Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to music and who always believed in music to be a universal language, I find this astonishing.
I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener.
He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?"
I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamentally different from mine.
This is me. I can't understand why people want to listen to music in their cars when quiet is so much more pleasurable. Though, I also can't understand why people want to listen to music at all. It has no emotional response for me. I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one since it seems like everyone else likes music for some reason.
I feel sorry that you don't gain the joy and pleasure that I get from music, but on the other hand I'm guessing you also don't suffer from the utter distaste and even hatred of boring, repetitious pop music that you get exposed to when out in public.
I'd argue enjoying the absence of music doesn't qualify as musical anhedonia. "Enjoyment" is a valent measure so "negative enjoyment" is still enjoyment, but negatively impacted. If the absence of music is pleasurable, then you are perceiving and responding to the sound. Otherwise you could argue there exists "silence anhedonia", "cake anhedonia", or that everyone has passive "breathing anhedonia".
I'd need to read through the article, but the Wikipedia link sounds they are conflating "enjoying" and "responding to". Instead, I'm assuming musical anhedonia is referring more to "apathy of sound".
I disagree. For an example I would say that roadworks or traffic or other people’s conversations do not really elicit an emotional response however many people would likely prefer quiet.
I think it is unreasonable to assume that if someone were to say “well I prefer quiet, I guess,” they mean that they have some great emotional response to being in the quiet making them love it. It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise.
> It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise.
We are actually agreeing; however I'm saying that this is a preference. Wikipedia refers to anhedonia as an inability to have pleasure about something. However, valence [1] as a measurement identifies affect dimensions as a polar system - (to quote Wikipedia) "Stress is negative valence and opposite of this is pleasure or happiness." My claim is that "pleasure" can be positive or negative - in that music would cause happiness or stress. Adding genre only furthers my statement that you could claim someone is "R&B anhedonia", "death metal anhedonia", or "classical anhedonia" if anhedonia only refers to positive affects. I, however, am saying anhedonia should be for the positive and negative degrees of an affect.
"No sound" is still sound - its the difference between null and zero. My original post says I'd say anhedonia is more linked to "null", while preferring no sound is more linked to "zero". Holding a positive or negative preference is a measurable attribute and therefore not what I would claim anhedonia; however, being purely apathetic (void) of preference would.
Musical apathy? This really only applies to music. I derive great pleasure from other artistic works, just not anything auditory. On a perhaps related note, I can recall almost 100% of what I read, but I can recall only about 10% of what I hear, no matter how closely I am paying attention. Someone can tell me something, but it won't make sense. But if I read the exact same words I will have complete comprehension and recall.
I enjoy music but I realizes that the ROI of listening to music is on uplifting my mood. I rather listen to a podcast or NPR now cause I get something to ponder on or form an opinion about on my commute. I rather listen to music socially with people in the car though.
From the field of neuroscience, we know that music affects the brain like a drug of sorts. I believe Steven Pinker said in a book of his that music releases a "cocktail of neurotransmitters."
That's understandable, but he specifically asked what kind of music his coworker likes. If you asked someone what their favorite movie is and they brought up a completely different activity they enjoy to pass the time, like programming, you'd find their response more than odd, no?
My reply to what music do I like is usually... "it depends on my mood". I like many genres so I start listing some of them or ask the other person what they like and steer the conversation in music we have in common.
If you asked someone what their favorite kind of pizza is and they responded with "chocolate milkshake", you wouldn't be at a loss for words? They're both categories of food.
I think you're missing the point. To me music isn't qualitatively different to any other sound sequence, or lack of sound. "Silence" is something you can listen to, just as much as "running water", "conversational din", or "Beethoven's 5th". Yet because it is structured in the form of certain integer ratio harmonics, 95% of the population treats it as something categorically different. Objectively, that is what's weird here.
If you abstract enough, everything is just the movements of particles; and yet, you can distinguish and categorize certain kinds of such movements, and music is no exception. It's no weirder than any of the categorizations you no doubt assume every day.
If for you, there's no value in that categorization, that's fine, of course.
Correct! Speech, for example, is a category of sound that we've ascribed meaning to by learned convention. It's a purposeful categorical construction. The sounds of the jungle is another -- it's probably good to know it's a tiger when you hear a tiger :)
I say music is "weird" because it doesn't fit into either of these categories of useful natural or constructed forms. People didn't first make music in order to feel good, but because that music made them feel good. They already had an instinctual response. It's more like those odd visual illusions that are due to the freaky things our brains do to correct for visual blind spots in our eyes: a species-specific thing largely without intrinsic survival value. Audio hallucinatory masterbation, essentially.
(Some things probably are evolutionarily driven. Percussion sounds a lot like a moving herd of animals being hunted. Makes sense this would dump adrenaline into your system to make you run faster and harder. But being moved to tears by a violin concerto or lost in ecstasy at a rock concert is categorically something else.)
Anyway, to the point which started this sub-thread if someone asked me "what music do you like?" I'd interpret that question as "what kinds of things do you like to listen to?" since in my experience that's what most people mean by the question. And indeed, I have noise cancelling headphones I don't even bother plugging into my computer because "silence" is what I prefer to listen to when working, thinking, etc. If you get shocked by the answer.. that's the fault of you and your own assumptions. You asked; I answered: I prefer to NOT listen to music, thank you very much.
It's more like saying, "What kind of pizza do is your favorite?" and they respond, "No pizza." which is perhaps not quite the same as saying "I don't like pizza at all."
Maybe he meant smooth jazz, classical, adult contemporary, downtempo type stuff that is quiet music but isn't any genre. People who aren't big into music don't learn all the genre names.
It's possible for someone to enjoy music at times, but not have an instant recollection of the music they like when prompted. A lot of my memory is kind of path dependent - it takes other things to prompt it, not just a simple query.
I know I have listened to a lot of enjoyable music and yet I go for long periods of time not seeking it, not thinking about it, and probably unable to list off things I used to listen to.
For instance, years ago, I was buying any CD with some sort of concerto grosso. These days I am listening to mostly streaming electronic music from the early 2000s. For a while I was listening to FM radio, but not enjoying it much.
I also at times have had a visual imagination connected to music and at other times not.
Anyway, anhedonia/apathy may not be total or one-dimensional, is my point.
An anecdote: when my semiotics professor talked about this composition for the first time, I was recording the lecture, and when colleagues asked for a copy, I sent them only the pauses between the sentences. When art meets sarcasm, it spreads really fast.
I hate when people ask me that! Haha! I like some music, sure, but by and large it doesn't come into my life. I don't go to concerts (don't see the point and when I have, have not enjoyed them anywhere near as much as others who came with me), I don't have spotify, I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to an album, in the car I prefer talk radio to be on.
I wouldn't say I'm fully unable to appreciate music. But... I dunno, I can get by without.
I'm in between. I do get enjoyment from music, but don't listen to it except when driving, which I didn't do for the six years before last week. I don't actively seek it out or wear headphones for walking/working/exercising.
I think his response was low effort as much as the question. Might have been expecting a different conversation and defaulted to the lowest common denominator.
There's also a small percentage of people (maybe <10%) who experience musical frisson [1][2]. I'm one of them. It's a related, but entirely different phenomenon to ASMR.
