Noticed Ave Maria is on that playlist. It’s obvious why it’s so famous but hearing it recently in The Batman definitely gave me “the feeling” the article is taking about.
Schubert's "Ave Maria" is the one that gets to me the most, although I associate it with action scenes where you can not hear the protagonists, with glass breaking in slow motion, from movies and video games.
I can't overstate how important music is to my productivity.
What I listen to is extremely dependent on my mood and energy levels, but I almost always have on some long playlists (or better still, a single long youtube video, with adblocker on of course).
Satyricon, started out oldschool and raw, evolved to a more polished more produced (clean vocals even!). This album is right at the start of the more polished style but still quite a lot of energy.
Can definitely confirm that. It's one of the few genres (with general Metal, some Crust/Sludge/Old-school Rock being among the main alternatives) that's able to touch me on an emotional level while managing to keep my attention without me zoning out.
I recently threw together a simple website for this purpose – love those YouTube playlists, but having YT open during my work sessions was hurting my overall productivity.
Thanks for sharing. I can’t listen to songs with lyrics when I work - but the structure of the music seems to have the frisson, although I’m usually so far in a work groove that it doesn’t necessarily make my hairs stand up, but instead subconsciously motivates me more to get into a flow. Usually it’s mostly electronic (ie https://m.soundcloud.com/kobeyo) or classical. When watching classical live I get the frisson. When I’m at an electronic event they really play with the buildups and the frisson seems like the goal (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=quoAVYJfDuU)
My dad constantly listens to the same era of music, the 60s and early 70s…like every night. I think this brings back memories of when he was growing up and of the times (lots of political / social changes) because he just starts ranting about high school and super detailed small things that happened to him like almost 50 years ago. I speak three languages and can’t remember anything from my past almost. The music really puts him on a time machine, it’s pretty interesting to observe…it’s like this frisson thing is going non stop.
For me, music is only helpful if I'm in the flow. If I'm trying to figure something out (i.e. in the creative part of work) it only distracts, but for the parts that are more mechanical, music is a great catalyst.
For coding session (where I need to be creative) I listen to this in loop (usually 9-10 times in a row per session (I code a lot, mostly JS (I got a different song for Rust, I feel like for Rust different brain regions need to be activated)))
https://youtu.be/AnEfB1F9BaY
When I travel to work (literally _travel_ to work, I choose working locations far away from my apartment, so I can walk there. The furthest was like 20 miles.)
For this, I listen to this:
https://youtu.be/0ttYoJk5sHY
the article claims the playlist is "scientifically verified" ... but doesn't seem to cover the science behind the list construction or verification. is there a background article somewhere else?
I wish there was. There's so much subjectivity and context that feeds into whether you experience "frisson" when hearing a song.
I was very surprised to see Infected Mushroom in the playlist. Psytrance is the last thing that will give me goosebumps. Though I'm sure there are people out there who have imbibed, who have a connection to music like this.
Psytrance gives extra frisson, but most people have to be high on something to appreciate it. I know that the nootropics I've taken are working when psytrance goes from being slightly annoying to listen to to being awesome.
I was wondering that myself, as reading the list I suspect it's got something to do with people reporting they experienced the feeling from that song. Too many bands had their most popular song featured, and while it could be that songs that cause frisson are more popular it seems more likely that more people listening to the song makes it more likely to be reported.
If they had some program check some huge library of songs for ones that have some sequence likely to cause frisson I'd expect the playlist to be far different.
Oh yeah. I have a 100% guaranteed goosebumps song -- Yes, Anastasia by Tori Amos. Right around the 8:25 mark, but it helps if I listen to at least 2 minutes leading up to that point.
That’s funny because I produced a remix with an original beat I composed over a 2pac acapela, and the number one comment I always get is that the song gives people chills and goosebumps.
Sure enough, it does give me chills pretty fast. Do you reckon you could put it on Spotify or at least publish a higher quality file? The MP3 download seems dead
(Nvm for Spotify - it's there just not in my country :( )
“Expectancy violations (e.g., harmonic, rhythmic, and/or melodic violations) are strongly correlated to the onset of musical frisson, such that some level of violated expectation may be a prerequisite.”
