavior. This suggests that understanding our perception of tones in music requires understanding the biological significance of tones in the human auditory environment. Defining “tones” as sounds with regularly repeating structure that we perceive as having pitch, it seems reasonable to assume that the most biologically relevant and frequently experienced sources of tones is the human voice. This perspective implies that understanding mode-emotion associations in music begins with understanding the tonal properties of emotional expression in the voice. Aims. To investigate the tonal properties of vocal emotional expression, examine their relationship to the perception of emotional arousal and valence, and discuss the implications for a biologically grounded theory of mode-emotion associations in music. Main contribution. The tonal properties of the voice differ as a function of emotional arousal and valence, and are correlated with the perception of these qualities. Examination of tonal properties relevant to vocal expression in the context mode-emotion associations suggests that they also play a role in communicating emotion in music. Implications. The tonal properties of vocal emotional expression can help us understand widespread associations between emotion and musical mode.