In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts.
Interesting to know what it's called, thanks. I have a few pieces of music that trigger this for me, up to shivers and tears in the eyes (though not at overwhelming/lightning-bolt levels.)
On the other hand, I'm utterly unresponsive to poetry.
If it makes you feel better, I've never personally run into somebody in real life who's ever admitted to this phenomenon. I think it must be rare enough, and not really spoken of by people who have it.
Childhood was very difficult, the few times I tried to explain it to me parents they thought I just found music very beautiful. It's very hard possessing something so great and never connecting with another person who can also experience it. It's like having a completely different sensory organ and describing what colors are to people who are blind from birth.
The internet has definitely helped me realize we're not alone with this thing!
(I also don't get much out of poetry and pretty much ignore lyrics in music)
Is it the feeling of unexplainable unbridled pleasure ?
I am reluctant to call it similar to an orgasm , because of the sexual connotations. While my body does not respond in a way similar to an orgasm, the "dopamine rush" (I am being liberal with the term) I get when listening to certain music is very similar.
I often have raised hair, tears in my eyes and a general lightheadedness and the biggest grin after such a moment.
First time I put it that way. Hoping it doesn't sound too creepy.
I get this, sometimes much stronger than others, even for the same music. I donate platelets at the Red Cross which takes a couple hours, so they provide DVD players and a selection of movies to choose from while you are hooked up to the apheresis machine.
I found they had a DVD of Yes' Symphonic tour from around 2001, and I felt like a real idiot because my eyes were seriously watering up during a lot of that concert. It's not crying, although it may look the same.
I get this too. I call it eargasm and have a folder full of music files that have triggered it. Anytime I hear a new one I save it in my eargasm playlist.
It's a different kind of experience, but definitely clustered in the "feelings of intense pleasure" cluster. I'd say that musical frisson is much more of an emotionally driven feeling that encompasses a much larger part of the body. The intensity ranges all over the place from a small feeling of "nice!" to intense, almost physically disabling, feelings of absolute bliss that have left me weeping like I'd just experienced an overwhelming introduction to an infinite god. But most of the time it happens it's just a crawling feeling of pleasure waves along the upper back, shoulders, back of the neck and arms and a general feeling of happiness and joy.
In my case, there's sometimes feelings of "consciousness expansion", and "universal connection", similar to stories I've read from among various drug users or people who've experienced intense religious experiences -- at times I've felt intense focus, explosive creativity, and an "overclocked" sensation like my brain had been turned up to a faster performance ratio -- often for those moments of he frisson I can be intensely productive in creative pursuits. But it falls away as the frisson dissipates. I do not know if this is universal or not, there's pitifully little understanding of this phenomenon and sharing of information.
It's a very personal feeling, I don't know that I could ever do it with other people around, and it's tied to very specific passages of music that seem unique to the frissoner. As you can guess it's very addictive, and when I was younger I would spend hours auditioning albums looking for "frissonable" moments I would play over and over again for hours -- usually just a few seconds of some passage that would trigger it. However, pursuing this seems to "use-up" the feeling and after a while the passage would lose its triggering power.
If the universe was about to end, and I was allowed to have one final pleasurable experience replayed, selected from any orgasm of frisson I've ever had, I'd definitely pick from among my most intense frissons.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I experienced a lesser version of this phenomenon relistening to some music I hadn't heard since undergrad with a good friend that passed away. It was like I was transported back to that time and had goosebumps cascading my entire body. It only happens when I haven't heard a track in a while and I can't force it. Music is truly a human experience.
Yeah sure, it's a huge range of things that are paradoxically highly specific to a few moments.
Certain classical moments are pretty reliable.
For example, the first few seconds of the Paganini variation here at around 23:00 minutes. https://youtu.be/c33q87s03h4?t=1375 except not this recording. I used to have a recording of it I inherited from my great grandfather and it was that specific recording that used to send me off.
Several pieces by Steve Reich seem to hack the phenomenon for me and run just underneath the trigger: Six Pianos, Music for 18 Musicians, etc.
It can also depend on the context, some of the passages won't "work" without other surrounding song context...like the contrast of the triggering passages and the non-triggering is what sort of does it.
There's actually an entire subreddit dedicated to this, but I've not found much in other people's music that kicks it off. https://www.reddit.com/r/frisson
It's an entirely different feeling of liking music or finding it pleasurable, for which I believe I'm fairly conventional.
It's maybe a little like the aftershocks of one, or someone nibbling on your ear / nipple. It's an all-over skin tingle, felt especially on the arms and scalp, and a transcendental emotional feeling.
Whoa! I had no idea this was a thing! I'd always thought it was just some weird thing about me. I don't really get a whole lot of pleasure out of music, or get moved by music much. I almost never listen to music. When I do listen, it's usually to drown out external noise or help me focus, but in that case I usually just listen to the same song on a loop.
I'm really curious about this. Have you ever fiddled around, learnt or messed about with any musical instrument, and if so, how did you feel?
I recall that when I was learning my first instrument, and started learning a lot of songs, a lot of the other instruments didn't really make sense. For instance, if I was learning a guitar part from a rock song, the bass/drums/keys sort of sounded like a background mix that I couldn't identify into their individual instruments/parts.
I played the viola and sang in chorus in middle school. I really enjoyed both--especially the viola--but I think my enjoyment was more of the mechanics of it rather than the actual music we were making. I also really enjoyed playing Guitar Hero in college in the same way.
I've thought about taking up the guitar or piano since then, but haven't ever gotten around to it.
You sound like me, I get stuff done in dead silence. Music actually distracts me, playing songs in same loop helps out though. I still like practicing singing in the car though on the way to work, and guitar hero is fun to me too. Looking to learn to play the ukelele. I have like almost no musical intelligence, I can't remember song lyrics very well at all
Funny you should say that - I've been slowly trying to learn guitar for a couple of months now. I picked up a ukulele last week on a whim and can't seem to put it down! It's simpler than a guitar, but there's still so much to learn: the chords themselves, of course, but also how chords are created and how that relates to the way the instrument is strung; strums/rhythm; fingerpicking; the way different types of strings change the character of the sound... it just goes on and on.
I'm not expert, but contact me if you want to chat sometime. My username is my real name, which is also my homepage's domain ( plus '.com') and my username on every social media service I use.
Just curious why you explicitly "hope there is no cure"? Seems like an odd wish. If music has little to no effect on you now, why would you even care? Furthermore if a "cure" did exist, what would be the downside of trying it?
From what I can see, there is no upside to enjoying music. People spend so much time and money (attending concerts, paying for streaming services, buying music, buying instruments, practicing instruments, listening to the music, etc.) that I'm able to happily use elsewhere. If I enjoyed music I might want to start using my time and money for those things.
I like who I am, and am perfectly happy the way I am. If you step back and look at it, letting vibrations in the air control your emotional state is kinda a scary proposition, no?
> If you step back and look at it, letting vibrations in the air control your emotional state is kinda a scary proposition, no?
How is that different than letting reflections of light off of objects control your emotional state? Do you also have no emotional reaction to art, or even as simple as preferring a certain color?