Interesting. The Spotify playlist didn't do much for me, but when I think of a couple moments in songs that always give me chills, they all feature that pattern:
Nightwish, Ghost Love Score, Wacken 2013 @ 9:22, affectionately nicknamed the "Floor-gasm" by fans. The melody line feels like it's already gone as high as she can possibly go and is just going to descend by a couple notes. Instead she takes it up another 5th to what feels like an impossibly high note, and then holds it there.
Dream Theater, A Change of Seasons, @ 13:01 and again @ 13:28. It follows one of the odd-time-signatures, chromatic-only jam sessions, and then the band teases an end multiple times starting @ 12:40. When the jam session finally resolves into 4/4 time and the guitar comes in with those held power chords, you're like "Ahhh...." and then just as you start grooving along to that rhythm, the guitars/bass/drums drop out entirely and it's just acapella vocals over keys.
I too was thinking about Ghost Love Score. I get it especially when watching reaction videos when noticing that others are getting it. So, it might not just due to the music itself, but also be a social/emotional effect. I have literally have weekends where I only watched reaction videos and got it over and over again.
My favourite moment in Ghost Love Score is much earlier in the song, at t=158, "into the blue memory". That transition and the melodic line following it ("still I write...everything I may ever be") is pure gold.
The famous frisson moment in this recording is at 2m57: "as it was". Three reasons. One is the shifting chords in the organ part and the tenor/bass parts that lead up to it (the "expectancy violations"). The second is just the pure thrill of trebles soaring to a top A like that. And the third you only get if you listened to the Magnificat beforehand, which in its natural environment - a service of choral Evensong - you would: the "as it was" in the Gloria of the Nunc is _almost_ exactly the same as it was in the Mag... just a beat later. Pure "expectancy violation" again.
Howells is full of these moments. The big, crunchy, discordant Amen in the Gloria of the Magdalen Service is my favourite - where the harmonies are offset by a crescendo/diminuendo/crescendo sequence in the choir, all on the same note.
> Nightwish, Ghost Love Score, Wacken 2013 @ 9:22, affectionately nicknamed the "Floor-gasm" by fans.
I saw Floor Jansen live last month. It was to a different song, but it was the first time ever that live music gave me goosebumps. And I've seen a lot of live music.
You need to be at least a little bit in the mood to give this effect a chance I guess. If you play the songs on your phone in between finishing breakfast and taking a dump, not much will happen. I know some of the songs on that list gave me that feeling in the past, now I only need to find some time to give the others a try.
One of my favourites is Symptom of the universe by Black Sabbath.
It's a classic Sabbath style tune with a hard hitting riff, solid drums, vocals and all that. The song seems to be winding down after the 4 minute mark with a standard fade out.
It feels like this is an example of a song structure that frequently leads to frisson, where you have a standard pop song (verse-chorus, repeated about 3x, maybe a solo), a long instrumental part that feels like an outtro and often has irregular rhythms or key changes...and then the song reconvenes with a vocal part that's either a small variation on the original pop song or something totally different. Other examples of this pattern:
This is a common thing in the Metalcore scene at least around 2005 - 2010. All That Remains, Shadows Fall, Killswitch Engage, etc. It's still pretty common though. Very heavy music followed by super melodic choruses. Some songs even feature acoustic bridges and instrumentals. The contrast between verse and chorus really pays off the listener.
Intro to Money for nothing gets me every time. When the chaos resolves to that crunchy riff i get chills. You need to listen to it where the drums are actually hitting you though.
If you like that, I suspect you'd enjoy Breaking Into Heaven[1] by The Stone Roses. It is a much longer walk (as in a few minutes long), but I highly recommend sitting through the chaos until it resolves, as you say.
I suppose that's also how songs wear out with time and/or repeated listens. Fittingly, any frisson seems to be the first to go.
I'll contribute Stellenbosch University Choir's rendition of Say Something (by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera). The arrangement capitalizes on the choir's dynamic range; by remaining relatively soft throughout, the sudden loud, tutti passages (1:38 & 3:51) have great effect.
