Ah, not so fast on that last one. Research says that the chills you get from a powerful piece of music can be traced back to the build of your mental hardware. For instance ...

No matter how science tries to take the magic out of life, there are certain things that you just can't qualify with data: young love, the joy of holding a puppy, the beauty of a classic song ...

5 Your Brain Is Wired to Recognize "Sad" and "Happy" Notes

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You don't need lyrics to know what "sad" music sounds like -- imagine what plays under a funeral scene in a movie. Likewise, you know what triumphant music sounds like, even if the song doesn't feature Joe Esposito explicitly telling you that you're the best around.

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But what if you found some natives in the jungle who'd never heard music before? Would they know the difference between the soundtracks of a happy movie scene and a sad one? Yep.

In the same way that we're all programmed to know that babies are cute and spiders are terrible, our brains are also programmed to recognize "sad" and "happy" when it comes to music. The two main chord and scale types are referred to as major and minor. Major chords tend to sound positive and upbeat, while minor chords are spooky and sad. This video shows a pianist playing Beethoven's "Fur Elise," once in A minor (as intended), once in A major. Even though there are only three different notes between the keys, the effect is remarkable. Take a listen.

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And here's where it gets weird. Researchers visited a culturally isolated native tribe in Cameroon to see if they had the same perceptions of "happy" and "scary" music as we do. Even though their music was nothing like ours and their civilization had not yet progressed to the Nickelback phase, they identified the emotional core of songs the same way we would. When exposed to piano selections in the major keys, they were more likely to point to pictures of smiling faces; when presented with songs in the minor keys, they were more likely to point to sad or fearful faces.