I'm not them, and don't find that scary at all (speech certainly affects my emotional state!) but I don't have any color preference, or feel like I have anywhere near the emotional reaction to art that other people do.
Are you suggesting visuals of any kind do not create an emotional reaction for you? I'm not sure what the point of your comment is otherwise.
Would painting a room bright pink be no different to you than painting it black? Does looking at roadkill or a corpse feel absolutely no different to you than viewing something most would consider calming like a sunset, flowers or someone who you consider to be beautiful? If you do feel different, then yes, light reflecting off of objects does create an emotional reaction to you.
And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my
database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore.
I watched them. Honestly I got nothing out of them. It's just noise. I could see that the guy with black hair on the left in the first video was really getting into it, I just don't know what he was getting out of it.
In the second one, I felt pleasure looking at the pretty girls, but their singing did nothing for me.
The first one is interesting - if I heard it on the radio I wouldn't think twice about it, but seeing a video is different. Watching the guy play the guitar gives me a sense of how difficult it must be to play - which means I appreciate the music because I appreciate the technical skill of the person playing it.
The second one does nothing for me - it's just dull.
Can you explain how you feel when you listen to those songs?
Sure! When I see Derek Truck play guitar in that first video, I feel about his playing how BB King says he feels, like this was one of the best things I've ever heard.
The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her. The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.
> I feel about his playing how BB King says he feels, like this was one of the best things I've ever heard.
Thanks for this, it's very interesting. I've realised that I don't really rank music in that way - I don't have favourite songs, in the same way as I have favourite books, movies etc.
> The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her.
The story is cool, you're right. I understand how it would be emotional to those involved, but I found the description of the story conveyed the emotions involved more than the singing did.
> The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.
It's well sung, but I don't find it technically impressive like the guitar playing. Perhaps because, day-to-day, we are exposed to many good vocalists but very few guitar solos?
Looked a minute into the first one. Did not recognize the song but since I'm not into music, I don't know that much.
I find myself distracted by the body language of the guy on the left (and later the one to the right). It is more interesting to me to watch how people behave than to listen to the music.
Emotionally? Nothing really. It's just someone playing music, which doesn't really do anything for me. I appreciate that the person in the first video is doing some neat things with a guitar though. It looks & sounds neat.
Felt probably the same as you would feel if I asked you to watch a youtube clip of paint drying to the din of a noisy train station or other public place.
How would I know if it is harder for me to enjoy movies than for somebody else?
I don't like "music movies" such as High Fidelity, 8 Mile, School of Rock, Blues Brothers. They are just average comedy/drama flicks for me. Maybe normal people like them more?
For a while if someone asked me what music I like, I replied film music. I do enjoy film music but maybe just because the music makes me remember the movie?
I'm definitely affected by the music. Maybe music can still emphasize emotions for a musical anhedonic and it just that music in itself does not do much?
Interesting. I also have mostly soundtracks in my playlists, for when I feel like listening to music at all (usually to drown out distractions). It's all soundtracks of things I've watched and enjoyed, and puts me in the mood of the memory of the movie or TV show its from. The music itself doesn't do very much at all for me directly.
This mirrors my own experience exactly. I too listen to a lot of soundtracks, from movies or from video games that I have enjoyed. Although music doesn't provoke an emotional response on its own, it has an incredible ability to being back emotional memories.
For a similar reason, when choosing music to listen to, I generally listen to the same songs again and again - those which have a connection to my past. It is very hard to feel anything about a new piece of music.
This means that I may regularly listen to one track by a particular artist, but have no interest in any of their other songs. I don't even like listening to remixed or live versions of songs that I enjoy - they are sufficiently different that they do not evoke any memories and hence are uninteresting to me.
How would I know? I don't have an emotional response to music and never have, so what would I compare it to?
You know, I also don't dream. I wonder if there is a name for never dreaming and if there is any link between not dreaming and not having an emotional response to music.
Quite possibly. I do enjoy watching a movie on occasion, but there are many other things I would rather do with my time. It turns out that compared to most people, I don't watch many movies - I've seen well under 100 of the "IMDb Top 1000 Movies of All Time" [1].
I've never considered this to be related to music, but I guess it could be.
I dunno, I think soundtracks to movies are one of the only places where I ever get any sort of emotional response from music, and it's always because I associate some sequence of sounds in the piece with something that's happening in the film then. It doesn't feel like appreciating the music so much as just being reminded of the part of the movie that happened around that time. Sort of like an aural mile marker.
Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :)
There's actually quite a lot of this: it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.
> Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia (http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :)
That's exactly what's happening to me right now! I always just kind of assumed people were just using overly flowery speech to describe music! I remember one time in high school a kid who was way into music got really mad at me when I said I didn't really like music much. He said that I didn't seem much more than a sack of meat if I couldn't enjoy music.
> it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.
I've known I had a color vision deficiency since I was really young, but it isn't very strong so I don't run into trouble much. I only really got a strong example (outside of a purpose-built color vision test type thing) recently while playing Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress has a world map which represents volcanos as little red "^" marks. I was generating worlds repeatedly looking for a volcano near some grasslands. I was getting frustrated because I'd look at a map and wouldn't see anything. But after staring at the grassy areas for a while, I'd slowly start to see them. There were usually quite a few volcanos actually, it just was hard for me to find them. I was kind of confused as to why I wasn't seeing them easily before it hit me that the grassland is shown as green characters.
I tried showing a map to my sibling and my partner, both of whom have normal color vision. They both found all the volcanos immediately with no issues. It was wild!
Fortunately, Dwarf Fortress lets you customize all the colors used by the game. I should be able to make a higher contrast color palette for myself in the future.
> I always just kind of assumed people were just using overly flowery speech to describe music!
Yes! I realised this a few years ago. When people say "that's a sad song", they really mean that the song makes them sad in and of itself.
Whereas, for me, the only way a song can make me sad is if it brings back sad memories - i.e. if I had previously heard the same song on a sad occasion.
Incidentally, one thing I'd like to know about musical anhedonia, which perhaps all the anhedonics here can try out, is whether psychedelics affect it. They are famous for heightening the emotional response to music; do they work at all on anhedonics, and if so, does it bring them up to the normal level? Surely some have tried it a few times, since music is a common accompaniment on trips.
This is me. I can listen to and appreciate music in the same way regular people can learn to appreciate art or fine wine. But I usually prefer listening to silence, and really don't get why people on the whole are so obsessed with music. I've been to a concert exactly once, enough to know it's really not my thing.
Interestingly I'm also clinically tone-deaf, meaning that I'm utterly unable to tell what note is played or make anything resembling song with my voice. Don't invite me to karaoke. I cannot tell that the pitch of my voice doesn't match the song accompanying it.
But don't feel any pity: you guys are the weird ones :P
(I think) I'm anhedonic and it's interesting to me that you can get pleasure out of just the music. To me, it's nice to have things on in the background, or to watch people do something they love. Sometimes, when the lyrics of a song are good and the setting is right (like when driving) that's good too. Like, you can sway the car to the beat, and that's fun. But otherwise, I dunno, there really isn't anything there for me, it's the same as a washing machine, or a desk fan, or the birds singing. I've twiddled with a guitar before, and getting the chords right is pretty neat, but more from a 'look, I did a thing' sorta way. I think I've felt the hedonia before, but only a handful of times, and only in extreme environmental/psychological settings.