I find that choral performances of pop songs work really well, though they're regrettably but understandably rare. Interestingly, the focus on dynamics isn't present in the original, duet, or Pentatonix version of Say Something, so no frisson moments there. Someone listed Bohemian Rhapsody--can also compare with Stellenbosch's version:
(10 days later...for the record): Turns out choral covers of pop songs are more common than I'd remembered. It's just that the most relevant search term is popchoir/pop choir, which wasn't obvious to me until I noticed it used in several video titles in sequence. These tend to be performed by less formal community choirs, which makes sense. And though many have mic setups, the point about choirs being difficult to record still applies.
The interesting bit is that many European languages have converged on the same juxtaposition of the lexemes <pop><choir>, with the former consistently being a loanword from English. That is, there are lots of search results to be found by translating literally to terms like popchor (German), popkoor (Dutch), поп-хор (several Slavic languages), or popcoro (several Romance languages), plus hyphen and space variations.
> Expectancy violations (e.g., harmonic, rhythmic, and/or melodic violations) are strongly correlated to the onset of musical frisson
Listening to Funkadelic's Maggot Brain album while under the influence of strong hallucinogens turned my regular frissons into full blown waves of pleasure in my body, which I remember were directly correlated to harmony, call-and-response and the play of consonance and dissonance that's so taken for granted in music.
A dissonant chord would make me tense up, and the subsequent resolution would just feel like a blanket of warm pleasure rolling over me.
> when I think of a couple moments in songs that always give me chills
There are a couple of songs giving me chills when I'm singing them myself. Not every time, only when I'm in a appropriate mood. So expectation violation doesn't seem a cause.
I don't know exactly what "contrasive valence" is, but it sounds more like it. I think my chills correlate with a qualitative change in an emotions. The short moment when one emotion is transformed into other induce frisson. Some change in a way how I interpret things, or how I feel about them, or both. It must correlate with some properties of a music, because it is one of the ways to change emotional content, but it is not the cause. Sometimes it is one of the causes in a chain of causes.
Thinking about it, not every transformation of emotions gives me chills, sometimes I get tears in my eyes without any chills.
Love seeing Dream Theater on HN. The first I heard of the term "frisson" was a discussion on the dream theater forums, and I was interested to see that some people don't experience it at all.
Another DT song moment that gets me is in Scarred, climaxing with the lyric "Sometimes I feel I should face this alone, My soul exposed, It calms me to know that I won't".
Awake is one of DTs best album, I’m a huge fan of Jordan Rudess but listening to Awake there’s just that “something special” that Kevin Moore added to the band that is indescribable and unmatchable.
Always fun to see Dream Theater brough up outside of fan forums, they’ve been my favorite band for over 20 years.
A Change of Seasons is one of the greatest compositions of all time, in my opinion.
Breaking All Illusions is another track that just gives “that feeling” though it’s a bit “musically dense” so it might take a few listens to really digest it for some.
Disappear and The Spirit Carries On are also the only songs that have ever made me cry like a baby.
Thanks for mentioning that Nightwish song. I hadn't listened to them in 18 years or so and I completely missed that they switched vocalists again. She's utterly amazing and her stage presence is formidable.
Afaict, frission isn't a quality of music itself, but rather a chill-like response you may have while listening to certain songs. If you get frission while you listen to a song, then yes, it counts as frission to you.
Edit: but yes, this key shift is rather beautiful and unexpected.
+1 for Dream Theatre. Progressive metal is my number one source of Frisson. Brutal, heavy lows followed by soaring, melodic highs really does it for me.
Before I learned of the name frisson, I always thought it was an adrenaline response.
I'm not that into metal bands, but I figured I'd give your examples a listen. At first I didn't think much of it, but right at 9:22 when she hits that note... frisson!
I'll reply with the best examples I know. It's likely that this phenomenon is very personal, though.
Carlo Gesualdo, Tenebrae Responsories. Three nights full of "Expectancy violations", unparalleled word painting, cross relations... definitely do reference the text in translation, because the word painting is a huge part of the beauty of the work.
What a surprise reading your comment citing Nightwish! When I read the post headline, I immediately thought about the Nightwish song "Amaranth". It was really the most powerful, memorable and long lasting frisson I had ever experienced.
One of the definitive examples has to be Radiohead's How to Disappear Completely [1]. 2 or 3 great frisson moments in there. The big one is toward the end, when the strings decay and smudge into atonal textures (very very heavily influenced by the 20th-century composer Penderecki) and then suddenly come back into focus as the song climaxes.
