Why are we so responsive to MUSIC?

Discussion in 'Human Science' started by aaqucnaona, Jun 9, 2012.

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  1. aaqucnaona

    aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Techno and trance music genres have recently caught my attention and I must say, if I were a [poly]theist, Armin Van Buuren would surely be in my Pantheon. But it does raise an intersting question - why would an atheist like me say that? [Troll says - Because you are 17!] Well no, actually. Listening to his "wall of sound" with the lights dimmed and the cool air blowing through my window which looks upon the nearby vegetation then being washed by a gentle drizzle, I came as close to a 'religious experience' as I will probably ever get.

    Why did this happen though? What did to music do to my neurology and biochemistry? How did it happen? And why would such a mechanism evolve? How prevalent is it among other species? And is it more pervasive in intelligent species like apes and dolphins than say, cats or ferrets?

    The only reason I can think of for its existence in humans is that I may have been of some use in social bonding through ritual music in our early tribes. I wonder where this is have enough effect on the advancement of social bonding such that it would actually have an effect on their success and survivability and therefore their reproductive rate. This is just my speculation, so if you have such speculations of you own or know of some studies done in the biochemistry and psychology of our response to musical stimuli and/or the development of those pathways in our evolutionary history, do let me know.

    In summary -
    1. What psychological/biological processes work to create such emotional responses to music and how does it work?
    2. What is the evolutionary history of this process and its effectors?

    The song in question - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxrZnmLg0TU
    The artist - http://www.youtube.com/artist/Armin?feature=watch_video_title
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armin_van_Buuren
     
    aaqucnaona, Jun 9, 2012
    #1

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  3. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The oldest musical instruments I know of are a flute made from a mammoth tusk about 42KYA, and another flute made from the wingbone of a vulture around 35KYA. The set of five holes in both of these were made with geometric precision that would be considered excellent craftsmanship today. In other words, people already understood the harmonics of the pentatonic scale.

    That said, obviously the Pythagorean model of music, in which two notes are said to have a "pleasant" or "harmonic" relationship if their frequencies are in the ratio of small integers, must provide insight into the way those vibrations affect us. If you look at a major third (C:E, 4:5), a minor third (E:G, 5:6), a fourth (C:F, 3:4), etc., on an oscilloscope, the waveforms are visually attractive. It's not much of a leap of logic to suspect that they also feel "attractive" when they cause our eardrums to vibrate in the same slightly complex patterns.

    This is the essence of both melody and harmony, two of the fundamental dimensions of music. (Rhythm is the third.)

    Despite being an aviculturist I'm not much of an expert on birdsong. However, my modest knowledge of physics suggests that without the unique, complex human voicebox that allows us to produce speech (and caused a reconfiguration of our throat that makes our species uniquely incapable of breathing and swallowing at the same time and therefore uniquely capable of choking on our food), makes me suspect that birds probably can't produce the same intricate range of tones that we can: not just a chromatic scale but slight flats and sharps that give our songs character.

    So without dragging an oscilloscope and a microphone outside I'm going to guess that the notes in birdsongs are in the ratio of small integers: notes that can be produced by natural harmonics. I'll wager then that the earliest humans, and perhaps our large-brained pre-human ancestors, may have had the ability to appreciate the sound of bird "music."

    Harmony is harmony wherever we find it, in relationships or in sounds. It makes us feel good.

    Frank Zappa said, "Music is the only true religion. It promises to make us happy, and it does."

    Of course we have stretched the definition of "harmony" beyond anything Pythagoras could have envisioned. The scientific or "chromatic" scale shifts the pitch of the notes just slightly so that the ratio of two notes a half-tone apart is now the twelfth root of two, an irrational number, rather than 15:16. The "blue notes" that revolutionized 20th century popular music are even closer together than a chromatic half-tone, and their frequency ratios are not only still irrational but not even consistent from one line in the song to the next.

    Yet somehow we still find music to be musical. By playing blues, then jazz, and finally rock'n'roll music while displaying happy expressions and behavior, when our babies are in their cribs and most of their brain cells have yet to develop, we seem to do a good job of teaching them that those sounds are what humans find pleasant, even if Pythagoras would have run screaming from the nursery. Babies do their best to imitate their parents in both behavior and attitude, so another generation of rock'n'rollers is born.