If it helps, I REALLY like to dance and have alright rhythm, but I like the dancing not the music. Dancing without music is just as enjoyable to me, personally, but I understand that music hides a lot of the sounds my body makes and that makes it better. Something about the swaying is fun to me: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/01/opinion/slomo.html
I don't know exactly why it is pleasurable, but to me it's sometimes about the sound itself. I just find some sounds pleasing, like the vibration of a cello string being bowed or a dirty electric guitar riff with tons of distortion. Very specifically I love the distortion produced by the Boss HM-2 pedal, which a lot of my favorite metal bands use. Perhaps it's something about the "texture" of certain sounds that I find very appealing.
It's not just the sound itself though, there's also something about a good riff or a well-written chorus. I don't get music that's too free-form, like improvisational jazz or stuff with way too many tempo changes. There has got to be a groove, a rhythm, a flow, a drive and a connection between the instruments, so they're playing together, to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
There is obviously also something to be said for emotional connections to specific songs or passages. As an example just off the top of my head, I read The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck as they were published when I was 7-9 years old, they were part of my formative years, as you might say.
So when I listen to Tuomas Holopainen's 2014 concept album Music Inspired by the Life and Times of Scrooge, it just touches something in me, I get all emotional and well up, especially at this song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWwSVOo5K_k
I obviously don't expect other people to have quite the same reaction, but to me, aside from being a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, it also tugs deeply at my childhood nostalgia, and elevates the music to a whole new level for me.
Finally, I have a name for it! If all of music simply disappeared right this second and there was never again a melody, song, etc. forever more, I wouldn't miss it for one second. I understand music evokes something in other people, I just don't understand why or how or what that "enjoyment" consists of. It does absolutely nothing for me. I've tried just about every genre of music that I've been aware of, but it's all just noise.
Interesting I was wondering why there is "ear candy" that would catch me, even though I did not understand most of the song meaning or background or history. And I was caught by the ear candies of different genres except folk. Folk would not catch me much. Most of the 1 hit song of some band or singer would catch me. (lll￢ω￢)
> As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to music...
I, in turn, find this somewhat astonishing. Not only is it so different from my own experience, it's difficult to understand.
When you're enjoying a piece of music, you can at least imagine what it would be like not to feel anything. For me, though, when I see people enjoying music, it's so confusing. What am I "supposed" to be feeling?
Music is a form of communication. What I experience in certain pieces of music is a connection with a particular set or category of feelings that verbal language is simply unable to describe with an equivalent clarity and it's a sort of empathy shared with the composer.
That's a difficult one. It didn't make me feel anything, so I really do have to guess what other people might feel.
For example, I have to think about occasions on which similar pieces of music are generally used. A solo piano like this piece is often sad, but on the other hand, this piece has a higher tempo than most sad songs.
I think I enjoy music, but I've never seemed as interested in it as other people are. I usually find a few things that match a mood and listen to it on repeat. I never listen to music just for fun, and effectively never go to concerts.
I'm also convinced that tone deafness is a spectrum, not a binary thing, and that a lot of people, perhaps most are at least a little bit tone deaf. Or it's possible that tone deafness is a default trait that can only be changed by being exposed to music.
The inevitable trend in pop music to becoming simpler and simpler and more homogenized to me is a symptom of the de-evolution of people's taste in music (on average) because they are not exposed to more sophisticated music, so they never develop a taste for it.
I think it's probably similar to how spelling and grammar seem to get worse every year, corresponding with the decline of reading actual books. But that may be just because I suffer from terminal Grammar Naziism and my sensitivity to it increases overtime.
"Laughter (and humor) involves the gradual build-up of expectation (a model) followed by a sudden twist or anomaly that entails a change in the model -- but only as long as the new model is non-threatening -- so that there is a deflation of expectation." [1]
My theory is that music provides pleasure in the same way that we get from our hobbies & interests via "familiar surprises": from poetry through rhyme, from dance through rhythm, from movies through plot-twists. Our brains are pattern recognition systems and constantly distinguishing friend from foe, and listening to music we grew up with is a part of that "IFF" system.
The "familiar" - usually we listen to a few genres at most and stick to them throughout our life., and the "surprises" are the slight variations and nuances in a song - with the assurance that all is well - that give us our dopamine shot. This is very similar to wordplay in poetry, humor in comedy. I think they are all closely related neuronally.
[1] "The neurology and evolution of humor,
laughter, and smiling: the false alarm theory" Prof. V S. RAMACHANDRAN
edit: added a reference to VSR's article and some grammar
Combinations of frequencies that form simple integer ratios are naturally perceived as being consonant, no culture or upbringing needed. As the ratios begin to involve higher integers and become more complex, the intervals they produce are considered more dissonant.
For instance, in ancient Greece, the scales were constructed by combining intervals where the integer ratios have a prime number no higher than 3. The result is a very consonant but almost bland music. Something you could easily fall asleep to.
The major and minor scales from which classical music is composed are made by combining intervals with a prime no higher than 5. This adds more dissonance and makes things a bit more interesting.
Scales based around higher prime numbers (7,11,13,..) are outside the scope of mainstream music although jazz is said to approximate the scales that could be built off the '7-limit' intervals, which explains its more dissonant nature (heavy use of tritone which has a ratio of 7:5, and the 'minor seventh' approximates the interval with a ratio of 7:4).
That covers consonance, but it doesn't explain emotional affect. I think one example that is at least a part of the explanation can be seen in the distinction between the overtones and undertones.
The major scale (and more specifically the major chord) of today's western music is generally considered to be happy, confident, uplifted, etc. The major chord appears naturally in the harmonic series of overtones (any 3 notes played together whose frequency ratio is 4:5:6).
The minor chord, on the other hand, appears naturally in the undertone series which is just an inversion of the overtones (1/4:1/5:1/6). It also occurs in nature like the overtones, although less frequently.
I may have flubbed some details as I'm writing off the top of my head mostly but I think it covers the gist of how harmony can contribute to the perception of music. There is of course also the rhythm and the sense of expectations/irony involved in writing as well.
> Combinations of frequencies that form simple integer ratios are naturally perceived as being consonant, no culture or upbringing needed. As the ratios begin to involve higher integers and become more complex, the intervals they produce are considered more dissonant.
This is only true for a definition of "consonant" and "dissonant" that is literally tautological. Yes, one can distinguish between consonant and dissonant, but the assignment of those as "pleasurable" and "not pleasurable" (which is the topic of the article) are incredibly culturally contextual. That is, you can construct a distinction between harmonies that one might label as consonant and dissonant, but the interpretation of that distinction is not universal. In fact, the relevance or applicability of that distinction is not even universal, because there are plenty of musical traditions where this wouldn't apply at all, and therefore couldn't be used to distinguish "pleasurable" and "not pleasurable" music.
In reality, in the grand scheme of musical traditions, the classical European model of consonant, simple integer ratios is an outlier.
