What is Valence?
Also called: musical valence
In music analysis, valence describes how positive or negative a piece of music feels, from sad, tense or angry at one end to happy, cheerful or euphoric at the other.
Valence comes from psychology, where emotions are often mapped on two axes: valence (positive or negative) and arousal or energy (calm or intense). A calm sad song and an angry intense song can both have low valence while their energy is very different.
Mode, harmony, tempo, rhythm, timbre and lyrics all affect it. Some streaming services and music analysis tools estimate valence automatically to sort songs into moods.
It is useful for building playlists, choosing music for sync and describing your own songs, but listeners can feel the same song differently.
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Analyze the mood, energy and emotion of a song.
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