Music as Emotional Storytelling is a two-part, in-person, participatory workshop series exploring our emotional responses to simple musical concepts.
Overview
Designed for artists of any discipline who are curious about using music to support storytelling, this workshop will give participants the tools and understanding to identify why and how musical sounds affect us emotionally the way they do.
Through listening and analyzing examples from well-known songs and film scores, we will explore how musical pitch, speed, tone/timbre, order, melody and harmony can be used to spark emotional reactions for the listener. We’ll discuss the ways that musical sounds can trigger instinctual human reactions to our surroundings. Moving beyond traditional concepts of musical genre, these two workshops will explore the ways that simple and clear musical ideas can convey emotion and support storytelling in visual media. Each participant will have the opportunity to begin a project creating their own short recorded musical sounds for 2-3 different emotional moods.
No theoretical music background knowledge required. Demonstrations will be given in Ableton Live. Participants are welcome to use any recording software (digital audio workstation) that they are comfortable with. If you have a phone or tablet with free recording software, that will work too. Several desktop computers with Ableton Live will be provided for participants who wish to participate but do not have a device with recording software.
Outline
Session 1:
How do our brains interpret different kinds of musical information and why?
Overview of music recording, multitracking and editing
Creating sounds that evoke specific emotions
Musical storyline project to develop for next week
Session 2:
Emotional impact of melody and harmony
Emotional expressivity of the human voice
Review and expand on project from previous week
Sharing and discussing participants’ musical storyline projects
Registration
Session 1: Tuesday, August 13, 6pm-8pm
Session 2: Tuesday, August 20, 6pm-8pm
Participants will need access to:
Laptop or computer with Ableton Live installed (trial available here)
Headphones (will be provided)
Any additional materials will be sent in advance via email
Note: If you don’t have access to software and prefer to work on your own device, please contact education@digitalartsresourcecentre.ca and we’ll see what we can do.
