While driving to school each morning, junior Jordan Wolken listens to rap music to pump himself up for the school day.

Cora Palfy, a music theoretical researcher at Northwestern University, said music that is played in a major key tends to make listeners feel happier.

“I listen to three kinds [of music]: country music, rap music and Justin Timberlake,” Wolken said.

According to Palfy, music such as country, rap and pop are typically played in a major key.

“There are certain features of music such as the [key], how fast the tempo is, how smooth or jumpy the melodic line is and what instruments are being used that evoke different moods,” Palfy said.

According to Palfy, a reason for a change in emotion while listening to tunes is partially due to our bodies’ reactions to the music.

“Music can push us and pull us and give us chills and create surprises that we tend to respond to as if we might be responding to a person or some sort of emotional event,” said Palfy.

She said music also carries us through a timespan, as we continue to listen, we feel different emotions.

“As we’re listening, time is passing and so it’s sort of creating and shaping an experience that’s changing over time and shifts us through moods as we’re listening, as we’re having that temporal experience with music,” Palfy said.

Palfy said that while observing a piece of visual art such as a painting or a photograph, that piece of art does not change. We may notice different things, but the art itself does not carry us through time the way that music does.

Wolken said music also contrasts with other arts because it does not take as much focus.

“If I’m sitting down to watch a movie, I actually have to stay focused on that movie, but if I’m listening to music then I don’t necessarily have to sit down and only listen to music,” said Wolken. “I sit down and I put music on in the background while I also do something else.”

Palfy said using music as background noise can also create an attachment between a moment and a song.

“Especially when we have earbuds in and we’re experiencing the world around us with this constant soundtrack, I think that it attaches to moments that are important to us and so we get these moments of nostalgia,” Palfy said.