
Alex O Neill
This thesis explores how emotional music can change a viewer's perception of visual art. The objective was to write three original songs based on certain emotions: happiness, sadness and anger. The songs also have unique styles based on their emotion and were recorded, mixed and mastered for the project.
The next step was to acquire 40 participants to accompany the researcher to the National Art Gallery. Participants were divided into groups of 4, with 3 of the groups being associated with one of the emotions and the final group being the control group (no music). The participants looked at 2 different paintings and then received a survey asking if listening to music (or for one of the groups no music) impacted their viewing experience.
Through the research in my thesis, I aimed to understand how to write songs that would convey an emotion and to see if that reflects on a piece of visual art like a painting.
I also wanted to be able to present my findings to prove how powerful music is to trigger an emotional response.
It was important to record these songs with care and understanding, while trying to make them as clean and clear in what they symbolise.
My objective of forty participants in the National Art Gallery proved to be challenging but was ultimately successful.
Once the surveys were completed, I aimed to link my findings to my literature review and to see what aspects of my songwriting could have been improved in the context of emotion.
I also tried to use my responses to provide evidence that many emotions can change someone's view of visual art (not just happiness).
The surveys involved 40 participants; there were two surveys given out per group with the first survey being about the first painting and the second survey being about the second painting, this resulted in eight surveys that were given out over the lifespan of this project.
The project asked the participants to look at a painting from the start to the end of the song or for the control group for three minutes. After that time, the survey asked questions including if the participant knew the artist, what emotion they felt after looking at the painting, did viewing the art change their mood and did the environment influence their opinion of the art piece. The overall results of the project showed that emotional music can change the viewer's perception of visual art, with the most success from the happy and sad group. However, the anger group did not show as much evidence as the other groups. The control group, as expected, showed more mixed responses.
In the future this research could explore a broader range of emotions like fear and disgust. Expanding the participants' demographic and expanding the number from 40 to 100 could also offer insight into how cultural background or personal music practice affect emotional perception. In addition, there could also be testing with other types of visual art like digital art, photography or film which would provide a more comprehensive understanding of emotional music.

My name is Alex O’Neill. I am 23 and I have developed a passion for songwriting and sound design over the past couple years. I've learned many instruments since I was sixteen and wanted to write songs for other people. I then fell in love with producing but I was worried about finding a course that would help me improve my skills. Thankfully, Creative Music Production allowed me to pursue production to help me out in the real world. I have spent the last few months researching and creating emotional songs for a visual media, especially for my thesis with help from my lecturers.