It's just so incredibly well-done that I feel like even people who only listen to classical and jazz, or whatever, would have to acknowledge they really landed something there.
I notice that most frisson moments have a nostalgia connection for me, possibly unlocking the feeling I had experiencing that thing at a younger age when everything seemed more awesome.
I remember discovering this phenomenon in high school and my buddy dubbed it a metalgasm, when you feel the blood draining from your face, the goosebumps and all of those other feelings.
A few years later I launched metalgasm.com (early 2000s), it is offline now, but it was a place to record your metalgasms or frissons (which I never had heard of until now) with timestamps so people could explore new metal and sort by sub-genre tag and know which songs are the most metalgasmic and which parts to look out for. There is so much to discover and sometimes you think you don't like a genre, but you just haven't found the right band or songs to get you started.
I can tell you that Ghost Love Score had the most entries and Dream Theater made up most of the rest of the site. It's fun to look through what's still on the Internet Archive. Maybe I should rebuild and launch the site again for fun.
That Nightwish video already gets into the flow half a minute before peaking at the time stamp. Very effective. The Dream Theater track does nothing for me, it sounds too clean cut.
I want to see what these songs look like in frequency space. Especially around the part where the frisson happens. I'm willing to bet they have a common frequency or multiple of a common frequency as a main component.
Long story short, the brain does most of its representation and signaling with frequencies of brain waves. Just like certain bands of the EM spectrum are reserved for TV broadcast and other parts are reserved for WiFi etc, certain bands of brain waves are reserved for motor-sensory IO. If by sheer coincidence you come across a sensory stimulus that oscillates around the carrier wave frequency used to carry that same stimulus, you should experience some funny interference effects.
Throughout evolutionary history there wasn't really a problem using these carrier frequencies because in our natural environment you're not going to accidentally run into a blinking bright light or loud sound with exactly the right pure frequency. Then we invented instruments and later electric light and oscillators.
The relevant band of frequencies is around 30hz - 60hz. More likely than not the musical examples contain beat frequencies rather than directly containing sound in this part of the spectrum.
I've experimented with external vagus nerve stimulation devices and it's my opinion that this sensation, along with "ASMR tinges", has to do with stimulation/activation of the vagus nerve.
After reading this, I’m reminded of the Sanskrit concept of adbhuta. It can be roughly translated to wonder, but in the sense of witnessing something otherworldly or supernatural.
The Nāṭya Śāstra elaborates and articulates on 8 rasas in the performing arts, including adbhuta. Truly an interesting work.
> According to a 2019 study, one can experience frisson when staring at a brilliant sunset or a beautiful painting; when realizing a deep insight or truth; when reading a particularly resonant line of poetry; or when watching the climax of a film.
And meditation. I relatively frequently experience frisson during meditation, even when there is no obvious realization of some truth during the sit.
Because you still have the same expectations about how music should be structured the second time you listen to it. But the effect wears off after some time. Try playing it 20 times on repeat. It won't do it anymore. But that's mostly temporary, if you come back to it after a while it should work again.
I don't think it's about expectations at all. For me it's about the state of mind I'm in when I listen to it, same song will or won't give me goosebumps based on where my head is at even if I've heard it hundreds of times.
That's a different effect. There are different reasons why you react to music. You can have a strong emotional reaction for example because it was played during a key moment of a movie you really liked, or while someone broke up with you, and then this feeling is forever fused to a song. And recalled through it. But it is well understood that music in general connects with us by meeting and breaking expectations we have about music.
In my own experience it is caused by an 'overload' of emotions. When I had a burnout the same thing happened, but much faster. After reading into it I came to the conclusion that it must be a disorder in hormones.
So after reading this article I wonder if a frisson is in fact an 'overload' of hormones caused by a huge amount of emotions. And that this causes a mismatch between your emotions and what you are feeling.
Previously reading on this topic and found out only a small percentage of people feel music emotionally. I was very curious, as my experiences are very intense, from frisson to full blown breakdown, chills, crying and overwhelmed completely.
Was recently 'diagnosed' as gifted but there's no explanation as to why I feel music so intensely. Perhaps part of the whole thing, I became an autodidact musician and music is pure bliss to my ears.
