It’s just rhythms and pitches really, in a sequence. But we don’t love patterns, a scale sounds boring. It’s the breaking of the patterns that sound good in music, but only in specific ways. Other ways sound discordant. What the duck is going on?
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PhD in neuroscience here. I didn’t specifically study musicology, but i did study the neuroscience of music.
The theory that holds the most water, in my opinion, is that music activates all the same parts of the brain as motor processing. It makes us want to move, and to make predictions about what’s coming next. People like makimg predictions. It’s also a pro-social activity that encourages bonding and communication. These are typically positive experiences.
Edit: you mentioned we like the breaking of patterns in music. Very true, we love syncopation. But we don’t tap our foot to the rhythm, we groove to the beat.
Humans are electrified meat computers. Music is math and chaos brought into order. It’s no wonder we love music like we do.
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But we don’t love patterns
I would disagree with that somewhat - I think we do love patterns, but the more complex and intricate the better.
Which is why music appeals so much - it’s chock full of patterns overlaying each other, echoing and counterpointing each other, contrasting each other in ways that are both conflicting and harmonious. Good music is like seeing the rhythms of the world all around you.
I’m also interested in why there is such varying tastes in music. Why do I love metal but hate pop? shrugs
Probably based on where you were born and raised:
And why do I love both metal and bluegrass, and find them similar?
Oh my friend!
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iron+horse+bluegrass+metallica
I just put Metallica to give you a taste, MUCH more!
Same! I really hope I get to be the first one to show you this 🤘
Love it! 🤘🤘
And here I am, I don’t really like pop and I don’t really like metal but put them together and I’m in heaven.
How did I know it was going to be Babymetal? 😛
“Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hail souls from mens’ bodies?” – Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
(Guitar/lute strings used to be made from sheep gut, for anyone confused)
Because at it’s core, music is a beautiful lack of auditory dissonance. See this minutephysics episode for an in depth explanation why. It’s fundamental. (to music itself, not to any particular style of music) https://youtu.be/tCsl6ZcY9ag
i can only think of one style of music that doesn’t heavily rely on dissonance.
I don’t know anything about specifics, or actual explanations, but I once heard it said that Art decorates space and music decorates time.
My pet theory is that our brain rewards us for interpreting clues correctly, because this is crucial for survival. And patterns make it easy to do this interpretation correctly, therefore triggering the reward system frequently.
But if it is too easy to interpret a pattern correctly, the reward will be lessened, because the challenge you succeeded in was lesser. And it was also crucial to survival to fade out patterns which don’t change, so that e.g. the wind brushing through leaves doesn’t drown out the noises from a predator approaching.
That’s why patterns which don’t change every so often stop triggering the reward system and therefore bore us.
Don’t animals also “understand” music to some extent and seem to enjoy it?
The answer is we don’t know unfortunately. I dont think scientists have found a definitive answer on this one. The theory tho is that it had some evolutionary benefit in the past, but we dont know why that would be either.
I don’t. And I don’t understand why I’m the only one who just in general would rather hear silence then music.
I too like silence, then music, when the album I’m listening to intended to have a break between songs.
However, if the songs’ tracks are meant to fade from one to the next without a break, it’s annoying and distracting if I can hear a silence between them, however small – even just a click – then music.
Why do we like reading? It’s just arbitrary characters, really, in a sequence.
This discounts so many quantitative and absolute qualities of music.
Birds love music too now you mention it.
It’s mainly to get laid. Now that I think of it, that’s kind of the case with human music as well.
To drown out the sound of your brain counting the moments until your next shift at work.
13 hours 50 minutes…
I think all experience of art, enjoyable for us or not, is something the brain adheres to because it is unlike nature. Nature tries to all blend together in a very loose way. We categorize many things like animals, land, the stars… but it all is really just one thing. Art is the ability to purposefully change that continuity with intent. To see something sitting there, doing nothing, and you feel the desire to arrange it in some way.
Music is no different. We realized sound was one of our senses and most of nature’s songs are chaotic, outside the rare particularly talented bird.
We’ve found ways to harness sound into whatever we found is most pleasing. And it seems what it pleasing is different from one person to the next, but also shares ground through the instruments we use.
I imagine when we first started rhythmically hitting sticks on rocks, it wasn’t long before we had an arrangement of our favorite sticks and rocks to hit together. And we just kept getting more creative from there.
