Hila Mor, Nithin Ravindra, Mia Schneider-Martin
How does a walk in a lush green forest make you feel?
How about a dip in the clear blue ocean on a sunny day?
How does waking up to a white snowy morning make you feel?
How does this music make you feel?
Which would you play in each of the previous scenarios?
Music and color have the power to
evoke emotions in us.
So how are our emotions affected by the type of music we listen to?
​What kind of emotion does each color evoke?
A brief introduction: color, music, emotions
This visualization is based on a study by Valdés-Alemán, Zamudio-Gurrola & Téllez-Alanís in 2022 of human perception and the link between color and music and the emotions they evoke. But how can one measure the relationship between color, music or emotion? We will start with a brief introduction to the fundamental variables we need to think about when we come to understand our perception of color, music and emotions.
Color
The color scale is divided into 8 colors that are mostly recognized across cultures.
These colors are divided into four categories:
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And a grayscale:
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Music
To learn about peoples' perception of music, researchers picked 16 songs from 2 different musical systems (tonal and atonal), a variety of cultures, and tempos.
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Tonal Music is music that is composed around a tonal center, has major-minor chords, traditional harmonies, and sounds more uniform.
Example of tonal music
Atonal Music is music that lacks tonal center, major-minor chords, traditional harmonies and sounds more chaotic.
Example of atonal music
To evaluate how peoples' emotions relate to the music, the researchers analyzed the survey through looking at measures of musical familiarity and musical pleasure.
Musical Familiarity
To measure familiarity, participants were asked to rank: 'how close is the music to music you usually listen to?' on a scale of 1-100.
Musical pleasure
To evaluate pleasure participants were asked to rank 'how pleasant is this music?' on a scale of 1-100.
The study used measurements of emotional responses to define if a song is joyful or sad. To evaluate the participants' emotions they used emotional scales which we describe below.
Emotions
Based on Russel et al.’s multidimensional emotional scale, emotions can be measured by two dimensions: valence, and arousal.
Emotional Valence
Describes the extent to which an emotion is positive or negative.
Emotional Arousal
Arousal refers to the intensity of valence, the strength of the associated emotional state.
Multidimensional Emotional Scale
To understand music's association with emotions, we combine arousal and valence into a single multidimensional scale. In this scale, positive valence and arousal refer to joyful music; and negative valence and arousal refer to sad music.
Linking the dots...
To visualize the emotional link of color and music, we use the data from the Valdés-Alemán, Zamudio-Gurrola & Téllez-Alanís (2022) study that surveyed 60 participants, using 37 colors and 16 musical tracks to measure their perception of music and color and how that relates to their emotions.
​To show this relationship, we visualize the data in three parts:
Linking color and emotions
Linking music and color
Linking emotions to color and music
Invitation to explore
Visualizing the data from the study may help us gain insights about commonalities and differences in human perception of color, music and emotions. Yet, we would like to acknowledge the subjectivity and diversity of these topics across cultures as well as across individual differences.
We invite you to explore the data, discover new insights and reflect on your own unique perspective.
Linking Color to Emotion
Emotions Evoked by Colors
In the study, participants were asked to rank each color by the emotional valence: are the emotions positive or negative? And by the emotional arousal: how intense are the emotions?
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The scatterplot shows distribution of the 37 colors on the emotional scale of valence and arousal.
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The colors correlated with highest intensity of positive emotions are within the saturated and light categories.
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Among the saturated colors, yellow and green represent the most positive emotions.
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Saturated red is an exception, since it represents the highest emotional intensity, yet the least positive emotions among the category. Saturated blue is also an exception since it is lower in intensity and relatively more negative among the category.
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Dark and muted colors represent less intense emotions that tend to be more negative or neutral.
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Grayscale colors part into three, black and white - which represent two edges of emotional valence, white is on the most positive side and black is on the most negative side. Gray colors represent negative emotions however with less intensity than black and white.
What are the most extreme positive or negative emotions? Do you see similarities and difference across color categories? Which colors stand out and evoke different emotions than the other colors within each category?
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To explore the data, click the legend and filter the colors by categories.
Linking Music to Color
Music Categories
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The music in the study includes x16 tracks from two music categories,
x8 tonal music tracks and x8 atonal music tracks. Half of which are joyful music, and half are sad music.
Which Colors are Associated with the Music?
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Music and color are often intertwined in our minds. In the study, participants were asked to listen to the music and pick the colors that most represented the music for them. Results showed that each piece of music evoked a unique set of colors.
This video visualization portrays the 10 most representative colors for each of the music categories. The thickness of each band on the chart represents the number of people who chose that color; the greater the thickness, the more people chose that color.
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Listen to each type of music while observing the associated colors. Reflect what colors you associate with each piece of music.