I'm probably on the gifted spectrum (145 or something on raven matrices online test) and music is indescribably beautiful to me. Not always but often. Music also often makes me laugh, when it discovers an unusual space. I get the same emotional reaction to new intellectual insights.
I've experienced frisson at great moments in music but only when fantasising about performing the music (or some part of it) myself. I did a lot of this as a teenager...
I briefly mention this phenomenon in Designing Sound [1], and have
since learned there are several forms of it elicited aurally.
As well as the pleasurable goose-bumps associated with positive musical
emotion there's another kind, an 'uneasy' frission that is the feeling
of hairs on the back of your neck raising.
While the "Wilhelm scream" is the most talked about sound design
cliche, probably the one familiar to most of you will actually be the
"doom tone" (60-100Hz noise bands), a signifier of "space", "evil" etc
- think of Vader's "force choke".
It's a great example of a fear response that is hard-wired, because it
represents danger, avalanche, thunder, earthquake or stampeding
animals. We have deep auditory circuit, and evolutionary advantage to
run away.
The other kind of frission stimulated by very high buzzing seems more
mysterious. I discussed with sound designer prof. Mark Grimshaw, who
amongst other things is an expert on the horror/suspense genre [2], as
to why some screeching (bat-like) or buzzing sounds might give us such
creepy feelings. It turns out the sound of mosquitos causes the hairs
on the neck to stand up - likely a defence against being bitten when
we were much hairier creatures.
Still mysterious, I think, is the reason nails on a blackboard
"hurts your teeth", and the exact mechanism and function of
pleasurable frission is still a mystery as far as I know. I suspect it
may have a social signalling utility, much like blushing. In times
when we were much more attuned to each others' body states there could
be an evolutionary advantage to signalling when we feel good about
something.
Not a link, but many (most) David Lynch movies/shorts have a low background drone that is discomforting in an otherwise normal scene. It often changes tone with shot changes giving the impression that impending physical danger is approaching or receding but never comes.
More than almost any other director, his movies make me “feel” a particular way (mostly uncomfortable).
For anyone interested: When removing the dialogue audio channel from Twin Peaks episodes, it is nice to discover the rich tapestry of sound design hidden underneath. Listen to the sounds extracts these layers for you personal enjoyment.
Note that you can favorite comments as well as articles. It's in the info bar next to "flag" on the write reply page. You can retrieve them later through your profile page.
I've read those explanations of 'avalanche, thunder, earthquake, stampeding animals' before, but I think those are bunk. Most of those are far too rare to cause evolutionary pressure. Wolves, on the other hand... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrU4OY6W1qE
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadWhat I listen to is extremely dependent on my mood and energy levels, but I almost always have on some long playlists (or better still, a single long youtube video, with adblocker on of course).
When I need calm, awesomeness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXSrQ_c904M
Upbeat productivity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-NXWQ9QZwo#t=27m13s
When I want to be distanced and creative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI4-HUn8dFc#t=26m54s
When I want something fun (although also a little distracting): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SolEjKrcg4E&t=39m11s
edit/ And Sludge.
https://open.spotify.com/album/3LHSxySCaooKrQxuLtuYSV?si=OVS...
Wolves in the Throneroom, kind of dreamy artsy style. I'd like to think of these guys as the Pink Floyd of BM.
https://open.spotify.com/album/5t5tP8dVwdyI8yTShWcIzX?si=zzL...
Satyricon, started out oldschool and raw, evolved to a more polished more produced (clean vocals even!). This album is right at the start of the more polished style but still quite a lot of energy.
https://open.spotify.com/album/4a4g7PAi7KRsCQykBFqE5E?si=4LG...
Darkthrone, about as raw as it gets while still good. 2 guys and a porta studio, never played live.
https://open.spotify.com/album/63NhXXsb7BNEtLCTnYzub2?si=8qL...
Feminazgul, deep in the nerdery now. Queer themed with Tolkien inspired/ripped lyrics.
https://radio.writing.fm
My dad constantly listens to the same era of music, the 60s and early 70s…like every night. I think this brings back memories of when he was growing up and of the times (lots of political / social changes) because he just starts ranting about high school and super detailed small things that happened to him like almost 50 years ago. I speak three languages and can’t remember anything from my past almost. The music really puts him on a time machine, it’s pretty interesting to observe…it’s like this frisson thing is going non stop.
