Is happier music groovier? The influence of emotional characteristics of musical chord progressions on groove

Abstract

Specific rhythmic patterns in music have been reported to induce an urge to move with feelings of pleasure or enjoyment, called “groove.” However, it is unclear how the emotional characteristics of music (e.g., happiness or sadness) affect groove. To address this issue I investigated the effects of the emotional characteristics of music on groove by altering the chord progressions accompanying drum breaks composed by a professional composer while manipulating independent tempo and rhythmic patterns. An online listening experiment was conducted using pieces composed by a professional composer but comprising different types of chord progressions that lead to happiness or sadness. Participants evaluated the nine items on a 7-point scale, including urge to move (i.e., groove), felt emotions, nori, and liking. The experiment found that: (1) chord progressions that evoke happiness were more likely to induce groove, (2) emotional characteristics did not interact with tempi and syncopation in terms of groove ratings, and (3) the accompaniment of drum breaks enhanced groove in both happy and sad chord progressions. Musical pieces with chord progressions that induce happiness were more likely to evoke groove, namely the urge to move. This implies that considering the emotional characteristics of musical pieces and rhythms is crucial when creating music for movement during rehabilitation, therapy, or dance.

Positive Moods before Listening to Music Enhance Groove

“…Groove is defined as the urge to move that is induced by specific rhythmic patterns or music (Madison, 2006;Senn et al, 2016). Similar terms for groove exist worldwide such as "nori" in Japanese (Kawase & Eguchi, 2010;Kawase, 2023), "balanço" in Brazilian (Danielsen et al, 2023), "lüpfig" in Swiss German (Senn et al, 2019), and numerous people share a common groove mechanism (reviewed in Etani et al, 2024). Several acoustic characteristics of music, such as syncopation (Witek et al, 2014;Witek et al, 2017), tempo (Etani et al, 2018), beat clarity (Madison et al, 2011), and bass component (Wesolowski & Hofmann, 2016), induce groove.…”

“…Indeed, groove can be altered by changing the happiness of chords without changing the rhythm (Kawase, 2023); this suggests that the generation of pleasant feelings induces groove even without changes in rhythmic perceptions. The aforementioned studies have mainly investigated the occurrence of groove in response to external musical stimuli.…”

“…As discussed earlier, groove involves the reward system. Previous studies have also indicated that changes in the reward system can alter groove without affecting the rhythm perception process (Kawase, 2023;Senn et al, 2023). Mood is known to affect the activity of the reward system (Young & Nusslock, 2016).…”

“…Previous studies have suggested that reward or arousal from sound stimuli is involved in the groove induction mechanism (Matthews et al, 2020). In addition, previous studies have suggested that changes in the valence of music can also change the groove of the music being listened to (Kawase, 2023). Given that mood affects the activity of the reward system and that people induced by a positive mood have a more active reward system (Young & Nusslock, 2016), the participants in the current study who were in a positive mood perceived the stimuli as groovier compared with those who were in a negative mood because they had a higher level of activation of the reward system prior to listening.…”

Stimulation Effects of Some Acoustical Musical Attributes on Beat-Synchronized Walking

“…Although enjoyable music has not shown an association with groove music (Roberts et al, 2021), happier music has been reported as having higher groove (Kawase, 2023). Since lower tempos are associated with sadness and faster tempos with happiness (Levitin et al, 2018), it is not surprising that fast and happy are both associated with groove.…”