Elements of tension and release

Motifs and build-ups in music. Set-ups and punchlines in jokes. Dramatic peaks in stories. There are two common elements in all these techniques that work to stir our emotions. Those elements are tension and release.

To understand tension and release, I think that one important aspect of human psychology to keep in mind is our constant attempts to predict the future.

Our brains are constantly making predictions out of the input of what we perceive, so that is serves as a support for our decision-making process. The reason for this mechanism can be boiled down to the fact that we’ll make a better decision on our future actions if we know what is going to happen next. Thus, we are able to anticipate and make less mistakes.

The way the brain works with predictions is that it looks at a sequence of events and as it is unfolding it uses past experiences to fill the gaps of what’s coming next. It’s also possible that instead of using past experiences as a precise reflection of what is going to follow from this sequence, the brain can make use of its reasoning capabilities to blend different past experiences and recurrent patterns it detects. These patterns can be somehow related to what it is currently perceiving and it can infer a supposition of what is going to follow. Basically, when the brain perceives a sequence of humid air, dense clouds and thunder, it will assume that rain is going to follow based on previous experience or an understanding of how rain happens.

Now, tension and release work with our feelings. We could say that feelings are a way our bodies have to send us messages about whether something needs to be avoided or allowed, prevented or sought after. Then we could say that tension and release are a message from our bodies telling us that something different might be happening, and that our expectations might not be correct this time. It could be that what we were expecting to happen did not quite happen the same way, or that it happened later than expected. It could also be that what we expected never happens and something entirely different does instead, or that it happens sooner than expected.

With music, there is the well known tension and release of a dominant and a tonic. If we tried to describe it in non-theoretical terms, it is a moment in a piece of music where tension is being created and it creates a feeling of some resolution being needed. Resolution is a kind of relief in the music, when a phrase, a section or a song finishes and we feel that it would be okay to stop for a while in that place and not sense that something is missing. And this is only on the tonal side. Tension can also be created with changes in the instrument arrangement, or in voice texture, rhythm, etc.

One of the most elusive elements of tension in music is that of the motif. The composer introduces a musical phrase and repeats it so the listener’s brain understands that this is the piece’s identity. Then it creates expectations by establishing that something specific will follow after it. As the brain gets used to it, it begins to try to fill in the gaps so that every time it hears that motif it will expect what usually follows to follow. If the composer successfully creates this expectation, then she can attempt to create points of tension and release.

The simplest form of tension would be to let the motif elongate for a moment, so that the brain realises that what it assumed was going to follow after the motif didn’t but it still pays close attention. For it all is not lost because even though the motif is followed by something different this time, it is a kind of elongation that keeps going with the same texture. So, as the tension builds up, with the motif dragging on for a bit longer, the brain pays closer and closer attention, still trying to catch the next moment where what was predicted is going to happen. Once it happens, a feeling of satisfaction flushes over us. The long-awaited resolution of the motif that we had missed is back.
That is the magic of tension and resolution. We can make use of already existing motifs or create our own as we develop our ‘story’. In humour we can use already existing motifs such as common sense and then subvert expectations, making something expected happen to a situation everyone relates to and then adding an unexpected twist right after this resolution. Here there is a satisfaction that is snatched away instantly to be replaced with a sense of delight as something more outrageous, ridiculous, counterintuitive or that exposes the non-sense in some common-sense. It is an emotional trip in a way, going from one place to another, or to new better destinations while taking many unexpected roads in the journey.

Tension and resolution is such a basic thing, related to a basic mechanism of our perception. We can find it anywhere we look slightly to the future and think about what is going to happen next and whether we can predict it. One of the simplest examples are questions. We ask a question to someone not knowing what the answer will be. Nonetheless, we keep in mind an answer that we would like to receive, an answer that we expect we will likely receive, or an answer that is a complete mystery to us. In every one of these cases, we are making a preliminary bet to ourselves on what is going to happen and then seeing how our emotions and our attention are guided by that bet.

So to create tension in whatever we are creating, I think that it is useful to ask ourselves what is the other person going to expect from this, what the resolution would look like. Then, once we have an idea of this, we think about whether we will give it to them, make them wait for a moment, give it to them sooner than expected and then show them something new, or never give it to them and make a completely unexpected turn. The list goes on.

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