and the overlap between those in purple.
And what you see in either the expression of actors
uttering single words or monologues.
That is a few paragraphs of words spoken in one or another emotional states.
Is that when the speakers are in an excited emotional state,
again, those are the red columns here.
The fundamental frequency, whether it's a male or
female speaker, is considerably higher.
So, the fundamental frequency when people are actors in this database,
in an analysis of this database, are speaking in a subdued manner.
The fundamental frequencies tend to be low, as you might imagine, 100 Hz or
192 Hz on average for males and females respectively.
When they're excited, the fundamental frequency goes up.
And again, this is true whether it's in single words or monologues.
Well, why should that be?
I think the reason is pretty obvious.
Let's go back to this slide.
So, when a person is excited,
the tension on their vocal chords is increased by virtue of a muscular
tension on the vocal chords that changes their vibratory frequency.
That's what causes the fundamental frequency of
the harmonic series as being generated by
the vibration of the vocal cords to increase when a person is excited.
And to be less when that person is in a subdued,
relaxed, sad, unexcited state.
The rest of the vocal tract is then operating on vibratory power that's coming
from the vocal cords that's quite different giving these different
fundamental frequencies, whether it's single word, or a monologue.
Now the question is, does that characteristic, that tonal characteristic,
the fundamental frequency that's defining whether a person is excited,
or subdued in speech is that the same as music.
Well, let's make the comparison, so here is major music, here's minor music,
major music in red, minor music in blue, overlap in purple.
For classical melodies and for the folk melodies.
And again, you see what I said before, that for the major melodies,
the fundamental frequency, again, because we're talking about the dyad now.
That's the implied fundamental frequency of the two tones together,
is less in minor music than it is
in major music, and the same thing applies in folk music.
The fundamental frequency, the implied fundamental frequency,
is less in minor music than it is in major music,
when the composer intends to convey excitement versus a subdued emotion.
So, the general idea is then musical tonality conveys emotion by imitating
the tonality in speech or vocalization in different emotional states.
And the parallel is between music in major and
minor scales and speech in excited and subdued states.
And the reason I would argue and ask you to think about,
the reason that a major scale conveys the sense of brightness, excitement, etc.
And a minor scale conveys a sense of a lack of excitement,
a lack of arousal, sadness, is because those two scales are imitating
the emotional state in tonality that's expressed in speech
by the tones and their fundamental frequencies that are used in speech.
