A composition in A
minor

What do we perceive as happy or sad in music? Is it the notes, chords, pattern of notes, pattern of chords, tempo, rhythm, arrangement or all of it taken together?

As a keyboardist, the first answer that comes to my mind is musical mode or scale. Everyone thinks that Major mode=Happy and Minor mode=Sad. No tempo, rhythm or arrangement has such a consistent interpretation.

It would be great if we could equate other Western modes or scales to an emotion/mood too. However, even though the happiness of the Major mode and the tragedy of the Minor mode is almost universally agreed upon, I don’t think the same would work for all the remaining modes. For instance, I know many happy and sad songs in the Blues scale – a scale which allows for a lot of diversity.

In spite of this confusion, people have attempted…