When I study (mostly algorithms and mathy stuff) I listen to this: https://youtu.be/daOaDBIh9xo
For chilling I prefer this: https://youtu.be/CKAc3nYEatw
For coding session (where I need to be creative) I listen to this in loop (usually 9-10 times in a row per session (I code a lot, mostly JS (I got a different song for Rust, I feel like for Rust different brain regions need to be activated))) https://youtu.be/AnEfB1F9BaY
When I travel to work (literally _travel_ to work, I choose working locations far away from my apartment, so I can walk there. The furthest was like 20 miles.) For this, I listen to this: https://youtu.be/0ttYoJk5sHY
I was very surprised to see Infected Mushroom in the playlist. Psytrance is the last thing that will give me goosebumps. Though I'm sure there are people out there who have imbibed, who have a connection to music like this.
If they had some program check some huge library of songs for ones that have some sequence likely to cause frisson I'd expect the playlist to be far different.
Im not a music fan, and it’s my favorite. Does something to my brain. Highly recommended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUazhfLiG6U
https://youtu.be/sHKdWOL1q8k
(Nvm for Spotify - it's there just not in my country :( )
Interesting. The Spotify playlist didn't do much for me, but when I think of a couple moments in songs that always give me chills, they all feature that pattern:
Nightwish, Ghost Love Score, Wacken 2013 @ 9:22, affectionately nicknamed the "Floor-gasm" by fans. The melody line feels like it's already gone as high as she can possibly go and is just going to descend by a couple notes. Instead she takes it up another 5th to what feels like an impossibly high note, and then holds it there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47e_961OQWE#t=528
Dream Theater, A Change of Seasons, @ 13:01 and again @ 13:28. It follows one of the odd-time-signatures, chromatic-only jam sessions, and then the band teases an end multiple times starting @ 12:40. When the jam session finally resolves into 4/4 time and the guitar comes in with those held power chords, you're like "Ahhh...." and then just as you start grooving along to that rhythm, the guitars/bass/drums drop out entirely and it's just acapella vocals over keys.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZKrwJzGg0k#t=730
Start listening at the beginning of the Gloria (well, listen to the whole thing if you can, but if you're pushed for time start here):
https://youtu.be/4jmxJa4kMGM?t=131
The famous frisson moment in this recording is at 2m57: "as it was". Three reasons. One is the shifting chords in the organ part and the tenor/bass parts that lead up to it (the "expectancy violations"). The second is just the pure thrill of trebles soaring to a top A like that. And the third you only get if you listened to the Magnificat beforehand, which in its natural environment - a service of choral Evensong - you would: the "as it was" in the Gloria of the Nunc is _almost_ exactly the same as it was in the Mag... just a beat later. Pure "expectancy violation" again.
Howells is full of these moments. The big, crunchy, discordant Amen in the Gloria of the Magdalen Service is my favourite - where the harmonies are offset by a crescendo/diminuendo/crescendo sequence in the choir, all on the same note.
I saw Floor Jansen live last month. It was to a different song, but it was the first time ever that live music gave me goosebumps. And I've seen a lot of live music.
Her cover of Phantom of the Opera with Hank Poort is absolutely divine.
https://youtu.be/plCScjvDOJM
It's a classic Sabbath style tune with a hard hitting riff, solid drums, vocals and all that. The song seems to be winding down after the 4 minute mark with a standard fade out.
But then something magical starts at 4:23.
