How We Can Use Music to Express Sincerity and Drama

Knowing how to balance sincerity and drama in everyday communication is one of the most powerful social skills we can develop. In my last post, I presented ideas on how we perceive sincerity and drama. Now, let’s take a look at how we express those ideas to be perceived accurately by others.

During the pandemic Zoom era, I discovered a gap between what I thought I was conveying and how poker-faced I actually looked on screen. I learned self-awareness of the nuances in energy level, pacing, volume, and other aspects I formerly only thought of as musical elements.

In the fictional world of the popular novel A Face Like Glass, citizens have lost their natural facial expressions, and have to train to put on an expression. Our own world of screen-centric communication is eroding our external expression, and we urgently need to educate our citizens, especially the younger generation, who prefer to converse through text and Discord rather than visit in person. Music, as a powerful form of human communication, can revive our sensory and in-person connection.

To have emotional influence in work, music, and personal life, we need to understand and bridge the cultural layer of who we are and who we are communicating with. Interpersonal expression in both musical and verbal languages can cue up empathy and trust, which in turn cultivates rapport so that people can align.

Transfer Internal State of Mind to External Signals

As a pianist, I always have “one ear out in the audience” for an objective awareness of what is being expressed and how many of my signals are landing—in terms of intent, volume, energy, or competing distractions.

Like performing, everyday communication is a skill set of signalling facts, emotions, intensity, and pacing to others.

The feeling of sincerity increases with predictable consistency. Choosing to play the music or to speak with a steady pulse, a relaxed, sustained tone, unhurried phrasing, and simple gestures all suggest authenticity.

The experience of dramatic moments is created by an unexpected and broader range of change. A sudden shriek or “crescendo” (getting louder), an unexpected silence, a steeply rising and falling melody, or a fast harmonic mood change signals the listener to pay attention immediately.

Use Variations to Signal Sincerity

In science, we want to reproduce the same results every time we do an experiment, whereas in art, we want to create a different nuance every time we play to communicate the uniqueness of the moment. If a phrase is played or spoken three times in the exact same way, with the exact same attack and inflection, we receive it as calculating and machine-like. Instead, we can allow nuances to breathe and evolve with the conversation.

Use Drama to Influence

Psychological research shows that leaders, speakers, composers, and performers can effectively use dramatic flair as attention signals to persuade, inspire, motivate, threaten, or focus. Just as a sudden crescendo makes listeners sit up, variations in our speed keep them actively engaged.

To be sure, it’s easy to overdo the drama. The boy who cried wolf sure had a lot of fun, but paid with his life. The best approach is to sustain a calm baseline and emphasize the moments that really deserve to shine.

Cultural Norms

Classical music provides a cultural lens for how our sound ideals differ. Let’s continue with my previous post's examples of Prokofiev and Mozart. The Russian School prizes boldness and projection; the French—Prokofiev’s other influence—seeks colorful fantasy. For Mozart, we turn to the Italian singing line—purity of tone as emotional transparency. Cross-cultural studies reinforce that what signals sincerity in one context may read as insincere in another. So the more we understand our audience, the more we can highlight what is significant in a specific communication.

Taken into present-day family life, I speak to my child using references to video games and anime. I speak to my adult piano students with references to their favorite opera or TV show. As an immigrant and a child who preferred classical music to the pop songs of my classmates, I had a head start in realizing I can’t expect everyone in my life to understand my own culture. If I want to make myself understandable, then making the effort to get into their world first counts a lot.

Emotional Intelligence Essential Reads

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In Mozart’s Sonata K.304 of 1778, he established his own sincere and dramatic musical language of sharp character contrasts, intense interjections, rhythmic propulsion, and augmented harmonies. Very similar traits were used in Prokofiev’s Sonata in D major, Op. 94 of 1943, with an amplified tension between sincere serenity and dramatic sarcasm.

While both pieces were successful with their own audiences, I think that neither one would have been embraced if they had switched cultural time and place.

Full Range of Expression

While a dramatic response can draw attention momentarily, we need to think of sustainable long-term impact as well. When we develop the emotional maturity to understand all of our emotions and organize them in order of present moment relevance, we can access a full range of expression that blends both sincerity and drama.

Just like an intentional emotional communication in a musical masterpiece, our response can be decluttered from disproportionate catastrophizing or emotional triggering without context or getting stuck in the same patterns.

Emotional maturity is a charismatic quality that draws others to listen to us. Whether we are in the middle of a disagreement, a job interview, or a date, every situation is an opportunity to practice emotional awareness and regulation, as well as expression.

In Closing

Imagine a world where everybody valued the skills to be emotionally sincere with themselves and others, and used drama in proportion to the context. While we can’t control how others perceive us, we can use these cultural, cognitive, and emotional tools from the psychology of musical expressivity to be more heard and understood. And we can encourage other people’s emotional awareness by syncing up in live music.