Well, you can say that fast, loud and danceable tunes give you a lift. It's common sense, right? A dance tune makes one want to dance and the thought itself is associated with fun and celebration. Science, however, tries to explain it a bit further.

In a study reported in ScienceDaily, Daniel Bowling, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, compiled around 7500 western classical melodies and Finnish folk tunes. What his team did was measure the distribution of tones in both major and minor keys. What his team found out: the minor thirds (melody note pitched three semitones higher that the tune's keynote) represent 15 percent of the tones in minor pieces, while they are found to be less than 1 percent of tones in major pieces.

These musical intervals, when compared to spoken vowels, show that music in major keys closely match excited speech, e.g., "animated accounts of winning lottery," while music in minor keys match those of sad speech, e.g. failed marriage, etc.

Besides the happy lyrics of "Singin' in the Rain" or the dark and depressing "Gloomy Sunday" by Diamada Galas (or any other song that would make you want to slit your wrists), it's actually the patterns of pitches in major or minor keys that shape the emotion we get from certain musical expressions.

How about a song that takes you "Walking on Sunshine?"  Or better still, how about going "Singin' in the Rain"? Go ahead, make your day!