Gives me the chills every single time.
https://youtu.be/4qDYa2aIBxw
Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody @ 3:05
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ&t=150
Pink Floyd, Echoes @ 19:12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBca3xf-j3o&t=840
Pink Floyd, Atom Heart Mother @ 19:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fku7hi5kI-c&t=1080s
Ozzy Osbourne, No More Tears @ 4:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CprfjfN5PRs&t=220
Styx, Come Sail Away @ 2:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5MAg_yWsq8&t=140s
Metallica, Master of Puppets @ 4:50 (mentioned in the article)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0obBdrfUMzU&t=270s
Meatloaf, Bat out of Hell @ 7:38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7ES7ueI7p0&t=420s
Eric Clapton, Layla (original version) @ 3:10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WUdlaLWSVM&t=170s
Piano Guys ft. Taylor Swift & Coldplay, Love Story Meets Viva La Vida @ 3:43
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXtVBJDPs6k&t=185s
I got an unskippable YT double ad at exactly 3:42. I hate YT so freaking much.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nu5YLoaxHc
I'll contribute Stellenbosch University Choir's rendition of Say Something (by A Great Big World and Christina Aguilera). The arrangement capitalizes on the choir's dynamic range; by remaining relatively soft throughout, the sudden loud, tutti passages (1:38 & 3:51) have great effect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdnPAIFn32A
I find that choral performances of pop songs work really well, though they're regrettably but understandably rare. Interestingly, the focus on dynamics isn't present in the original, duet, or Pentatonix version of Say Something, so no frisson moments there. Someone listed Bohemian Rhapsody--can also compare with Stellenbosch's version:
https://soundcloud.com/uschoirkoor/bohemian-rhapsody
The interesting bit is that many European languages have converged on the same juxtaposition of the lexemes <pop><choir>, with the former consistently being a loanword from English. That is, there are lots of search results to be found by translating literally to terms like popchor (German), popkoor (Dutch), поп-хор (several Slavic languages), or popcoro (several Romance languages), plus hyphen and space variations.
Listening to Funkadelic's Maggot Brain album while under the influence of strong hallucinogens turned my regular frissons into full blown waves of pleasure in my body, which I remember were directly correlated to harmony, call-and-response and the play of consonance and dissonance that's so taken for granted in music.
A dissonant chord would make me tense up, and the subsequent resolution would just feel like a blanket of warm pleasure rolling over me.
It was probably the most ecstatic I’ve ever felt in my entire life.
I will never ever forget that day.
There are a couple of songs giving me chills when I'm singing them myself. Not every time, only when I'm in a appropriate mood. So expectation violation doesn't seem a cause.
I don't know exactly what "contrasive valence" is, but it sounds more like it. I think my chills correlate with a qualitative change in an emotions. The short moment when one emotion is transformed into other induce frisson. Some change in a way how I interpret things, or how I feel about them, or both. It must correlate with some properties of a music, because it is one of the ways to change emotional content, but it is not the cause. Sometimes it is one of the causes in a chain of causes.
Thinking about it, not every transformation of emotions gives me chills, sometimes I get tears in my eyes without any chills.
on the theme of Nordic chills, does anyone remember Árstíðir - Heyr himna smiður (Icelandic hymn) in train station?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=e4dT8FJ2GE0
Another DT song moment that gets me is in Scarred, climaxing with the lyric "Sometimes I feel I should face this alone, My soul exposed, It calms me to know that I won't".
A Change of Seasons is one of the greatest compositions of all time, in my opinion.
Breaking All Illusions is another track that just gives “that feeling” though it’s a bit “musically dense” so it might take a few listens to really digest it for some.
Disappear and The Spirit Carries On are also the only songs that have ever made me cry like a baby.
Edit: but yes, this key shift is rather beautiful and unexpected.
Before I learned of the name frisson, I always thought it was an adrenaline response.
Carlo Gesualdo, Tenebrae Responsories. Three nights full of "Expectancy violations", unparalleled word painting, cross relations... definitely do reference the text in translation, because the word painting is a huge part of the beauty of the work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtYMrQjbSak (1 of 27)
Bruckner, 4th symphony, finale. https://youtu.be/o0g82i784bw?t=4440
Bruckner, 8th symphony, finale. https://youtu.be/elVHvTrEM34?t=5610
The 8th symphony is titanic, but worth it if you can set aside 2 hours. I like Celibidache's recordings best.
