Generating Music from the 2016 Debates
The debates were increasingly hard to watch, and I thought it'd be interesting to see if I could sonify the transcripts to 'hear' the emotional tone of the respective candidates during each one. Below are the results. All of these were created with one algorithm - no modification between them.
Clinton was consistently more positive and 'active' in her language, where Trump was more negative and used less 'active' words. Both candidates had high amounts of trust words and anticipation words, which makes sense as they were often discussing the future. Both candidates also used fear words. Clinton was the only one to have joy appear in her top emotions, while Trump was the only one to have high levels of anger.
The emotions of both candidates also changed as the debates went on. Both started off with 'trust' and 'anticipation' in their highest emotions. In the second debate, 'anger' crept to number two for Trump, and by the third debate, it was the number one emotion for Trump. Clinton held both 'trust' and 'anticipation' until the third debate, when 'fear' words increased to second place, with anticipation falling to third.
Overall, Trump's pieces also sound a little more dissonant, which is likely because they have competing positive/negative emotions, where Clinton generally has at least 3/4 positive or neutral emotions in her top 4.
This project used the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon and Activity Lexicon from the National Research Council of Canada (more information on the 'About' page).
A few things to listen for:
Clinton was consistently more positive and 'active' in her language, where Trump was more negative and used less 'active' words. Both candidates had high amounts of trust words and anticipation words, which makes sense as they were often discussing the future. Both candidates also used fear words. Clinton was the only one to have joy appear in her top emotions, while Trump was the only one to have high levels of anger.
The emotions of both candidates also changed as the debates went on. Both started off with 'trust' and 'anticipation' in their highest emotions. In the second debate, 'anger' crept to number two for Trump, and by the third debate, it was the number one emotion for Trump. Clinton held both 'trust' and 'anticipation' until the third debate, when 'fear' words increased to second place, with anticipation falling to third.
Overall, Trump's pieces also sound a little more dissonant, which is likely because they have competing positive/negative emotions, where Clinton generally has at least 3/4 positive or neutral emotions in her top 4.
This project used the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon and Activity Lexicon from the National Research Council of Canada (more information on the 'About' page).
A few things to listen for:
- the octave represents the difference between positivity and negativity (lower octave = more negativity)
- the tempo is related to how 'active' the candidates' words are
- the major/minor key is related to the positivity/negativity and the positive/negative emotions (joy, sadness, anger, etc.)
- note duration relates to the amount of emotion throughout the debate
Debate #1
Clinton
Highest Emotions (in order): trust, anticipation, fear, joy
Baseline Octave: 6
Tempo: 140
Key: C Major
Baseline Octave: 6
Tempo: 140
Key: C Major
Trump
Highest Emotions (in order): trust, anticipation, sadness, fear
Baseline Octave: 5
Tempo: 50
Key: C Minor
Baseline Octave: 5
Tempo: 50
Key: C Minor
Debate #2
Clinton
Highest Emotions (in order): trust, anticipation, joy, sadness
Baseline Octave: 6
Tempo: 110
Key: C Major
Baseline Octave: 6
Tempo: 110
Key: C Major
Trump
Highest Emotions (in order): trust, anger, fear, anticipation
Baseline Octave: 4
Tempo: 46
Key: C Minor
Baseline Octave: 4
Tempo: 46
Key: C Minor
Debate #3
Clinton
Highest Emotions (in order): trust, fear, anticipation, joy
Baseline Octave: 6
Tempo: 123
Key: C Major
Baseline Octave: 6
Tempo: 123
Key: C Major
Trump
Highest Emotions (in order): anger, trust, fear, anticipation
Baseline Octave: 4
Tempo: 45
Key: C Minor
Baseline Octave: 4
Tempo: 45
Key: C Minor
The audio clips were uploaded with the help of SoundCloud and embedded on this page. The graphs above are generated by SoundCloud as part of the embedding; they are not relevant to the emotions of the novel.