    Experiments with music and other species of animals suggest that they may also have reactions like ours, indicating perhaps that the geometric aspect I alluded to transcends species boundaries.

    But as we get into the deeper nuances of music, I don't think we've made much progress toward figuring them out. Why do minor chords and modalities sound sad and major chords and modalities sound happy? Particularly since that's just a "Western" paradigm and people in other cultures don't react the same way?

    When ragtime was invented, with its extensive and intricate syncopation, why did a large segment of the American population recoil in horror while others (both Euro- and Afro-) embraced it? Why is syncopation now unconsciously regarded as "standard," so even commercials and hymns have to have a rock beat, or nobody will buy the products or the religions?

    There's a bird in my backyard right now, singing his heart out. The same two notes over and over again. They're in the ratio of a major third, 4:5.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jun 9, 2012
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  5. Buddha12

    Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    When the first instrument was invented, the drum, it was used to communicate with other tribespeople who went out on hunts to have a way to get back home when they were through with their hunting for the day. Then as tribes moved ever outward they formed a way to communicate with their home boys with certain ways they played the drum. Then they found that beating the drum was rhythmical and started to celebrate swaying to its sounds. IMO

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...rMXPAw&usg=AFQjCNGUISAvGuf5s9ds0Yk-UWuF2X-xqw
     
    Buddha12, Jun 9, 2012
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  7. aaqucnaona

    aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks for that explaination fraggle. And so slowly, the answered get filled in. You gave me the musical answer. Biology, history, evolution anyone?

    Ps. Btw, I really dont know ANYTHING about music, can you suggest a book or something? I dont even know what a note refers to or what those ratios mean!
     
    aaqucnaona, Jun 9, 2012
    #4
  8. Cavalier

    Cavalier Knight of the Opinion Registered Senior Member

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    No one knows, though the issue has been investigated both from the standpoint of comparing music to animal communication generally, and comparing music to language. Both comparisons seem to yield tantalizing connections that could help explain the attachment some people have to music.

    See, e.g., http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~wtsf/downloads/Fitch2006BiomusicCognition.pdf
     
    Cavalier, Jun 9, 2012
    #5
  9. Tero

    Tero Registered Member

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    Have to disagree on the birds. Words and letters is different. They produce any note and tone in their range.
     
    Tero, Jun 9, 2012
    #6
  10. Aqueous Id

    Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Wow there's so many. You've asked a very broad question with lots of implications from music theory, acoustics, biology, psychology, aesthetics and even evolution.

    There's a very old and very extensive book that dealt with the question of why music sounds good to us. I read this book as a kid, barely understanding it, but wondering if it might be possible to understand why music is so appealing. The book remained a subject of great curiosity for me over a period of many years. I kept checking it out over and over, and some small fraction of the material began to take root even though I was not properly equipped to understand it. It presupposes a command of ideas that kids do not typically have, and which I certainly didn't have. It probably comes across as one of the driest most tedious treatments of the subject, but you can judge for yourself.

    With that as an introduction, I recommend On the sensations of tone as a physiological basis for the theory of music by Hermann von Helmholtz, old enough and dry enough to be a free ebook!
     
    Aqueous Id, Jun 9, 2012
    #7
  11. Tero

    Tero Registered Member

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    Just on the making of music, themes, structure, Copland the composer has a good book, a paperback.
     
    Tero, Jun 9, 2012
    #8
  12. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    The universe abounds with rhythm. The four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism and the two nuclear forces) guarantee that oscillation will be a common phenomenon, and when you have oscillation you have rhythm. But rhythm is only one component of music. Until the 20th century, with the avant-garde composers and later the advent of rap, it was assumed without comment that music must have tonality in addition to rhythm.

    I'll grant drumming by itself (sometimes augmented by tuneless chanting or rapping) to be a precursor to music, but I won't call it music until it's joined to melody and harmony.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jun 10, 2012
    #9
  13. arfa brane

    arfa brane call me arf Valued Senior Member

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    My take on why humans find music enjoyable is that music reflects something in our brains.
    Music is mathematical (in fact you can construct what's called a symmetry group from the 12-note diatonic scale, with several actions on subsets of 12 elements (say three note triads, but any chord is permutable), such as transposition, inversion, and reflection, i.e. permutations of the set).

