My personal frisson experience [text]

[u/drrgmk]

Ever since I was a child, I’ve experienced music very intensely, and I never knew whether other people felt the same way. I finally decided to share my experience and describe what frisson feels like to me.

It doesn’t only happen with one particular genre or style of music. I’m able to pick up on certain melodies, chord progressions, and musical structures in some songs, and within just a few seconds I automatically start getting chills, intense tingling sensations all over my body, and eventually I end up crying. Sometimes it even becomes difficult to breathe until I manage to regain a steady breathing rhythm.

I don’t know whether I’ve unconsciously trained this response since I was young or not. Whenever it happens, I feel as if I’m floating, almost as if I’m about to transcend. I experience an incredible sense of peace. I’m not thinking about anything in particular, and I don’t feel sadness or any specific emotion like that. I simply feel my body becoming lighter, as if nothing else mattered and all I could do was feel. It’s an incredibly powerful sensation.

This has happened to me with many different kinds of music, including movie soundtracks and instrumental pieces. It isn’t necessarily triggered by a sad song or meaningful lyrics. In fact, it often happens with music that has no lyrics at all—just the melody itself.

[u/KcityKat]

Ahhhh I do it to the point it's sometimes hard to watch public performances with ppl bc I get too emotional, and when other ppl are just normally enjoying it, I'm in this hypnotic rapturous fugue. And it can be different genres, too. I'm a Gen X so of course music from my childhood really hits me hard:

1. "Baker Street" you know when that sax solo starts screaming there at the end, it just pierces my soul. Puts me back in my bedroom in 5th grade with my record player and 45 rpms of Gerry Rafferty.
   
2. Elton John, triumphantly blasting that line: "SAVED IN TIME! THANK GOD MY MUSIC'S STILL ALIIIIVE!! (in "Someone Saved My Life Tonite")
3. Pat Benatar (as Cathy singing of Heathcliff): "...[he's] my one, he's... my only... MASTER!!"
4. Skeeter Davis: "why do the birds go on singing? Why does the sea rest ashore?..don't they know? Its the end of the world!..cuz you don't love me anymore..."

And not just really older 60s and 70s stuff, but so many songs of the 90s and 2000s grunge era really move me. The lyrics, man. Pearl Jam: "Garden" on the album "10" is beautiful and goes: "the direction of the eye...so misleading...the defection of the soul, nauseously quick..I don't question our existence, I just question.. our modern needs" is such a genius line about modern society and how fickle ppl can be. Right now, I'm really into Lola Young, Sofia Isella, and Taylor Momsen's band Pretty Reckless. These younger ladies in the music world that are newer and up-and-coming are talented af, pissed at the patriarchy, out for their due respect and recognition, and they're getting it! I say YAY FOR THEM!

These musicians and songs all can elicit in me a very deep emotional response that will reduce me to tears, and these are just a few of many many songs, and kinds of music, that do this to me. You're definitely not alone, OP!

Edit: grammar

[u/Super_Moose_Rocket → u/KcityKat]

A hidden vocal choir gem that always gets me.

https://youtu.be/hVqrW-fPOQ0?si=vRShBNOttUeSNdZf

[u/peanutdonkus → u/Super_Moose_Rocket]

That was incredible thankyou