"Consonant" and "dissonant" are words that are indeed a bit too specific to the European music pedagogy as a whole. But I would argue that the "whole integer ratio" principle does actually extend a fair bit beyond Western classical.
The lowest whole integer frequency ratios -- using Pythagorean terms and the ratios, octaves (2:1) and perfect fifths (3:2) -- seem to be present in the music systems of many music cultures, at least the ones I'm aware of. Perfect fourths (4:3) are also decently common in many music scales, although not quite as common as the other ratios.
Beyond that, there is much variety and I'm not sure I can conclude anything (especially since my knowledge of scales and modes outside Western music is fairly limited). It just seems like most music systems in the world are aware of these core ratios at least.
One other curiosity: I would say a huge percentage of music scales throughout the world tend to feature either seven or five notes (five notes actually is probably the more common one, if I had to take a guess). Unlike harmony, I'm honestly not sure why this is the case. Even gamelan scales are seven notes.
Balinese gamelan is played on metal instruments which don't have the same concept of consonance and whose overtones and scales have almost no relationship with Western music.
Some eastern european folk uses minor-like scales but harmonies feature a major second, which is certainly not considered a consonant interval.
In the West there's also jazz, which is based rather loosely on conventional Western harmony but uses unusually remote and dissonant chords.
And the entire serial and post-classical academic tradition, which is self-consciously and deliberately anti-tonal and dissonant.
In fact extremely consonant music is the exception.
Ok I see what you are saying. I guess I didn't really get this across but I'm not saying that more consonance always means more listening pleasure. As with the Pythagorean tunings, all consonance and no dissonance can become bland. Dissonant intervals are also a part of the harmonic series as you go further up. The major second that you mentioned is a 16:15 ratio.
As far as Jazz chords, many are not as dissonant as you would think. The dominant seventh which makes up the entirety of the blues progression is generally considered dissonant because of the flat 7th, the most 'out of tune' note in western tuning. It actually is an attempt to approximate the interval formed between the 7th and 4th overtones which are a strong consonance.
Dissonance is definitely a part of what makes music interesting. I wasn't trying to say that consonant intervals are the only reason for listening pleasure, just pointing out that there's some natural phenomena (harmonic series) that we're approximating or emulating with our music that can explain why we perceive music the way we do or why it sounds beautiful to us.
I'm not familiar with gamelan but I found this interesting quote on the page regarding one of its tunings:
> ..where instruments are played in pairs which are tuned slightly apart so as to produce interference beating. The beating is ideally at a consistent speed for all pairs of notes in all registers, producing stretched octaves as a result. This contributes to the very "agitated" and "shimmering" sound of gamelan ensembles. In the religious ceremonies that contain gamelan, these interference beats are meant to give the listener a feeling of a god's presence or a stepping stone to a meditative state.
So in a way, even though the tuning system goes 'outside' the harmonic series, it doesn't completely ignore it but rather 'stretches' some of its intervals, which is what gives the music its otherworldly or mystical feeling.
For people who are not familiar, there are 12 steps in an octave. The frequency of the note doubles for each octave. Thus, each "step" increase the frequency of the note by 2^(1/12) times. So you have the frequencies of each semitone as roughly:
This is the reason why "Do/Mi/So" (1/1.26/1.5, ~4/5/6) or "Do/Fa/La" (1/1.33/1.68, ~3/4/5) sound good to the ear.
Incidentally, the way the piano is tuned is different from guitar, where piano tuning is more precise (closer to the 2^(1/12) steps), and guitar more close to the integer relations.
jazz is said to approximate the scales that could be built off the '7-limit' intervals, which explains its more dissonant nature (heavy use of tritone which has a ratio of 7:5
That all sounds pretty baseless to me. is said to? By who? (Those people who find endless patterns in the measurements of the Egyptian pyramids, maybe.) I've never heard or read that. A tritone doesn't "have a ratio of 7:5", not in the equal temperament we use nowadays - 2^(6/12)=sqrt(2), or in its most literal/basic form of going up 6 perfect fifths i.e. (3/2)^6.
Quoting David Doty from Just Intonation Primer (highly recommended if you can find a copy):
"7:4, 7:5, and 7:6 can be identified with the flatted seventh, fifth, and third beloved of blues and jazz musicians". He may not be the most well known person to write about music theory but his understanding of the fundamentals of music/tuning/harmony is solid. Anyway, it is fairly self evident that the blues scale would not sound the way it does if it didn't have these three intervals (the others just being the fourth, fifth, and octave, which is about as basic as you can get)
As an aside, the flat third certainly has a different representation in 5-limit tuning (6:5) but both this as 7:6 are approximated by the same interval in twelve tone equal temperament.
In the section 'Approximation using equal temperament' you can see the tritone represented as 7:5.
To be more accurate with my wording, its not that the 'tritone is 7:5', but rather what we call a tritone in 12 tone equal temperament is really an approximation of the interval 7:5. Look at the 7th and 5th notes in a harmonic series, which interval do they most closely resemble?
The most basic and literal form of an interval is always the smallest possible whole integer ratio that can be used to represent that interval, in this case, 7:5.
As you mention, you can arrive at something similar by going up 6 perfect fifths, but the ratio ends up being 729:64 -> 89:64, if you take out the octave. The only way this would have musical significance is if its used as an approximation for 7:5.
Scales that are built by stringing perfect fifths do not produce a clean 'tritone', hence its relative shunning in classical music (and its absence in 5-limit tuning where the interval you mention is more of a byproduct).
It sounds like you are writing from the point of view of twelve tone equal temperament tuning as the standard by which intervals are defined, whereas I'm starting from the concept that the harmonic series is the basis of harmony and (most) tuning systems are just attempts to emulate it.
Hi :-) Thanks. I'm no expert in rational temperaments, I just am objecting when you say things that don't sound true. Like "jazz is said to approximate the scales that could be built off the '7-limit' intervals, which explains its more dissonant nature". (that explains nothing) Or "The only way this would have musical significance.." (only ratios of small integers can 'have musical significance'?)
"look at the 7th and 5th notes in a harmonic series" - I played trombone for years. :-) The 7th is flat, sounds out of tune. (Yes I was mostly playing jazz)
I don't know why you think I'm writing from the point of view of equal temperament as opposed to harmonic series. But it does sound like you're writing from the point of view of a particular rational temperament - maybe because you just read that book. There are many, dozens or hundreds, of different rational tunings/temperaments/intonations, writing today 'from the point of view' of any one of them about music, as if that's what music 'really' is, would be arbitrary, silly.
Thank you for mentioning overtones. I think it's a very important factor that makes it possible to talk about a universal musical aesthetics, even if a very basic one.
> For instance, Greek music is composed by combining intervals where the integer ratios have a prime number no higher than 3 to form the scales.
You mean the classical Greek music, right? I think the system you describe is called the Pythagorean tuning.
Hmm, I was hoping for something more contemporary that I could relate to, but was disappointed that it focused on pieces written centuries ago...like most formal musical theory.
Anyway, this passage stuck out to me:
"""There is something that still rings true of Mattheson’s general idea. We do tend to associate some musical features with being uplifted and others with melancholic reflection, both of which might afford a certain subsequent pleasure to listeners. Just think of how we use music in our everyday lives: some tunes help us to work out or to get something done, while others allow us to cry."""
