There are times when emotions dictate what style I listen to at the time.  It's good to know sometimes that someone can express their feelings in music.  Music with a lot of emotion usually moves me one way or another, and music that explores opposite extremes also appeals to me.  

At times it moves my soul causing me to start bopping and dancing no matter where I am, much to the chagrin of any family member nearby.

For example I can't listen to Yes' Lightning Strikes or Almost Like Love without my body taking over. Is that an emotional response? Perhaps.

ELP's trilogy does the same sort of thing, the first three minutes harken back to a time when I was living on the other side of the country and living with my estranged girlfriend's family. A lonely and emotional time for me a young adult. So it brings back memories, but not so much the actual emotions. Then, after the three minute mark when all hell breaks loose, look out, this dancin' fool is released once more.

Speed Metal and some of the more extreme music (for lack of a better term) tend to make me tense up and clench my teeth a little.

I can't recall any music ever eliciting tears or even a lump in my throat, so it doesn't tap those emotions in me.

My emotional central control is more affected by spoken audio input.

I've been going through a loungey phase too during the late evenings. These are just some of the crooners and songstresses I've been listening to over the last couple of months:- Julie Andrews; Paul Anka; Burt Bacharach; Tony Bennett; Brook Benton; Carpenters; Vikki Carr; Perry Como; Ray Conniff; Percy Faith; Engelbert Humperdinck; Jack Jones; Nat King Cole; James Last; Michel Legrand; Henry Mancini; Dean Martin; Matt Monro; Frank Sinatra; Caterina Valente; & Andy Williams, to name just a few. They help me get to sleep at night. 

On the subject of David Bowie, I've just finished listening to his entire discography of 49 albums (including live albums), only to discover how depressing and disappointing his final Blackstar album is. 

Les Baxter - Taboo

The passion for the music itself is maybe the strongest emotion, and I still can get surprised by how strong it can become. It can be like falling in love really.

This is however probably not quite what the question is about.

I have used music, occasionally, for working with bad emotions, for bringing aggression out and also sadness. Twice, at the end of more or less long relationships, it was straight rhythmic music with some edge (Comsat Angels, Fehlfarben) that made me realise and really feel that life goes on, and also that I'm not only sad but also angry about how I was treated. When I was younger, Eloy could do that kind of thing. 

Some melodies work like magic for me and bring back memories, happy and sad, and get me close to those feelings, or make me feel more about something that hadn't touched me that consciously when it actually happened, but they can also raise hope... or desperation even if not connected to events in the past. A major example is Bjork's Joga that will always get me in and move me on levels that are different from just the enthusiasm for the music.

And then there is something quite different, music that makes my perception sharper and makes me more aware about everything, and that can get me in a meditative and even temporarily enlightened mood. Much of this music is rather experimental, some electronic. Tangerine Dream and Art Zoyd have stuff that can work like this, but much from it is from the Experimental and Avantgarde categories outside the PA range of music, including music based on sound experimentation, field recordings and the like. I may listen to field recordings at rather low volume and integrate everything there is actually to hear in the world, car noise, a dog barking, a couple in the neighbourhood shouting at each other, into a full overall sound experience. 

Today I was driving back with a friend from a trip and we saw some quite nice places from the car and had music such as Zoviet France and some Art Zoyd running that gave quite some spin on the overall atmosphere and made it all more intense than it would probably otherwise have been.

Interestingly I knew the story before getting the album, but the album itself, which I love a lot and to which I feel a strong emotional connection, never reminded me of that story. I thought of it maybe once or twice when listening more superficially, but when I listen to it with full awareness, the story is never there for me to be felt or thought of. Strange, eh?

It's a hard thing for me to describe since I like so many different things and the next day I want something hard and different and the next something meditative and quiet. 

I don't think it is about my "moods" since I can pick up anything from my collection, and I can fly with it immediately regardless of the mood. I think it simply says that the feel I have for that particular album (or band) has stayed true all this time, and it continues in different albums -- something that we are not exactly on tune with, but might make for a good poll!

