Emotional Guitars: Pads is available today!

The 2nd in the Emotional Guitars line, Pads allows you to instantly set a mood with a soundscape matched perfectly to the emotion of the piece. It’s a great scoring tool in its own right, and it pairs perfectly with the Multisamples edition, released last week.

Our starting point for understanding human emotions was Plutchik's Wheel. This model serves as a visual representation of how emotions are related to one another. Psychologist Robert Plutchik created this model after studying emotions in both animals and humans. He identified eight primary emotions that are critical for survival: joy, sadness, trust, disgust, fear, anger, surprise, and anticipation. Each primary emotion has an opposite pair, such as joy and sadness, and various levels of intensity, such as rage and annoyance for anger or ecstasy and serenity for joy. Plutchik's Wheel also shows how these primary emotions can combine to create more complex feelings like optimism (ecstasy + vigilance) or disappointment (grief + amazement).

It feels a bit strange breaking down emotions into scientific diagrams and equations, but it is certainly useful to have a more objective reference. Emotions are obviously subjective, and even the precise definition of the words can differ from person to person. For example, amazement and awe might mean the same thing to some people, but the wheel places awe between amazement and terror, so it is a slightly more negative emotion. And even if this does not resonate with you, at least we have a reference to show what the performer was trying to convey with the 32 specific emotions.