Chartistic - A new non-verbal measurement tool towards the emotional experience of music

The aim of the current studies is the development of a new, practical non-verbal measurement tool in order to capture the emotional experience of music. 33 emotions of the Geneva Emotion Music Scale have been reduced to five emotions in a pre-test. The five emotions: love, sadness, tension, calmness and joyful action have been translated into five male and five female characters. After validating the new scale in study 2, a third study has been conducted testing fifteen songs, divided into Dutch hits, Dutch flops and unknown hits from foreign countries. The songs represent five genres: pop, hip-hop, dance, rock and singer-songwriter. Results show that the new scale is capable of differentiating between hits, flops and different genres. The most important emotions that differ significantly between hits and flops are ‗joyful action‘ and ‗calmness‘. Emotions predict 18% of the variance in hit potential. ‗Joyful action‘ is the strongest predictor.