Master Scoring Reference · Emotion → Score

Emotion → Score

Name the feeling you want to evoke. The tool tells you what kind of thing it is — a fixed feeling you hold, or a movement you build — and hands you the matching guide: the prioritised compositional moves, each tagged by how much it carries and how strongly the evidence backs it.

Name the feeling you want to evoke

Plain-language search — everyday words (English or Dutch) hand-mapped to intentions craft. It changes how you find an intention, never what that intention recommends.

Tonic for note display
Plan a multi-step path between feelings advanced

For moving through several feelings in sequence (e.g. Sadness → Defiance → a quiet outro). Most intentions don’t need this — single moves are already built into every trajectory guide above. This is the standalone multi-step planner, kept here because “plan a path” isn’t one intention.

Start feeling

Add waypoints — tap to append the next step

Path

Reference appendices

Full lever matrix — all emotions at once

Columns ordered strongest → weakest by empirical weight (top of the order — mode > tempo > register > dynamics > articulation > timbre — after Eerola, Friberg & Bresin 2013). Contour (\u25e6) is the lowest-confidence cue.

Mode brightness spectrum (valence axis)
Spectrotone tone-colours (arousal & blend)

Brighter colours (white/yellow) raise arousal and sit higher in the spectral centroid; darker colours (brown/grey) lower it. After Arthur Lange's Spectrotone chart.

Expectancy devices (temporal layer)
Feelings this tool won’t name — and what to reach for instead

These are feelings you might reach for that get no chip on purpose. The bar for a named intention is a distinct, listener-convergent cue-recipe the existing intentions don’t already produce. Each one below fails it — its granularity lives somewhere a score can’t reach: in appraisal (who caused this, can I act, is it about me — inaudible), in an orchestration choice rather than a lever set, or in a reference the music points outside itself. Naming the boundary honestly is more useful than a soft chip that looks like a recipe but isn’t. craft

Sources & further reading

Everything in this tool traces back to the work below. The role tag on each mirrors the in-app evidence tags: model the organising frameworks; research controlled empirical findings; theory expectation & induction theory; craft expert convention. The brightness→arousal link inside the craft sources is itself research-backed (spectral centroid). Links are to the canonical publisher / DOI page where one exists.

Models & frameworks

the two-axis spine and the emotion vocabulary the whole tool is built on

modelRussell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161–1178. doi.org/10.1037/h0077714The valence×arousal plane — the two independent axes the rose and every coordinate sit on.
modelZentner, M., Grandjean, D., & Scherer, K. R. (2008). Emotions evoked by the sound of music: Characterization, classification, and measurement. Emotion, 8(4), 494–521. doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.8.4.494 · overviewGEMS — the nine-dimension factor analysis the emotion list’s core anchors (Wonder, Tenderness, Nostalgia, Peacefulness, Power, Joyful activation, Tension …) is drawn from.

Empirical research

controlled cue studies — the lever weights, coordinates, accretion curves and acoustic targets