Composers aren't the only ones who have ever tried to manipulate the crowd. I'm not sure how pop stars/rock bands etc. plan out their sets, but one thing that any DJ[0] worth his salt pays attention to is "harmonic mixing"[1]. Taking things "darker", or trying to bring up the energy, are common strategies taken into account when planning a harmonic transition. I've personally bore witness to plenty of incredible sets that take you from the very top to the very bottom, and it's funny to me that the same ideas are masked behind hoighty-toighty music theory terminology that is used almost exclusively in reference to...music that was composed hundreds of years ago.
[0] By DJ I mean someone who does more than weddings, and certainly doesn't take requests.
> it's funny to me that the same ideas are masked behind hoighty-toighty music theory terminology that is used almost exclusively in reference to...music that was composed hundreds of years ago.
I'm just coming up to speed on music theory, but my impression so far is that it's reactive, not proactive. We already have music that we like; music theory is about trying to tear it down, identify why we like it, establish base principles that can be used to guide composition, and then use those to create something new. Fairly recently, this had led to "generative music".
I'm finding music theory to be useful to build a more accurate mental model of the instruments I'm playing, which I believe will eventually improve my ability to improvise and play by ear. I think that people who are musical prodigies have an intuitive understanding of those things, but I'm having to build my own understanding explicitly.
I've been playing bass and guitar occasionaly (as an amateur musician) since I was 15 and I'm now in my early 30s, I studied a bit of theory when I was learning and already knew how to build chords and also have a reasonable ear, last months I decided to learn how to read sheet music and study musical theory and jazz a bit more deeper, what I found is that now I'm way more confortable with my improvisation not being repetitive and over the same scales again and again and that I have a way better knack at finding the next note on songs that I haven't heard before, so my experience is similar to yours.
As an aside, I'm pretty certain that I'm suffering from frequency ilusion, I frequently find musical theory discussions at every place that I am used to read, where in the past it seems that this things were not that prevalent.
Well you're lucky I read this comment right as my morning coffee kicked in; it really depends on your taste I guess, but I'll try to be as broad as I can. Most of the sets I've heard/been at were not recorded, so syndicated radio shows from the time are the best approximate of what would have been played.
Lots of more-recent converters to the Prydz fanbase point to this set as being the "A-ha" moment of getting his music. He somehow manages to fit in a lot of different-yet-cohesive moods into 60 minutes, and the final song is a (live?) mash-up of two of his classics that is really, really clever and satisfying.
Take your pick of 2011 or 2004 depending on whether you want to tackle more-poppy, modern 128BPM or a more classic, lo-fi acid-influenced 138BPM. I think the bootleg of Massive Attack's Teardrop from 2011 is a very special track, can't really speak highly enough of it...
I included a YouTube link because the audio doesn't do the gorgeous setting justice - sunset at The Gorge, Washington State, if you can get past the interesting rave attire that Americans seem to feel compelled to wear at festivals. Fine Day is an absolute classic, very airy and day-dreamy; bonus for the recording capturing the crowd singing along.
Club instead of festival or Essential Mix. Again, ends on a very classy, satisfying track that rewards you for sticking through to the end. A bit more techy and minimal than my other choices.
Same club, one year earlier. Again, more techy and minimal. The track around 28 minutes, "Trigonometry" is a perfectly drawn out with a very intense climax, and absolutely deserves the "progressive" moniker - unfortunately it's the radio show and Sasha talks over the track hah. This is only a middle snippet of the full 4 hour set.
Something a bit poppier, but deep. Just like the Eric Prydz UMF set, a lot of Lane 8 fans point to this radio edition as being their "A-ha" moment. Very, very classy and restrained, but with some darker, more emotional moments.
If you can handle modern (post-2000) trance, then this is definitely one of _the_ sets to listen to. Really runs the full gambit of the genre as it was in 2008, starting slower and poppier, and ending with a very intense final two hours.
We're the way we are because our ancestors had these traits and they were the ones who survived. Music is a system for encoding knowledge, especially across generations.[1] Humans appear to sexually select for musical ability.[2][3] We like music, because being able to encode encyclopedic knowledge across generations without written language is a successful adaptation for survival.
"It has been noted that rhythm is a built-in part of every human being so the urge to move is very natural and it comes from deep inside. There has been a lot of suggestions that this would develop during child’s growth in the uterus, since hearing is the sense that develops close to its final stage before birth. This way the child absorbs the sounds of environment along with mother’s steady heartbeat that could be seen as a steady pulse in music."
It may be junk science but I remember reading something long ago that said the bpm of a song that is closest to a human heart beat is more pleasing than one much faster or slower. I'm now off to see if I can find the reference...
Hmm, electronic genres are definitely clustered around 128, 140, and 170 (+/-2), and those are all reasonable heart rates when you're partying...But a "human heart beat" can be literally anything so I'm not convinced.
Perhaps they mean the average non-stressed, slightly relaxed rate of around 100 or so? I'm not convinced either, but it is interesting to think about. Tempo and rhythm/beat has such a profound effect on the emotional response to music.
For harmony I have no clue, but for rhythm I have a serious belief that it's a side product of our mechanical balance processing unit (and also why dance goes with it). Just data from years of learning drumming, de-synchronization (ability to think about and move different limbs in ~parallel) is extremely valuable in every activity. You're probably smarter and more efficient because you process your movements and your perception quite differently.
Leonard Bernstein gave his answer on the question in a series of lectures titled "The Unanswered Question." Draws analogies to concepts in linguistics and CFGs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fHi36dvTdE
We're able to recognize simple ratios instantly. The fact is without number the actual digits, we know they instantly simplify into a handful of fractions. That is mind blowing.
What's even more mind blowing is Adam Neely's explanation of pitch ratios and how they're related to tempo. The short incorrect explanation is if you layer beats 4:4, 5:4, 6:4 ratios (which is the ratio of pitches against the root in a major chord), then speed it up to a ridiculous frequency, our ears hear a major chord. It would seem that Tempo and Pitch are very much intertwined and our brains decipher that very quickly without evening consciously dividing the frequencies.
I think the article took a strange approach. It focused on a complex piece by Bach. But most people don't find Bach pleasurable, and simple melodies can be very pleasurable, at least to most people. It would make much more sense to try to understand the simple cases, and then later try to figure out the more complicated ones.
Also instead of explaining musical pleasure in terms of non-musical concepts like emotion and openess, might it be at least in part to evaluations in the brain that are unique to music? We don't think that, for instance, tastes are pleasurable or unpleasant due to their connection to other matters, so why could this not be the case for music?
My father loves music. Famously miserly, he wouldn't mind a monthly paycheck on an audio system.
I on the other hand have never enjoyed music. I think it's a rebellion thing. But also that sad music made me despondent but happy music didn't affect me to the same extent.
The way my father managed to reel me in was to ask me to predict where the musician would take the song. In things like Jazz or improvised music, this is pretty hard. But even in well known classical pieces, this kind of prediction and correction is a pretty interesting exercise.