    This mathematical 'structure' was invented, not synthesised from group theory. The reason is that the structure corresponds to the way our brains function--we transform musical sounds mathematically, so musical symmetry is 'pleasant' or 'inspiring' or affects our emotions directly because we find symmetry is attractive. Discordant sounds are not 'enjoyable' for instance, in fact they cause stress and anxiety. We 'enjoy' rhythm by itself for the same reasons, but music is more interesting to us because it has more structure/symmetry.

    I mean who thinks Ice T (or Justin B) is more interesting than Beethoven or Bach? What kind of a philistine would think that?
     
    arfa brane, Jun 10, 2012
    #10
  14. too-open-minded

    too-open-minded Registered Member

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    Well, we all do respond differently to a harmony of synchronized sounds than we would to a bunch of random crappy noises. We would all rather choose to be in a room playing music than a room making a random assortment of noise. I think it's reflecting our subconscious fondness of symmetry and patterns. Sound moves kind of like a wave, so when that wave is symmetrical and has a pattern we recognize it.
     
    too-open-minded, Jun 10, 2012
    #11
  15. Stryder

    Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    All this and no mention of "Mantras" (Where's Kmguru, I'm sure this is his Forte?)

    In any event the reason I mention it is purely due to an explanation of how repetitive patterning initially found its way at least from a religious angle into music.

    For the most part it might have been reflected as an utterance of unity or something repeated for an attempted aspiration of divinity by a disciple (peep through the veil).

    Since I'm not that well versed in Hinduism I think I'll leave that to someone else to go further into.
     
    Stryder, Jun 10, 2012
    #12
  16. Carcano

    Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Why do humans find reverb and vibrato so appealing?

    Imagine what your favourite music would sound like without those two qualities.
     
    Carcano, Jun 10, 2012
    #13
  17. scheherazade

    scheherazade Northern Horse Whisperer Valued Senior Member

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    I have always pondered that we are responsive to sound by reason of our biology being largely comprised of water. We are composed of a medium that sound travels through, some vibrations energize us, some are relaxing and others can be absolutely irritating or disquieting.

    Most people find the sounds of nature to be calming although when nature is unsettled as in extreme weather, these sounds can be disturbing and even terrifying. Gentle rains can be soothing and strong winds make most people and animals rather nervous. I find that I do not sleep well when the winds are high.

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    scheherazade, Jun 10, 2012
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  18. Buddha12

    Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    I just use ear plugs, that way nothing can disturb me when I want to sleep.

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    Buddha12, Jun 10, 2012
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  19. Trooper

    Trooper Secular Sanity Valued Senior Member

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    I recently watched this video, and was just discussing this yesterday with a friend at a graduation party, whose daughter is really into music therapy, and of course, the Nova documentary, "Musical Minds" is based on neurologist Oliver Sacks's book "Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain"

    Yes, and of course, Marcus du Sautoy talks at great lengths about this in his book “The music of primes.” With music being mathematical in nature, it often depicts intricate patterns. He feels that the reason math is so fascinating is not only because of the applicability, but also because of our human desire to search for patterns and structure, in order to make sense of out the chaos.

    Surprisingly though, the most important part is when the pattern breaks down. If a tune is too predictable, we have a tendency to get bored. Beethoven was a master at teasing us with his variations of the same pattern, but never providing the one chord that our brain was searching for until the very end. This anticipation aspect of music was much more interesting than the usual links between emotions and tonality (prosody), which seem too obvious.

    Leonard Meyer thought that our expectation of upcoming tones was the most important part of our experience. In regards to music therapy, they are beginning to understand how anticipation plays a powerful role in human memory, as well. In this new study, they show how this anticipatory phase enhances our response to music with more dopamine release. Here's a pdf supplement.

    You know, in another thread, Fraggle talked about the enhanced sensual, creativity, and intellectual experiences with marijuana usage. It’s known to alter our sensory and time perception, but I wonder if our sensory perception is enhanced because our timing is off, which would make everything less predictable. After all, passion usually fades away and is replaced by predictability, right? :shrug:
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2012
    Trooper, Jun 11, 2012
    #16
  20. iceaura

    iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    A Burundi drum chorus is making music, by any reasonable definition of the term.

    One can make music from rhythms alone (the Central African drum), pitches alone (the Celtic air), and tonalities/timbres alone (the Tuvan throat song).