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Tonal music
is often associated with brighter and more saturated colors.
Atonal music
is often associated with darker and more muted colors.
Tonal Joyful Music
Tonal Sad Music
Atonal Joyful Music
Atonal Sad Music
Distribution of Color-Music Associations
This chart illustrates which colors are most frequently selected in association with all the music tracks that were studied in the research.
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Explore the chart using the dropdown filter to learn how often each color was selected and the relationship between and across color groups.
What do you notice about which colors are most frequently named?
How about ones that are rarely named? Why might that be?
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The colors that are most commonly associated with music are saturated or dark.
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Light and muted colors were the least likely to be associated with any type of music.
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In correlation with 'linking color to emotion' (the scatterplot above), we can see that colors that evoke the most intense positive emotions or most negative emotions are selected more than others.
Color-Music Associations per Music Category
In the study participants were asked to select which color most represents the music (above the line) and which colors least represents the music (below the line).
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Explore and compare the different color representations per each type of music.
Can you spot differences among color selection of tonal and tonal music? What are commonly selected colors for joyful music or sad music?
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Most and Least Associated Colors with Tonal Music
Tonal Joyful Music
Tonal Sad Music
Most and Least Associated Colors with Atonal Music
Atonal Joyful Music
Atonal Sad Music
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All sad music is highly associated with darker colors, whether it's atonal or tonal.​
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Saturated colors, especially red and yellow are the least representative of sad music.​
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Tonal sad music was more closely associated with blues than atonal sad music.
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All joyful music is highly associated with saturated colors, whether it's atonal or tonal.
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​There was the most agreement over saturated yellow representing tonal joyful music. It was selected nearly twice as often as any other color.
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Black, medium gray, light gray and dark blue are least representative of joyful music whether it's atonal or tonal
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Similarly, sad music, whether it's tonal or atonal is least represented by saturated yellow, green, red and purple
The Emotional Link between Color and Music
Different songs evoke different emotions in people, from feelings of joy and happiness to sadness and sorrow. This emotional link is caused by the way certain songs evoke different dimensions of emotion, such as valence, arousal, familiarity, and pleasure.
Valence reflects the degree of positivity or negativity conveyed by a song.
Arousal measures the level of emotional intensity a song elicits.
Familiarity describes how well-acquainted a user is with a given musical piece.
Pleasure corresponds to the extent to which music is enjoyable to the listener.
Emotions and Colors Evoked per Music Category
The radar charts illustrate which dimension of emotions are most frequently evoked while listening to the different types of music that were studied in the research. Each chart has 4 colors which is four colors most representing each type of music
Tonal Joyful
Music
Tonal Sad
Music
Atonal Joyful
Music
Atonal Sad
Music
Explore the following radar charts by hovering over the blobs while you listen to the music which evokes that emotion. The music player's background color corresponds to the relevant blob's color.
Do you notice any pattern in specific dimension of emotion being triggered for all types of music? Which dimension of emotion do you think is evoked for all?
Emotions and Colors Evoked by Tonal Joyful Music
Emotions and Colors Evoked by Tonal Sad Music
Emotions and Colors Evoked by Atonal Joyful Music
Emotions and Colors Evoked by Atonal Sad Music
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For Joyful music, familiarity has the lowest overall scores across, indicating that participants are less familiar with these music.
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Participants rated music with a wide range of valence, arousal, pleasure, and familiarity scores, indicating that there is no single emotion that dominates in the music.
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There is a moderate correlation between valence and arousal ratings, suggesting that participants tend to rate songs that they found positive as also highly arousing.
“You create a universe by perceiving it, so everything in the universe you perceive is specific to you” – Douglas Adams
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It is very likely that while scrolling this website you notice that you perceive a certain color, music or emotion differently than presented in the data. There are myriad physical and cultural parameters that affect perception of each of us. How does that affect the way we communicate or understand others? What are the differences or similarities that we might take for granted?
Do you sense what I sense?
Listen to the music and answer the poll based on the emotions evoked in you.
Credits:
Created by: Hila Mor, Nithin Ravindra and Mia Schneider-Martin
This project was created as the final project in Information Visualization class, Spring 2023, at UC Berkeley
Thought by: Professor Marti Hearst
Graduate student instructors: Chase Stokes and Astoria Ho
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References:
This work is based on research work from Valdés-Alemán, Zamudio-Gurrola & Téllez-Alanís (2022)
The data used for this project is publicly available at https://data.mendeley.com/datasets/x5sxsnprbd/1
Music from Valdés-Alemán, Zamudio-Gurrola & Téllez-Alanís (2022)
Icons from The Noun Project
Free images from Unsplash
Free videos from Wix