My takeaway from this kind of exercise is that I enjoy music as a pattern matching exercise. It's like a good joke - when you run into an unexpected punchline.
When I was in high school, I spent a lot of time improvising on the piano. I had been taking classical music lessons for years, but always loved to play around on the piano, composing little pieces for myself—mostly they were pop inspired pieces, nothing complicated.
One day, some researchers worked with my school to administer a test to find out if there was a connection between standardized test scores (in our case, the ACT) and musical aptitude. Pattern matching was the way they decided to test this.
They set a tape recorder in the middle of the room and gave us a multiple choice sheet. First, they played the beginning of a melody, which stopped abruptly. Then, they played four different ways the melody could resolve. Our goal was to choose the most likely.
Sometimes, the pieces would be something classic, like Mozart or Beethoven. Other times, they were more contemporary.
I glanced around the room to see the reaction of the other students. The choices all seemed very obvious to me. Afterwards, I asked around and most people said they had to guess on most of them.
The next day, the teacher pulled me aside and told me that I had scored the highest in the school.
I never did follow up to see what the results of the research was, but to this day, I believe I wouldn't have done that well if I had not spent a lot of time listening to music and tinkering with melody lines in my free time.
Me too, writ very broadly. I'll hear a melody reflect the way a thought or a story develops, instrumentation reflecting the way conversation or traffic behaves. It's completely abstract and yet I feel like music reflects reality, and its deviations from the "truth" comment on reality.
I might just be weird. But if in fact a lot of people derive pleasure from the correspondence between music and reality, then part of a composer's job is to create such correspondences, bearing in mind that every listener is going to draw different ones. They have to look for the "average interpretation".
Nobody attempting seriously and succintly to answer the question here even the article.
As far as i understand pattern recognition is basically what the cortex (in all its various divisions) does. Which is basically one of our most important higher functions and what sets mammals apart from other animals intelectually.
Recognising a melody is not so different from recognising the voice of a friend or the route to walk home. Except for different input types.
Except the fact that music and melody/harmony is not just 'match a pattern' but is designed essentially to tease, test and develop the pattern recognition function by taking simple clear ratios then finding ways to make them a little on edge mathematically in different ways.
So we shouldnt find it weird that music can give most of us pleasure itself because its literally the same mecahnism as things that are finding food or a good partner to mate with.
Then theres lyrics and the social side of music which puts a whole different twist on it. The above is pure rhythm and pitch only enjoyed individually.
> There is something that still rings true of Mattheson’s general idea. We do tend to associate some musical features with being uplifted and others with melancholic reflection, both of which might afford a certain subsequent pleasure to listeners.
I have always wondered if we know how much of the emotion associated with music is learned from culture. To put it another way, is a sad song inherently sad? Or is it sad because the culture we grew up in tells us that it is sad? (The answer is probably some combination of both.) There must have been studies about this, but I haven't come across any yet.
I'm a fan of the cross modal congruence school of thought here. In which experiences in one sense are similar in structure to experiences in another sense, imparting them meaning. For example, "Flight of the Bumblebee" by Rimsky-Korsakov (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M93qXQWaBdE), in which the franticness of the notes/rhythm have a similar variance and speed to what you see visually when watching a bee fly around. Or maybe even what you imagine the bee's internal thought process would be like.
I'm not sure if "cross modal congruence" is an actual term people use however, someone correct me if you know a more accurate label.
I've found myself able to easily 'feel' music played by exotic instruments I've never heard, and from different cultures I had minimal experience with or knowledge of. Chinese music in particular is far different from anything in the west yet somehow you can definitely 'feel' it. For instance check this out [1]. Minimize it to avoid visual cues from the video and I expect most can probably still 'feel' the tale that the music is telling.
I have the same question about major and minor keys. It's pretty easy to play something somber in C-major, and something happy in A-minor... This is opposite to the conventional wisdom about keys, and I think it's a cultural thing.
When you play them right on top of each other, the three notes which are a half step lower do seem to sound sadder in comparison, but I think that says more about descending vs ascending tones rather than the key itself.
Given your second paragraph... are you perhaps confusing tonality with chord quality? Amin (the chord) is a diatonic chord of C major (the tonality).
Also, it's easy to play "random" chords from a tonality and end up in a different mode without even realizing it. E.g.: A minor (the key, also known as A aeolian) has the exact same diatonic chords as C major (but the reference, i.e. tonal center, is A instead of C).
A large part of tonality is chord position in the piece, which is also greatly influenced by dynamics, melody, accompanying instruments, harmony, harmonic progression (both immediate/local and global)...
Also: Cmaj7 (the chord) is C-E-G-B and Emin6 is E-G-B-C (notice the similarity?), but E-G-B-C can also be interpreted as Cmaj7 in first inversion depending on context. Sometimes roots are omitted from chords so E-G-B (Emin at first sight) could be interpreted as Cmaj7(no root). Just like C-E-G could be a rootless Am7 (A-C-E-G with omitted A). They are often used as substitutes of one another in jazz.
Music is just too complex and musical language (chord names etc.) is just a hack developed around traditions and conventions, not science. It's mostly notation of intention, since everything can be twisted to mean something else.
The more music theory I know, the less definite answers to musical questions are.
Sorry, I should have compared C-major and C-minor keys. If I play a C-major scale, and then a C-minor scale, C-minor sounds sadder in comparison. But if I just play ascending thirds (R 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 R) in C-minor, it doesn't sound sad to me. Moreover, it's easy to make C-major sound sad by playing descending thirds (reverse of above).
Music is completely relative and context dependent. There's no such thing as an absolute minor scale: it all depends on what has been and what's to come. It's hard to derive a strong tonality from just a scale, they're pretty ambiguous.
C major has the exact same notes of A minor, and C minor/aeolian has the same notes of Eb major/ionian (and 5 other modes with different qualities: F dorian, G phrygian, Ab lydian, Bb mixolydian, D locrian... all have the exact same notes).
Even if you think of C aeolian when playing you might be implying a different tonal center, depending on your emphasis, and therefore a non-aeolian progression.
Your ears can latch to any tonal center depending on exact phrasing. With no harmony there is no clear tonal center (and even with harmony, it's easy to switch between related modes, even unkowingly, because they have the same notes _and_ the same diatonic chords).
> But if I just play ascending thirds (R 3 2 4 3 5 4 6 5 7 6 R) in C-minor
Are you playing that in a 3/4 rhythm? (R b3 2) (4 b3 5) (4 b6 5) (b7 b6 R) the downbeats are R-4-4-b7 (no characteristic minor tones) your ears are hearing the minor tones as passing tones. Since aeolian has no leading tone (natural 7, one semitone away from R) the tonal center is even more ambiguous.
You might be hearing that as Bb mixolydian: (2 4 3) (5 4 6) (5 b7 6) (R b7 2), downbeats on 2-5-5-R which is _the_ canonical major jazz progression (ii-V-I). The phrasing implies ii-V (ambiguous if major V or minor v)-v (minor due to b7 of I being b3 of v, establishes mixolydian)-I. V-I is a pretty strong (if not the strongest) tonality indicator.
Bb mixolydian is a major mode, hence why it doesn't sound particularly minor to you.
