Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker
Franklin sent me this item with a note: “I can’t help but think this has lessons for screenwriting…” I suspect he’s right. From the WSJ this article: “Why does Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ make everyone cry? Science has found the formula.”
On Sunday night, the British singer-songwriter Adele is expected to sweep the Grammys. Three of her six nominations are for her rollicking hit “Rolling in the Deep.” But it’s her ballad “Someone Like You” that has risen to near-iconic status recently, due in large part to its uncanny power to elicit tears and chills from listeners. The song is so famously sob-inducing that “Saturday Night Live” recently ran a skit in which a group of co-workers play the tune so they can all have a good cry together.
What explains the magic of Adele’s song? Though personal experience and culture play into individual reactions, researchers have found that certain features of music are consistently associated with producing strong emotions in listeners. Combined with heartfelt lyrics and a powerhouse voice, these structures can send reward signals to our brains that rival any other pleasure.
Twenty years ago, the British psychologist John Sloboda conducted a simple experiment. He asked music lovers to identify passages of songs that reliably set off a physical reaction, such as tears or goose bumps. Participants identified 20 tear-triggering passages, and when Dr. Sloboda analyzed their properties, a trend emerged: 18 contained a musical device called an “appoggiatura.”
An appoggiatura is a type of ornamental note that clashes with the melody just enough to create a dissonant sound. “This generates tension in the listener,” said Martin Guhn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia who co-wrote a 2007 study on the subject. “When the notes return to the anticipated melody, the tension resolves, and it feels good.”
Chills often descend on listeners at these moments of resolution. When several appoggiaturas occur next to each other in a melody, it generates a cycle of tension and release. This provokes an even stronger reaction, and that is when the tears start to flow.
Here is the song with a bit of insight into it from Adele:
Here’s a list from the article that really got me thinking:
Chill-provoking passages, they found, shared at least four features. They began softly and then suddenly became loud. They included an abrupt entrance of a new “voice,” either a new instrument or harmony. And they often involved an expansion of the frequencies played. In one passage from Mozart’s Piano Concerto №23 (K. 488), for instance, the violins jump up one octave to echo the melody. Finally, all the passages contained unexpected deviations in the melody or the harmony. Music is most likely to tingle the spine, in short, when it includes surprises in volume, timbre and harmonic pattern.
Let’s look at those four features and extrapolate for screenwriting:
* They begin softly then suddenly become loud: How about scenes or sequences which start ‘soft,’ then grow in intensity and end ‘loud’?
* They include an abrupt entrance of a new “voice”: How about surprise visits or actions of a character or characters?
* They often involve an expansion of frequencies played: How about central themes that are explored as sub-themes or by alternate themes?
* Contain unexpected deviations in the melody or harmony: How about surprise twists and turns in the plot?
As longtime GITS readers know, I’m pretty fascinated by the connections of music to storytelling. For example:
I posted something all the way back in 2008 about the connection of sonata form to screenplay structure.
I posted on some songs by the band Tool as they relate to the idea of the ‘shadow’.
I posted on the storytelling in the Death Cab for Cutie song “What Sarah Said”.
Perhaps Adele can teach us a thing or two about screenwriting through her music. What do you think?
For more of the WSJ article, go here.
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