A descending bass line coordinated with sad lyrics is often described as evoking the "lament" topic—a signal to listeners that grief is being conveyed (Caplin, 2014). In human speech, a similar pattern of pitch declination occurs as air pressure is lost ('t Hart, Collier, & Cohen, 1990) which—coordinated with the premise that sad speech is lower in pitch (Lieberman & Michaels, 1962)—suggests there may be a cognitive-ecological association between descending bass lines and negative emotion more broadly. This study reexamines the relationship between descending bass lines and sadness in songs with lyrics. First, two contrasting repertoires were surveyed: 703 cantata movements by J. S. Bach and 740 popular music songs released ca. 1950–1990. Works featuring descending bass lines were identified and bass lines extracted by computationally parsing scores for bass or the lowest sounding musical line that descends incrementally by step. The corresponding lyrics were then analyzed using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (Pennebaker et al., 2015a, 2015b). Results were not consistent with the hypothesis that descending bass lines are associated with a general negative affect and thus also not specifically with sadness. In a follow-up behavioral study, popular music excerpts featuring a descending bass were evaluated for the features of sad sounds (Huron, Anderson, & Shanahan, 2014) by undergraduate musicians. Here, tempo and articulation, but not interval size as anticipated, were found to be the best predictors of songs with descending bass lines.

中文翻译：

---

西宋降低音图式与负面情绪

与悲伤歌词相协调的下降低音线通常被描述为唤起“哀叹”主题 - 向听众传达悲伤正在传达的信号（Caplin，2014）。在人类讲话中，当气压消失时，会出现类似的音调偏角模式（'t Hart, Collier, & Cohen, 1990），这与悲伤的讲话音调较低的前提相协调（Lieberman & Michaels, 1962）-表明低音线的下降和更广泛的负面情绪之间可能存在认知生态关联。这项研究重新审视了带有歌词的歌曲中低音线的下降与悲伤之间的关系。首先，对两个对比鲜明的曲目进行了调查：JS Bach 的 703 首康塔塔乐章和 740 首发行的流行音乐歌曲。1950-1990 年。识别出具有下降低音线的作品，并通过计算解析低音或逐步下降的最低声音音乐线的分数来提取低音线。然后使用语言查询和字数分析相应的歌词（Pennebaker 等人，2015a，2015b）。结果与降低低音线与一般负面影响相关的假设不一致，因此也与悲伤无关。在后续的行为研究中，本科音乐家评估了以低音下降为特色的流行音乐选段的悲伤声音特征（休伦、安德森和沙纳汉，2014）。在这里，速度和清晰度，但不是预期的间隔大小，被发现是低音线下降歌曲的最佳预测指标。