Musical mood wheel

Music has the power to alter our mood, and anyone can harness it by following these five steps:

(a) Access a variety of different types of music.
(b) Identify and catalogue songs in terms of how they emotionally affect you (which ones make you happy, sad, calm, angry, restless, playful, energetic, etc.).
(c) Find and then play a piece of music that matches your current emotional state.
(d) Play a different song that’s close emotionally to the first song but is starting to take you away from where you were mood-wise and more towards where you want to be.
(e) Repeat the action of (d) with multiple songs until you eventually get to whichever mood you want to experience.

There will be plenty of trial and error to this exercise. However, once you start to attribute different songs to the length and breadth of your emotional landscape then the task will become a whole lot easier – intuitive, even.

This is a great opportunity for you to explore all types of music from around the world to find the sounds that can really move you in all directions.

For more on this subject, check out Kate Hevner’s Mood Wheel, as well as the term ‘iso-moodic principle’.