6 ms·

My experience of this was that the sad music could connect to where I was, and once I had connected, I could actually slowly shift my mood by gradually changing

My experience of this was that the sad music could connect to where I was, and once I had connected, I could actually slowly shift my mood by gradually changing the music (had to be gradual though). I kind of stumbled on that, and it worked for me, though in hindsight I can see how it could be seen as a form of musical therapy. The really essential point though, is that in order for this to work I had to begin with songs that actually matched my low mood (Radiohead and Portishead seemed to consistently do the trick)... trying to shift out of a low mood by playing a happy song directly did not work - it was just jarring. I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it’s not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself.

jklinger410 7y ago
Sad music is a type of immersion therapy. Confronting your fears is always the best way to overcome them. I think sadness and depression also require validation. Stewing on it is good if it is therapeutic, bad if it encourages helplessness.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  > Sad music is a type of immersion therapy. Confronting your fears is always the best way to overcome them. I couldn't stress this enough. Also there is a danger when in a depressive(depressed?) state to stay in it by feeding back the beast. I got stuck for two days once listening non-stop to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A (Hans Zimmer - Time (OST "Inception") │ Fingerstyle guitar) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuEEEwgdAZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuEEEwgdAZs (Hans Zimmer - INTERSTELLAR⎪12 STRING FINGERSTYLE GUITAR). I suspect the sadness I experience when listening to it comes from the threads I weaved between elements of my own life and those movies. Now I can't listen to those tracks anymore. I mentionned that because the sad track (adagio for strings) used in the experiment is a happy one for me since it reminds me of the Homeworld opening sequence (which bring elements of "let's move forward" and "let's fight for our lives").
yathern 7y ago
I've been doing this for years! I have a dozen or so playlists that start off with very sad music, become melancholy, then bittersweet, then hopeful, and finally happy. Almost always does the trick! But you have to have time to kill. The way I see it is like rescuing someone stuck on the ocean floor. You can't just bring them up! Your body has to adjust to the changing pressure. Slowly and slowly you change the mood, allowing time to ease in.
- thetrumanshow 7y ago
  Whoa. Please consider sharing your playlist via Spotify!
  - yathern 7y ago
    All you people encouraged me to write (my first ever) blog post - with links! Here you go: https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists.html https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....
    - zombieprocess 7y ago
      I am a little concerned that this website gives all kinds of SSL errors in Firefox and openDNS straight up categorizes this as malware. Could you please check into that?
      - yathern 7y ago
        Oh my. I don't get that on my machines. I'll look into it though.
- s3arch 7y ago
  Yes, please do share the playlist.
- mettamage 7y ago
  I'm the third person in favor for sharing the playlist! :D
MentallyRetired 7y ago
I came here to say exactly this. Once I got tired of sad music, my brain was tired of being sad. I could gradually improve my mood by shifting the music I was listening to. Fascinating that I'm not the only one who does this. This must be a thing. Thankfully I only deal with depression occasionally now, but this trick worked great for me.
systematical 7y ago
This. People seek things that "understand" them. Misery loves company.
- mjevans 7y ago
  Everyone loves /like/ company, to a point.
golergka 7y ago
Same experience as a DJ. You don't open a night with bangers - that's a great way to alienate everybody. Pick the light tone, don't go for anything further than nodding along to music in the beginning, and then gradually, track by track, pick up the pace, keeping an eye on the dancefloor. Same principle also works wonders in sex, btw.
spiderjerusalem 7y ago
I use music for fine grained mood modulation since at least 10 years now. Some progressions consistently work. I will typically start with Joy Division, Radiohead or equivalent post-punk classic albums, which tend to be really far out on the depressive/sadness spectrum. I will generally follow up with things like Swans, Godspeed! You Black Emperor (I also listen to a fair amount of noise). By this time, I'm usually getting focused in to something - either reading or coding. Before the ramp up, it would be virtually impossible for me to even start thinking of something. Post-rock type long noisy things work amazingly well for me to get into a certain flow state. At the end, after an hour or two, when I take a break from whatever I'm doing, I'm almost manic and hyper-restless (far away from the sad state I started from earlier), but in a good way. I really like my manic states.
- spiderjerusalem 7y ago
  Small addendum - the Greek idea of Catharsis is one of the most eloquent articulations of this process. It is well discussed in art and literature.
- easymodex 7y ago
  Upvoted for good music taste!
  - majkinetor 7y ago
    Upvoted for even more social effect!
xutopia 7y ago
If you have any playlists that move nicely away from sad music to uplifting ones I'd love to know about them :)
- Bartweiss 7y ago
  I don't have a playlist, but I do have a suggestion: if one doesn't work for you, play around with the choice of "intermediate" music. For me, the choice of music depends on what specific emotion I'm starting from and what I'm trying to do at the same time. (I wonder if Pandora could build these - take a starting and ending song and fill in a progression between the two?) "Sad to melancholy to emotional to happy" might be good for sitting around at home thinking about losing someone (family, romance, etc), perhaps with a bunch of folk music and slower songs. Townes Van Zandt can connect to just about any amount of sadness, the middle could be anywhere from Dire Straits to The Dubliners depending on taste, and the endpoint might be Led Zeppelin. (Actually, you could probably do an entire playlist of this with Zeppelin alone.) Whereas if I know I'm just tired and frustrated over minor stuff and I want to get work done, I might end up going "bleak to angry to driven to enthusiastic". Maybe... Filter to Black Flag to grandson to Glitch Mob?
- yathern 7y ago
  Here's my playlists: https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists.html https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....
Bartweiss 7y ago
I've always pictured listening to "sad music" as a sort of equivalent to double-clutching a truck or stepping onto a moving walkway. The music has to be well-synced emotionally or it'll just clash instead of applying useful pressure. There's also an aspect of externalizing the negative feelings to deal with them better. When it's deep, well-founded sadness that probably looks like catharsis, but it even works for 'pointless' sadness over sleep deprivation or an already-resolved problem. Anchoring those feelings to music essentially helps me play a trick on my monkey brain. "Sad for no reason" is hard to shake directly, so it can be easier to transition through "I'm sad and there's sad music, that must be the cause, clearly happy music will make me un-sad!"
lloeki 7y ago
I’ve been using similar tricks of the mind upon myself as well as others, works for many, many things and scenarios. I like to think about it as a reverse normalisation of deviance maneuver.
scotty79 7y ago
I was thinking about placing a screen on the wall that displays pleasant face. The system would observe you so the face can follow you with eyes and head turn. It would also read your mood from your face and behaviour and match it, but not exactly. Face on the wall would be slightly happier and calmer than you are. I think this could improve your mood through multiple mechanisms. It also might be very creepy which might be another reason to hack together something like this. Mood appropriate music might be nice touch as well.
- sagebird 7y ago
  I encourage you to test this idea out ( or if you don’t have the time, situation, etc. encourage others). Even if it has a low chance of working, it would be really positive if it did work. Some antidepressants are approved on slim margins over placebo effects, so the bar isn’t super high.
dizzyfingers 7y ago
>> I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it’s not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself. This was/is the purpose of the blues, an acknowledgement and release from adversity.