researchGabrielsson, A., & Lindström, E. (2010). The role of structure in the musical expression of emotions. In P. N. Juslin & J. A. Sloboda (Eds.), Handbook of Music and Emotion: Theory, Research, Applications (pp. 367–400). Oxford University Press. OUPThe broad cue→emotion review behind the lever set; corroborates the largely-additive combination picture that Eerola, Friberg & Bresin 2013 establishes by controlled manipulation.
researchEerola, T., & Vuoskoski, J. K. (2011). A comparison of the discrete and dimensional models of emotion in music. Psychology of Music, 39(1), 18–49. doi.org/10.1177/0305735610362821The source of the perceived-emotion v/a coordinates shown on each emotion — 110 film excerpts, directly dimensional, with a distinct anger coordinate.
researchEerola, T., Friberg, A., & Bresin, R. (2013). Emotional expression in music: contribution, linearity, and additivity of primary musical cues. Frontiers in Psychology, 4, 487. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00487The factorial-manipulation evidence behind two load-bearing claims: that the cues combine in a largely additive way (the rule the matrix depends on), and the ranked lever order at the top of the matrix (mode > tempo > register > dynamics > articulation > timbre). Contour and Accretion sit outside its scope and keep their own sources.
researchGoodchild, M., Wild, J., & McAdams, S. (2019). Exploring emotional responses to orchestral gestures. Musicae Scientiae, 23(1), 25–49. doi.org/10.1177/1029864917704033Behind the Accretion (texture-over-time) lever and the Intensity-arc graphs: gradual vs sudden addition, and the lingering-release gap (felt intensity stays up after the forces drop).
researchDean, R. T., Bailes, F., & Schubert, E. (2011). Acoustic intensity causes perceived changes in arousal levels in music: An experimental investigation. PLoS ONE, 6(4), e18591. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0018591The causal evidence that loudness/intensity drives arousal — the basis of the Accretion lever and the Intensity-arc graphs.
researchMcAdams, S., Douglas, C., & Vempala, N. N. (2017). Perception and modeling of affective qualities of musical instrument sounds across pitch registers. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 153. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00153Brightness (spectral centroid)→arousal, and that arousal is independent of which symphonic family plays — the support for deriving instruments from a brightness target instead of storing a symphonic family. Forte-only, so it can’t validate the exertion target, which the acoustic-target panel flags as unverified.
researchReymore, L. (2022). Characterizing prototypical musical instrument timbres with Timbre Trait Profiles. Musicae Scientiae, 26(3), 648–674. doi.org/10.1177/10298649211001523The timbre research behind the Roughness-direction note in the acoustic-target panel (negative valence × exertion → harshness).
researchStrauss, H., Vigl, J., Jacobsen, P.-O., Bayer, M., Talamini, F., Vigl, W., Zangerle, E., & Zentner, M. (2024). The Emotion-to-Music Mapping Atlas (EMMA): A systematically organized online database of emotionally evocative music excerpts. Behavior Research Methods, 56, 3560–3577. doi.org/10.3758/s13428-024-02336-0 · databaseGEMS ratings for 364 excerpts, used to sanity-check which emotions are distinct enough to stand as their own intention and which fold together. It carries no valence/arousal by design, so it shaped the emotion set rather than the coordinates.

Theory

expectation (the temporal layer) and the induction mechanisms behind felt response

theoryMeyer, L. B. (1956). Emotion and Meaning in Music. University of Chicago Press. U. Chicago PressThe founding argument that musical affect arises from expectation — confirmed, withheld, deferred, violated.
theoryHuron, D. (2006). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Expectation. MIT Press. MIT Press · overviewThe ITPRA model behind the Expectancy-devices appendix (cadences, suspensions, pedals, caesura) and the withheld / released distinction the build and resolve guides turn on.
theoryJuslin, P. N., & Västfjäll, D. (2008). Emotional responses to music: The need to consider underlying mechanisms. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 31(5), 559–575. doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X08005293The induction-mechanism framework behind the “Likely induction channels” line in each emotion’s guide.

Expert convention

craft sources — reliable practice rather than controlled data

craftThe Crow Hill Company. Blagsheet #01 — Modes. thecrowhillcompany.com/blagsheet-modesThe seven modes → emotional flavours, reordered by brightness (Lydian→Locrian) into the valence spectrum.
craftLange, A. (1943). Spectrotone Chart — Instrumental Tone-Color Chart (70th Anniversary Edition). Alexander Publishing. alexanderpublishing.comInstrument × register → tone-colour, digitised into the Brightness → instrument lookup; the brightness→arousal link it implies is research-backed via spectral centroid.
craftMomentum. (2022). Screen-scoring cue profiles (style decks: Love, Sadness, Suspense, Action, Adventure Hero/Villain, Magic & Fantasy, Comedy, Epic Orchestral Trailer). applytomomentum.comConvergent screen-scoring convention that corroborates the genre-costume palettes (esp. Fantasy, Comedy, Horror) and a few craft lever values (tempo bounds, the suspense bed). One course’s house style, not controlled data — it confirms craft choices but upgrades no tier.