How Harmony Shapes Emotional Storytelling

Stephen Berkemeier
May 29
4 min read

It's not just about major and minor

TL;DR

Harmony is your strongest tool for shaping valence — the brightness or darkness of an emotion. But valence alone doesn't create emotional depth. If you want your harmony to tell a story, you need to think about size, movement, and gesture too.

Harmony and Valence — The Emotional Baseline

If you want to shape an emotion, harmony is the fastest way to do it. Especially when it comes to valence.

Valence is the emotional "color" or "temperature" of a moment — whether it feels pleasant or unpleasant, bright or dark, comforting or dissonant. Harmony is perfectly suited for expressing that.

A warm progression in a major key? Uplifting.
A slow shift between modal chords? Introspective
A cluster of minor 9ths? Painful, mysterious, or unresolved.

So if you know your emotion has a "dark" or "bright" quality to it, you can immediately start shaping that with chord choices, voicings, and tension.

But here's where many composers go wrong:

They stop at valence.

Emotions in music involve more than just brightness or darkness. Theiy also involve size, movement, and sometimes gesture (musical metaphors that reflect different elements of a specific emotion/scene).

If you're new to this idea, check out my post: How Do You Portray Emotions with Music? — it breaks down the full emotional grid.

Harmony as Movement, Size, and Gesture

When you start treating harmony as a narrative tool, you begin to see how it drives the emotional shape of a piece, not just its mood.

Here are three powerful ways harmony influences storytelling beyond valence:

Movement:

The more your harmony shifts — through modulation, chromatic motion, or even harmonic rhythm (the number of chords per measure) — the more emotional activity you create!

For example:

Long prolonged dominant chords = suspense, tension
Sudden modulation = emotional pivot
Repeated pedal tones = stuck, stagnant emotion
Modal mixtures = ambiguity and/or emotional layering.

Size:

Size isn't about just dynamics or instrumentation, it's about emotional weight.

Wide voicings and layered doublings feel epic
Sparse textures with slow harmonic rhythm feel intimate.
Densely packed cluster chords feel overwhelming
Simple triads in the high register can feel fragile and exposed.

How big does your emotion feel in the story? Is it overwhelming or intimate? Harmony helps you answer that — without needing a single word.

Gesture:

Harmony can also create metaphors — a musical gesture that suggests deeper story meaning.

Ascending chords = rising hope or effort
Collapsing voicings = defeat
Modal detours = memory, dreams, or loss of clarity
Unexpected resolutions = emotional conflict or irony.

These don't come from "rules" or clichés — they come from storytelling instincts, and creative thinking. Harmony gives you tools to work with, while your imagination comes up with ways to apply it! (Learn more about creating emotional gestures in my eBook "Portraying Emotions with Music")

Film Cues That Use Harmony to Shape Story

Let's look at three moments where composers don't just mirror the scene's mood — they shape how we interpret it through harmony.

Infinity War — "Not Even for You" (Alan Silvestri)

Scene: Thanos sacrifices Gamora

The moment is tragic, but the music isn't just sad — it's noble
The harmony blends minor-key sorrow with a sense of inevitability and grandeur.
The result: emotional devastation with a mythic weight to it. The audience feels the magnitude, not just the pain.

Spirited Away — "One Summer's Day" (Joe Hisaishi)

Scene: Sen prepares to confront Zeneeba while chaos unfolds in the bathhouse.

Instead of action music or tension-building cues, we hear a nostalgic, lyrical ballad.
The harmony focuses on beauty and vulnerability, not urgency.
The music reframes the scene: Sen isn't surviving — She's growing.
The harmony tells us this moment is about courage born from compassion.

Princess Mononoke — Vocal Theme

Scene: Ashitaka speaks to the wolf goddess, while Princess Mononoke sleeps

The scene is filled with conflict and skepticism. The characters argue.
But the harmony is a serene lullaby — calm, centered, full of hope.
It scores Ashitaka's belief in a better future, not the literal action.
That contrast creates emotional depth: the music reveals his internal truth and hope, not the surface tension.

In all three cases, harmony reframes the moment — guiding us toward the emotional meaning, not just the surface level mood.

How to Practice This in Your Own Music

Next time you write a cue or sketch a piece, don't start with a chord progression — start with the emotion.

Ask yourself:

What is the valence of this emotion? (bright/dark/neutral)
What is its size? (small, large, overwhelming?)
How active or still is it?
What kinds of musical metaphors or gestures come to mind?

Then use harmony to build that emotional landscape — not just to create a mood, but to tell a story.

Want Help Doing This Step-by-Step?

If you want to go way deeper into how harmony, melody, and orchestration help shape emotion and story, my textbook The Musical Storyteller is designed to teach exactly that!

Grab the full textbook here.

Or check out my free eBook: The Composer's Roadmap — a practical self-study path for musicians looking to teach themselves a new skill.

Final Thoughts

Harmony doesn't just decorate your melody, it directs the audience's emotional experience.

So ask yourself:

What story do you want your chords to tell?

The answer is almost never just "major or minor"