The only thing I know, is that at times something different will grab my ear, and this week it has been the missing chirping of the two blue robins that come around to grab the peanuts I leave for them. Pete always says hi (loud I might suggest!), but his other mate is quieter and likes to sneak up, grab the peanut and then fly. You can hear the wings flutter coming and then going with a peanut in their beaks!

Some story, or idea about the music is ... weird for me. I can appreciate a band or two telling me about their fictional trip, but in the end, the trip you can not "define" is the only one that attracts me and keeps me on it over and over again. Think about Echoes, Atom Heart Mother, Tales from Topographic Oceans and the like where your attempt to "define" it, ends up nowhere at all. If you take this route on the left ... no, wait, take this route on the right ... and I'm not sure that I want to meet TIRESIAS to make things even ore confusing ... how does that help?

Be it music, a painting or a novel ... is the same. It's about it giving me a visual film that never ends or stops ... with only one bad side ... seeing that on Picasso's Guernica is the worst horror movie ever! Nothing like the reality of a Civil War and what could be seen right outside the window by a child! 

Sometimes, not knowing about it is better. For example, in the film MAHLER (Ken Russell) the ending is really sad ... he had written a Symphony for his wife, and she still left him not caring about the music! As much as I loved some of the music in that piece ... the visual of it from the film hurts. I felt the same on ROSSETTI (also Ken Russell's early film) when seeing the last 30 minutes was sad ... really sad, and it took some of the sails out of the "pre-Raphaelites" for me.

But all in all, at 70 and getting older, any music that makes me fly within a few seconds is going to really have a lot of love and appreciation. The rest? Ciao baby, progressive or not!

   if I hadn't heard Les Baxter's version of "Out Of This World" from CARIBBEAN MOONLIGHT as a child, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate Pink Floyd as a teen.  and hence, I would never have created SPACE PIRATE RADIO in 1973.  and 48 years later, I still play Les Baxter.  it always sounds just right after something like Can, Magma, or any of the new kids on the block.  & don't get me started on Martin Denny & the soundtrack to FORBIDDEN PLANET.  *giggles*  thanks.

It's good to see there's at least two other fans (incl. Logan) of Les Baxter's space age exotica on ProgArchives. Space Pirate Radio sounds like my kind of radio station.

What doesn't music do?

Let me guess...it was one of these guys.

Logan wrote: ^ I knew someone who claimed that music did nothing for them and couldn't appreciate any of it.

There will always be an odd one or two for sure.

That certainly applies to me, as do the heartfelt lyrics of this John Miles song....

Amen to that. 

Man With Hat wrote: erections

imagined or real?

How is being moved not real?

My being moved is real but the stimulus or source is artificial/manufactured. It's art (not reality)

I still don't get it. How is there a conflict between being manufactured and real? Chances are you wouldn't say a hammer and a nail are not real; also a painting or sound waves are pretty much as real as it gets, aren't they?

So the source is real, your perception is real (it can probably be physically traced in your brain), your being moved is real, so what is not real? 

Are you saying that it is not real (in the sense of not being an objective fact) that musical piece XYZ is, say, "happy"? But obviously happiness is a subjective sentiment, so shouldn't be ascribed to the piece itself but rather to its reception by a specific person, for whom, again, this is very real (for a given point in time). The thread question expresses this properly ("what does it do for you"), so what's your issue with that?

(I'm asking out of philosophical interest by the way. I suspect you have some background or at least interest in that direction, so I try to figure out whether what you're claiming here is of interest to me - not assuming that it is nonsense just because it doesn't make sense to me at first sight.)

Your suspicions are unfounded (I have no interest in yet another semantic pillow fight with a post modernist like yourself) I can read a story about a fictional character in a novel, about whom my empathy derives from the author's skillful/manipulative description. My emotional response is real but it's from a fictitious/made up source e.g. grieving over the death of someone who never actually lived.

Music is possibly one of the most abstract of all the art-forms so as to why something like Bartok's Dance Suite makes me cry is probably unfathomable. Although I know my tears  are physically real, they are effectively vicarious i.e. I can be affected by other's depictions of their own experiences but if I haven't lived them I cannot share them so would probably be guilty of a certain amount of bad faith/hypocrisy