User:WillieBean10/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
(Provide a link to the article here)

Music and emotion - Wikipedia

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I am a musician and originally went to college as a vocal performance major at UARTS back in 2003. I have played the piano since I've been 3 years old and have always found music to be the best form of therapy for me. I know that when listening to music, it can evoke all kinds of emotions and memories, both good and bad. I find music to be one of the strongest ways to bring certain emotions to the surface. My preliminary impression of the article was that it covered a lot of sub-topics that have to do with music and emotion, some of which that were lacking in information that I feel I could add to. I also liked that it brought up how music effects children and how different personality effects has a lot to do with how music effects the emotions of a person. There is just so much to go over with this topic and it's one that I feel passionate about, so that's why I chose this article to evaluate.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section The lead section is concise and gives the reader a good idea of what to expect to learn within the article in terms of how music and emotion "seeks to understand the psychological relationship between human affect and music". It explains in a second paragraph mentions how the article will go over areas such as philosophy, musicology, music therapy, music theory, and aesthetics as well as musical composition and musical performances such as a concert. I do feel like the introduction could have mentioned more about how music affects the human psyche and how the brain reacts to music and what types of music cause certain types of emotions, depending on the personality of the person.

Content

I believe the content is relevant to the subject of music and emotion as it involves subcategories such as Philosophical Approaches (Appearance emotionalism), Process Theory, Conveying emotion through music, structural features (which I found to be very important as the structure of the music has much to do with how it affects emotions in a person), Performance features (which I feel there could have been more touched on this subcategory), Listener features (again, more could be added), Contextual features (again, more could be added), Extra-musical features, Conflicting cues, Specific listener features such as development, infants, pre-school children, elementary-age children, and personality effects (which I find to be an extremely important aspect of music and emotion). The content also touches on Eliciting emotion through music and speaks on responses to elicited emotion, basic emotions, emotional memories and actions, and it also brings up a model of seven ways in which music can elicit emotion called the Juslin and Vastfjail's BRECVEM model. In regards to this model, it speaks on musical expectancy and aesthetic judgement and BRECVEMA. The content also speaks on the comparison of conveyed and elicited emotions by evidence for emotion in music, self report, physiological responses (which I find to be very important), expressive behavior, strengths of effects that are conveyed more than elicited or sometimes conveyed and sometimes elicited, or elicited more than conveyed. The content brings up music as a therapeutic tool, which I think more could have been added to this as it's very important when it comes to emotions and music. It speaks on the emotional impact of music, what evokes fear in music, the influence of music on mass belief, the persuasive power of music, and finally lyrics and emotions. I think much more could have been said in regards to lyrics in music. As a musician and composer myself, I find lyrics to be a very important component when we are speaking of emotions and music.

Tone and Balance

I found this article to be quite neutral in its content. I feel as if the article could have focused more on lyrics and emotion in music as well as the physiological responses that music can cause in in the body and brain. I don't believe this article was trying to persuade the reader one way or the other and was simply trying to cover all of the bases when it comes to music and emotion, which is quite a broad subject to begin with.

Sources and References

This article has numerous sources listed. 67 to be exact. It also includes further reading at the end that builds upon the subject of emotion and music. I checked some of the links and they did work and seem to be legit.

Organization and Writing Quality

The article does have some grammatical errors and could have been written better in some aspects, although it is quite clear and easy to read. It is broken up well into different subcategories that help the reader to find the information they are seeking when it comes to such a broad subject such as music and emotion.

Images and Media

The article only includes one photo (other than the photos that are shown when you hover over certain words in blue) and it is shown at the beginning of the article by the lead section. I found the picture to be quite powerful as when you hover over it, you find that the photo is a painting of Saint Cecilia, who became the patroness of music and musicians, which was painted by Simon Vouet, a French painter, in 1626.

Talk Page Discussion

The talk page does bring up a bad link, which I would find is sure to happen. It mentions edits and also peer reviews, one of which that started with commenting that the article was "Great!". One peer review brings up the part that it's great that so much information was provided and it was well organized. They had suggested that they work more with wiki style writing to make it easier to read and understand. It also mentions that the first few sections are "a little wordy and repetitive". It suggested varying words with other synonyms as well as breaking down the paragraphs into smaller paragraphs in the section that has to do with psychological methods and conflicting cues and nature of musical emotion sections. There is also a reviewer who made some changes to the article in a more "Wikipedia-appropriate way (i.e. adding the table in the 'Structural Features' section". They suggested the writer limit the use of subheading with small follow-up content and to also consider including the BRECVEM model in it's own page, which I wholly agree with, as it's something that deserves much more diving into than just a subcategory in a broad subject such as music and emotion. It does mention that the article is the subject of an educational assignment at Davidson College supported by the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2012 Q3 term.  IT is also the subject of an educational assignment at Davidson College supported by WikiProject Psychology and the Wikipedia Ambassador Program during the 2011 Q3 term.

Overall Impressions

I found the article to be full of very useful and interesting information that covered a multitude of topics when it comes to music and emotion. There are things I think could be changed, such as creating a page of its own for the BRECVEM model, since there is so much information that goes along with that, it is worth more than just being a subcategory, but still mentioning it was useful to the topic of music and emotion. I think the article could have focused more on lyrics in music as well as possibly the feelings of the musician when playing music. I know that the article is about how music can affect one's emotions, however, the same goes for the musician when playing the music and this comes from a personal standpoint. I know what it's like to listen to music and feel a certain way based on the music I'm listening to, but I also know that when playing certain music, it also creates emotions in me that are much different than when I am just listening to music. But overall, I enjoyed the article and thought it covered a lot of information and was fairly well written. ￼