Try playing the C minor with ascending thirds over a C harmonic minor _progression_ while emphasizing the V-i cadence and the characteristic minor tones (namely, b3 and b6). Notice I said harmonic minor progression, which has a leading tone to strongly stablish tonal center (which is what it was invented for).
Imagination. Sounds connect with you deeply, and even deeper than visuals. You can sing and make melodies without physical movements, without moving your lips, just in your mind. Your inner voice that you "hear" when you think is an artist that grows through immersion, exposure to things.
The real difficulty is translating that into physical movements through your body, making it real, this can only be done through practice.
If you listen to good musicians amd really like what you hear, they basically talk to your inner artist on the same skill level.
I find that certain musical expressions invoke the same feeling as something very real like the feeling of seeing the New York skyline for the first time or the feeling of taking off in a light aircraft for the first time, almost as if the music was pressing the same buttons.
The interesting difference is that the music buttons seem to get pressed every time I hear the same music (i.e. I never get tired of certain music) whereas visual stimuli quickly become mundane as we get used to them?
> the same feeling as something very real like the feeling of seeing the New York skyline for the first time
I think that feeling is highly variable depending on the person. I remember the feeling I had the first time I drove over the bridge on I-40 into Memphis as an adult - the industry along the Mississippi River was awe-inspiring to me. Ugly, sure, but it also represented a huge amount of human accomplishment; it took thousands of years of learning, engineering, building, and improving to build those petroleum tanks and the infrastructure that they support (and that supports them).
Seeing the NYC skyline for the first time made me really anxious, almost to the point of anger. So many people in such a small area, living and working together packed so tightly. All I wanted to do was finish what I had to do there and leave as quickly as possible.
Out of curiosity - have you ever seen the Milky Way from a truly dark location with no light pollution? I think that probably inspires a very similar feeling that you've described.
Another commenter wondered if the feelings that music evoke are cultural or inherent. I think that's really an interesting question!
I wonder if there exists music that makes individuals feel differently based on their background and preferences, or if it goes even further - are there certain chords or progressions that don't have a consistent emotional association?
I'm not aware of any, but I'm not an expert in the field.
so much emphasis on melody. I find the answer is that music is a more true language than any that are spoken.
This is all conjecture by the way which is shaded by my own beliefs and experience.
melody is one part of a trinity. equally important are rhythm and harmony. I believe that rhythm, melody and harmony relate to the body, mind and spirit respectively.
Rhythm is analogous to our physical form and not just in the obvious sense of our heart beat but indeed every atom of our being has a rhythm all it's own and they are in sync one way or another with every other part of our body from microcosm to macrocosm.
a coherent melody matches our thoughts in a way that can convey the colors of emotion. indeed lyrics are often set to a melody and convey thoughts and emotions together in a way that's so natural that it is sometimes quite eerie.
harmony is how melodic threads relate to each other. our spirits are also the most adequate way of relating to others. harmony is the basis of all combined human endeavour and spirits are what allow us to define relations beyond familial in an abstract way in which we can intuitively find our own place.
For those who enjoy music - if you take dance lessons until you get comfortable dancing, dancing smoothly to music you like greatly intensifies the enjoyment of the music.
Bobbing and swaying to the music also increases the enjoyment, but doing a structured dance with a partner cranks it up to 11.
Long before writing, people had oral histories. Those were more reliable using rhyme (sort of an error-correction scheme). Setting it to music made it even less error-prone, and so better transmission of information gave a survival advantage.
The universe is in a process of entropic decay. Entropy is death. Life is the opposite. Life creates order, reverses the decay. Music is spontaneous order, but nuanced, like life. Music is a celebration of life.
Because it is rightly ordered beauty (most of it) and pleasing to the intellect. The intellect delights in that which is good, beautiful and true. Certain types of music elicit a more base response, catering to the passions, such as EDM, or pop, tribal beats, etc. Other types of music cater to the intellect, such as classical, baroque, and certain types of folk and other genre's. Then you have sacred music, which is also prayer, such as gregorian chant and polyphony, these cause one to contemplate divine things.
Music is pleasurable in all these facets because it touches upon different operations of the soul, which in turn gives pleasure to the body, such as calmness or dopamine, etc.
Isn't that like saying "because genetics" or "because chemistry" or "because biology"? It doesn't really answer the question that the article is asking.
Yeah, and also the brain's dopamine levels are not homogeneous. Your dopamine can be low in one part of the brain and high in another. Also, dopamine receptors can have low/high count in different areas.
Well I didn't meant it to be in negative way. Sorry its answering the `how` part of question not `why`, but whatever be the reason of `why`, the final thing that brain finds pleasurable is because of dopamine. For example, lets say a person like classical music but might dislike rap or metal. This is because his brain is accustomed to classical music and the more he listens to it, the more dopamine is released. However, in case of other genres, brain is not accustomed to it and thus the pleasure hormone might not work.
It is commonly assumed that evolution tries to maximize its outcome using a greedy algorithm. In fact it seems to be a random walk across all possibilities, with unviable branches dying out over time.
Suicide may also be a second order effect of other factors. For example, suicide usually has a cultural basis: you feel some sort of shame, or maybe you think your future outcomes aren't good culturally. But that means you care about society. Therefore suicide may be an indication that we have evolved to optimize society rather than ourselves. If we didn't care about society, perhaps there would be less suicides, but it would also make humans less dominant.
I would argue that culture is incorporated into our genes. For example, humans show signs of domestication, just like certain animals. But domestication is another name for cultural genetics.
If evolution is the changing of statistical distributions of genes within a population, then reproduction isn't the only aspect of life that is germane. That's because your children are just one example of people whose genes correlate with yours. Practically anything you do affects other people in society who have some genes in common and therefore impacts the future distribution of genes. This is why being menopausal, infertile, homosexual, celibate, or whatever does not place you outside of or make you irrelevant to evolution.
It's a curious question. Here we have music, which produces sound waves, which gets received in our ears and through vibrations on the skin. Specific frequencies of that sound wave can cause dopamine. But other frequencies don't. Why the difference?
Could it be related to memory, having experienced a happy time in your childhood that music brings you back to. What about sad memories? Could it be related to the memories of movies where you had a strong empathy to the emotion of a story and the music was the soundtrack?
And what about music you've never heard before. Is there a mathematical rhythm that creates a pattern in the brain that releases dopamine?
This is how I think of the question. I am not experienced in any of these subjects to really know the answer.
Yes but why does some music elicit dopamine and some does not? If I just play random notes for you, even if I do it with some sense of rhythm, will your body still produce dopamine?
The theory of dopamine is that there has to be strong local connections on brain for the activity the person is being kept under. Think of a song that you initially disliked but when you hear the same thing again and again, the neural connections gets stronger. When this happens, brain will release dopamine enabling brain get its reward.
I think there is more to it then that. By that argument alone, I should enjoy a song more, the more I listen to it. Then why do we get tired of old music and look for new music?
You probably start to tolerate a song you don't like better the longer you are exposed to it. Of course, at some point boredom kicks in. You find pleasure both in what sounds familiar (thus harmless, cozy) and in what sounds novel (a new experience, an opportunity for gaining knowledge).
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_anhedonia