Emotional Tones and Emotional Texts

Vocal tone quality is a highly emotive musical resource in popular vocal songs. However, it is also one of the most difficult aspects to analyze due to the complexity and variety of the voice. This article presents a novel analytical approach to the sung voice by considering how emotion is conveyed through tone quality and text. The aim of the approach is to provide a system for annotating vocal tone quality and for analyzing its emotive content. The approach is informed by findings from psychology, music studies, and the social semiotics of sound—taking into consideration how our everyday experience of voice in communication contributes to our emotional perception of singing. Different modes of annotation, from static annotation to real-time annotation, are demonstrated and two new analytical parameters are introduced: the Affect Map and Cohesiveness. This paper first presents the theoretical underpinnings of the approach, followed by an outline of the approach itself, and finally demonstrates the approach through an analysis of the voice in Kris Kristofferson’s 1970 song “Casey’s Last Ride.”