    I suspect the question is backwards - my guess is that music is the physical fact or basis, embodies the fundamental properties of human mental activity, and we are responsive to other things according to their resemblance to music.

    That is, we don't respond to music: we are, in our responses to stuff in general, musical. It is the response.

    My favorite music - northern British Isles Gaelic folk dance and song, and its heirs in North America - is damaged by the inclusion of vibrato and reverb. Piebrochs vandalized by reverb and vibrato, for example, would be unlistenable.
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2012
    iceaura, Jun 11, 2012
    #17
  21. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Did you really mean reverb, or did you mean to say tremolo? Reverb is pretty much a phenomenon of the rock'n'roll era, an effect made possible by electronic amplifiers. Of course music pioneer Lee Hazlewood did a pretty decent job of creating all-acoustic reverb on Dwayne Eddy's first hit "Rebel Rouser," by recording it inside a grain elevator. But that made it rather difficult to duplicate in a live performance.

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    Tremolo is an oscillation of the volume of a note. It is most commonly produced by a breathing technique (speeding up and slowing down the lung or diaphragm muscles) so you generally hear it in singing or in the sounds of wind instruments. I can't find any figures but I'd estimate that an opera star or a pop diva like Céline Dion can oscillate between slightly louder and slightly softer at a maximum frequency of 15-20hz. The rest of us are lucky to get 5hz on a good night, and most people with no formal music training can't produce it at all because it's not the way breathing muscles are normally used in real life.

    Vibrato is an oscillation of the note's pitch. Although some vocalists can create vibrato in their voice, it's more commonly heard in plucked or bowed string instruments. On a fretless instrument like a violin you can oscillate the pitch by rolling your finger back and forth, thereby lengthening and shortening the part of the string that's vibrating. On a fretted instrument like a guitar you can do it by "bending" the string (pulling it out of a straight line), which increases the tension. Length and tension both affect pitch.

    (Note: the so-called "tremolo arm" on an electric guitar actually produces vibrato, by stretching the strings. Some idiot misnamed it and it stuck! These days it's not difficult to configure an effects pedal to produce tremolo, but I've never seen a guitarist do it.)

    So the short answer to the question, why do we find tremolo and vibrato so appealing, is simply that it makes the notes a little more complicated, and therefore a little more interesting. This adds variety to the music.
    A lot of the music of the Baby Boomer era (the first-born became old enough to be a market force in the mid-1950s) actually had no tremolo or vibrato.
    • Unlike the formally trained singers of the swing era, the early rock'n'roll singers had little or no training, and they simply could not produce a tremolo in their voice.
    • As for vibrato, the fast guitar licks of the early rockabilly and rock'n'roll records did not hold any notes long enough to apply the technique.
    It wasn't until the 1960s that rock'n'roll became "serious" music and some of the artists rediscovered the techniques of their predecessors--as well as inventing new ones of their own, made possible by new technologies such as synthesizers. Vibrato is now an established technique for rock guitarists.

    Tremolo, on the other hand, is still a rare vocal technique in postwar pop music. There are certainly the Pat Benatars and Mariah Careys who use it (Benatar is a trained operatic singer and Carey is in a class by herself), but they're rare. Even genuine divas like Adele don't use tremolo, if I'm not mistaken.

    So now we have auto-tune. Rather than making notes more interesting, it dumbs them down!
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jun 11, 2012
    #18
  22. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Sorry, I've been pondering your question and have come to the conclusion that I can't suggest anything that you could read. Music is aural and in order to discuss it meaningfully you have to have actual sounds to describe and compare.

    Or as someone once said (and I'm sure I've got this all mixed up), "Writing about music is like dancing about food."

    If you can find a CD, video, etc., that explains music to beginners using actual sounds, that would probably work. (Or to children; never underestimate the effectiveness of teaching tools for kids!)
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jun 11, 2012
    #19
  23. aaqucnaona

    aaqucnaona This sentence is a lie Valued Senior Member

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    Excellent post!

    The biological answers are filling up too. However, the evolutionary history of the pathways responsible for this are still woefully incomplete and that aspect is the one that got me curious about this in the first place. Why would a responsiveness to organised sound evolve?
     
    aaqucnaona, Jun 11, 2012
    #20
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