jklinger410 7y ago

Sad music is a type of immersion therapy. Confronting your fears is always the best way to overcome them. I think sadness and depression also require validation. Stewing on it is good if it is therapeutic, bad if it encourages helplessness.

johnchristopher 7y ago
> Sad music is a type of immersion therapy. Confronting your fears is always the best way to overcome them. I couldn't stress this enough. Also there is a danger when in a depressive(depressed?) state to stay in it by feeding back the beast. I got stuck for two days once listening non-stop to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAcALH67-2A (Hans Zimmer - Time (OST "Inception") │ Fingerstyle guitar) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuEEEwgdAZs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuEEEwgdAZs (Hans Zimmer - INTERSTELLAR⎪12 STRING FINGERSTYLE GUITAR). I suspect the sadness I experience when listening to it comes from the threads I weaved between elements of my own life and those movies. Now I can't listen to those tracks anymore. I mentionned that because the sad track (adagio for strings) used in the experiment is a happy one for me since it reminds me of the Homeworld opening sequence (which bring elements of "let's move forward" and "let's fight for our lives").

yathern 7y ago

I've been doing this for years! I have a dozen or so playlists that start off with very sad music, become melancholy, then bittersweet, then hopeful, and finally happy. Almost always does the trick! But you have to have time to kill. The way I see it is like rescuing someone stuck on the ocean floor. You can't just bring them up! Your body has to adjust to the changing pressure. Slowly and slowly you change the mood, allowing time to ease in.

thetrumanshow 7y ago
Whoa. Please consider sharing your playlist via Spotify!
- yathern 7y ago
  All you people encouraged me to write (my first ever) blog post - with links! Here you go: https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists.html https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....
  - zombieprocess 7y ago
    I am a little concerned that this website gives all kinds of SSL errors in Firefox and openDNS straight up categorizes this as malware. Could you please check into that?
    - yathern 7y ago
      Oh my. I don't get that on my machines. I'll look into it though.
s3arch 7y ago
Yes, please do share the playlist.
mettamage 7y ago
I'm the third person in favor for sharing the playlist! :D