It's just so incredibly well-done that I feel like even people who only listen to classical and jazz, or whatever, would have to acknowledge they really landed something there.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W6HhdqA95w (4:25 would be a good place to start, but it's not nearly as good if you don't listen to the whole thing)
Some examples, each about 10 seconds before.
https://youtu.be/ir5_fajcohM?t=252 (whole sequence has many, this one the biggest) https://youtu.be/t3mA6gwPbzw?t=42 https://youtu.be/7oelg2Ik8-M?t=35
High pitched vocals also often do it: https://youtu.be/bo_efYhYU2A?t=96
Or amazing visuals paired with music: https://youtu.be/65zm8ozcWl4?t=120 https://youtu.be/YFR-cJ4OM6M?t=422
A few years later I launched metalgasm.com (early 2000s), it is offline now, but it was a place to record your metalgasms or frissons (which I never had heard of until now) with timestamps so people could explore new metal and sort by sub-genre tag and know which songs are the most metalgasmic and which parts to look out for. There is so much to discover and sometimes you think you don't like a genre, but you just haven't found the right band or songs to get you started.
I can tell you that Ghost Love Score had the most entries and Dream Theater made up most of the rest of the site. It's fun to look through what's still on the Internet Archive. Maybe I should rebuild and launch the site again for fun.
One I remember from my childhood that always did the trick is the Yu-Gi-Oh theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjdNz071O4E.
Feel the need to point out that is a Nine Inch Nails song covered by Cash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurt_(Nine_Inch_Nails_song)
Long story short, the brain does most of its representation and signaling with frequencies of brain waves. Just like certain bands of the EM spectrum are reserved for TV broadcast and other parts are reserved for WiFi etc, certain bands of brain waves are reserved for motor-sensory IO. If by sheer coincidence you come across a sensory stimulus that oscillates around the carrier wave frequency used to carry that same stimulus, you should experience some funny interference effects.
Throughout evolutionary history there wasn't really a problem using these carrier frequencies because in our natural environment you're not going to accidentally run into a blinking bright light or loud sound with exactly the right pure frequency. Then we invented instruments and later electric light and oscillators.
The relevant band of frequencies is around 30hz - 60hz. More likely than not the musical examples contain beat frequencies rather than directly containing sound in this part of the spectrum.
The Nāṭya Śāstra elaborates and articulates on 8 rasas in the performing arts, including adbhuta. Truly an interesting work.
And meditation. I relatively frequently experience frisson during meditation, even when there is no obvious realization of some truth during the sit.
In my own experience it is caused by an 'overload' of emotions. When I had a burnout the same thing happened, but much faster. After reading into it I came to the conclusion that it must be a disorder in hormones.
So after reading this article I wonder if a frisson is in fact an 'overload' of hormones caused by a huge amount of emotions. And that this causes a mismatch between your emotions and what you are feeling.
Was recently 'diagnosed' as gifted but there's no explanation as to why I feel music so intensely. Perhaps part of the whole thing, I became an autodidact musician and music is pure bliss to my ears.
As well as the pleasurable goose-bumps associated with positive musical emotion there's another kind, an 'uneasy' frission that is the feeling of hairs on the back of your neck raising.
While the "Wilhelm scream" is the most talked about sound design cliche, probably the one familiar to most of you will actually be the "doom tone" (60-100Hz noise bands), a signifier of "space", "evil" etc - think of Vader's "force choke".
It's a great example of a fear response that is hard-wired, because it represents danger, avalanche, thunder, earthquake or stampeding animals. We have deep auditory circuit, and evolutionary advantage to run away.
The other kind of frission stimulated by very high buzzing seems more mysterious. I discussed with sound designer prof. Mark Grimshaw, who amongst other things is an expert on the horror/suspense genre [2], as to why some screeching (bat-like) or buzzing sounds might give us such creepy feelings. It turns out the sound of mosquitos causes the hairs on the neck to stand up - likely a defence against being bitten when we were much hairier creatures.
Still mysterious, I think, is the reason nails on a blackboard "hurts your teeth", and the exact mechanism and function of pleasurable frission is still a mystery as far as I know. I suspect it may have a social signalling utility, much like blushing. In times when we were much more attuned to each others' body states there could be an evolutionary advantage to signalling when we feel good about something.
[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/designing-sound
[2] https://sonicfield.org/sonic-virtuality-sound-as-emergent/
More than almost any other director, his movies make me “feel” a particular way (mostly uncomfortable).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5ZMZEaK4lQ
Used for a nice effect in music too, in Ben Frost's the carpatians https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qheTGTNxRVs
Try listening to that in a dark room!