MentallyRetired 7y ago

I came here to say exactly this. Once I got tired of sad music, my brain was tired of being sad. I could gradually improve my mood by shifting the music I was listening to. Fascinating that I'm not the only one who does this. This must be a thing. Thankfully I only deal with depression occasionally now, but this trick worked great for me.

systematical 7y ago

This. People seek things that "understand" them. Misery loves company.

mjevans 7y ago
Everyone loves /like/ company, to a point.

golergka 7y ago

Same experience as a DJ. You don't open a night with bangers - that's a great way to alienate everybody. Pick the light tone, don't go for anything further than nodding along to music in the beginning, and then gradually, track by track, pick up the pace, keeping an eye on the dancefloor. Same principle also works wonders in sex, btw.

spiderjerusalem 7y ago

I use music for fine grained mood modulation since at least 10 years now. Some progressions consistently work. I will typically start with Joy Division, Radiohead or equivalent post-punk classic albums, which tend to be really far out on the depressive/sadness spectrum. I will generally follow up with things like Swans, Godspeed! You Black Emperor (I also listen to a fair amount of noise). By this time, I'm usually getting focused in to something - either reading or coding. Before the ramp up, it would be virtually impossible for me to even start thinking of something. Post-rock type long noisy things work amazingly well for me to get into a certain flow state. At the end, after an hour or two, when I take a break from whatever I'm doing, I'm almost manic and hyper-restless (far away from the sad state I started from earlier), but in a good way. I really like my manic states.

spiderjerusalem 7y ago
Small addendum - the Greek idea of Catharsis is one of the most eloquent articulations of this process. It is well discussed in art and literature.
easymodex 7y ago
Upvoted for good music taste!
- majkinetor 7y ago
  Upvoted for even more social effect!

xutopia 7y ago

If you have any playlists that move nicely away from sad music to uplifting ones I'd love to know about them :)

Bartweiss 7y ago
I don't have a playlist, but I do have a suggestion: if one doesn't work for you, play around with the choice of "intermediate" music. For me, the choice of music depends on what specific emotion I'm starting from and what I'm trying to do at the same time. (I wonder if Pandora could build these - take a starting and ending song and fill in a progression between the two?) "Sad to melancholy to emotional to happy" might be good for sitting around at home thinking about losing someone (family, romance, etc), perhaps with a bunch of folk music and slower songs. Townes Van Zandt can connect to just about any amount of sadness, the middle could be anywhere from Dire Straits to The Dubliners depending on taste, and the endpoint might be Led Zeppelin. (Actually, you could probably do an entire playlist of this with Zeppelin alone.) Whereas if I know I'm just tired and frustrated over minor stuff and I want to get work done, I might end up going "bleak to angry to driven to enthusiastic". Maybe... Filter to Black Flag to grandson to Glitch Mob?
yathern 7y ago
Here's my playlists: https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists.html https://www.lukeschaefer.dev/2019/04/scuba-rescue-playlists....

Bartweiss 7y ago

I've always pictured listening to "sad music" as a sort of equivalent to double-clutching a truck or stepping onto a moving walkway. The music has to be well-synced emotionally or it'll just clash instead of applying useful pressure. There's also an aspect of externalizing the negative feelings to deal with them better. When it's deep, well-founded sadness that probably looks like catharsis, but it even works for 'pointless' sadness over sleep deprivation or an already-resolved problem. Anchoring those feelings to music essentially helps me play a trick on my monkey brain. "Sad for no reason" is hard to shake directly, so it can be easier to transition through "I'm sad and there's sad music, that must be the cause, clearly happy music will make me un-sad!"

lloeki 7y ago

I’ve been using similar tricks of the mind upon myself as well as others, works for many, many things and scenarios. I like to think about it as a reverse normalisation of deviance maneuver.

scotty79 7y ago

I was thinking about placing a screen on the wall that displays pleasant face. The system would observe you so the face can follow you with eyes and head turn. It would also read your mood from your face and behaviour and match it, but not exactly. Face on the wall would be slightly happier and calmer than you are. I think this could improve your mood through multiple mechanisms. It also might be very creepy which might be another reason to hack together something like this. Mood appropriate music might be nice touch as well.

sagebird 7y ago
I encourage you to test this idea out ( or if you don’t have the time, situation, etc. encourage others). Even if it has a low chance of working, it would be really positive if it did work. Some antidepressants are approved on slim margins over placebo effects, so the bar isn’t super high.

dizzyfingers 7y ago

>> I imagine that in doing so I was unconsciously reproducing one of the best impacts of certain kinds of therapy: creating the acknowledgement that yes, I feel the way I feel, that is mirrored by my environment in some way, and it’s not something I need to hide or feel shame about. The music helped me feel that without needing to reveal anything about myself. This was/is the purpose of the blues, an acknowledgement and release from adversity.