Submitted 1 day ago by TheLeadenSea@sh.itjust.works to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
It’s just rhythms and pitches really, in a sequence. But we don’t love patterns, a scale sounds boring. It’s the breaking of the patterns that sound good in music, but only in specific ways. Other ways sound discordant. What the duck is going on?
To drown out the sound of your brain counting the moments until your next shift at work.
13 hours 50 minutes…
PhD in neuroscience here. I didn’t specifically study musicology, but i did study the neuroscience of music.
The theory that holds the most water, in my opinion, is that music activates all the same parts of the brain as motor processing. It makes us want to move, and to make predictions about what’s coming next. People like makimg predictions. It’s also a pro-social activity that encourages bonding and communication. These are typically positive experiences.
Humans are electrified meat computers. Music is math and chaos brought into order. It’s no wonder we love music like we do.
Yes I am a human, I love human things like… um… music…
finishes zipping up skinsuit
@nostupidquestions Back on the frdiverse feels so good.. using Flipboard.. Everything is so pretty 😏
Birds love music too now you mention it.
It’s mainly to get laid. Now that I think of it, that’s kind of the case with human music as well.
But we don’t love patterns
I would disagree with that somewhat - I think we do love patterns, but the more complex and intricate the better.
Which is why music appeals so much - it’s chock full of patterns overlaying each other, echoing and counterpointing each other, contrasting each other in ways that are both conflicting and harmonious. Good music is like seeing the rhythms of the world all around you.
Yes! When a chorus repeats and becomes familiar, or when a sequence resolves and the pattern is “recognized”. Satisfying to the core.
Exactly - chills up the spine moments!
By the way your link didn’t work, but this one might: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_(music)?wprov=sf…
I’m also interested in why there is such varying tastes in music. Why do I love metal but hate pop? shrugs
And why do I love both metal and bluegrass, and find them similar?
Play bluegrass an octave down and distorted, hit the drums more, and you're basically at metal
Oh my friend!
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=iron+horse+b…
I just put Metallica to give you a taste, MUCH more!
Same! I really hope I get to be the first one to show you this 🤘
And here I am, I don’t really like pop and I don’t really like metal but put them together and I’m in heaven.
Knew what it was before even clicking
GIMME CHOCOLATE
How did I know it was going to be Babymetal? 😛
Because at it’s core, music is a beautiful lack of auditory dissonance. See this minutephysics episode for an in depth explanation why. It’s fundamental. (to music itself, not to any particular style of music) youtu.be/tCsl6ZcY9ag
i can only think of one style of music that doesn’t heavily rely on dissonance.
“Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hail souls from mens’ bodies?” – Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
(Guitar/lute strings used to be made from sheep gut, for anyone confused)
Are we sure he wasn’t talking about condoms?
It is in the context of a guy singing. The next line is something like “if it was a dog that had howled thus, he’d have shot him”
I’m not a scientist, but I think it is because humans like patterns, which is what music is. What makes random banging and loud noises annoying and how is that different from music? I think the answer is that music has patterns. What makes people like or hate different types of music is that they like one pattern over another.
I don’t. And I don’t understand why I’m the only one who just in general would rather hear silence then music.
I’ve met 2 people like that, you’re not alone! I love music but y’all are valid
I too like silence, then music, when the album I’m listening to intended to have a break between songs.
However, if the songs’ tracks are meant to fade from one to the next without a break, it’s annoying and distracting if I can hear a silence between them, however small – even just a click – then music.
I’m the same. I don’t listen to music, ever. It does nothing for me (except hurting my ears if it’s medium or high volume, annoying me, stressing me out if it’s fast, and preventing me from understanding spoken words.). There’s something weird in my brain, I think.
There is a gremlin in your brain, textbook synonym here.
Don’t animals also “understand” music to some extent and seem to enjoy it?
It’s the breaking of the patterns that sound good in music, but only in specific ways. Other ways sound discordant.
I like a lot of different music and I also like harsh noise, when it’s adventurous like Merzbow. It sounds discordant, but it sounds great and I enjoy listening to it. Maybe you should go more fundamental, “why do we humans like information entropy” or something like that.
The answer is we don’t know unfortunately. I dont think scientists have found a definitive answer on this one. The theory tho is that it had some evolutionary benefit in the past, but we dont know why that would be either.
Why do we like reading? It’s just arbitrary characters, really, in a sequence.
This discounts so many quantitative and absolute qualities of music.
My pet theory is that our brain rewards us for interpreting clues correctly, because this is crucial for survival. And patterns make it easy to do this interpretation correctly, therefore triggering the reward system frequently.
But if it is too easy to interpret a pattern correctly, the reward will be lessened, because the challenge you succeeded in was lesser. And it was also crucial to survival to fade out patterns which don’t change, so that e.g. the wind brushing through leaves doesn’t drown out the noises from a predator approaching.
That’s why patterns which don’t change every so often stop triggering the reward system and therefore bore us.
I think all experience of art, enjoyable for us or not, is something the brain adheres to because it is unlike nature. Nature tries to all blend together in a very loose way. We categorize many things like animals, land, the stars… but it all is really just one thing. Art is the ability to purposefully change that continuity with intent. To see something sitting there, doing nothing, and you feel the desire to arrange it in some way.
Music is no different. We realized sound was one of our senses and most of nature’s songs are chaotic, outside the rare particularly talented bird.
We’ve found ways to harness sound into whatever we found is most pleasing. And it seems what it pleasing is different from one person to the next, but also shares ground through the instruments we use.
I imagine when we first started rhythmically hitting sticks on rocks, it wasn’t long before we had an arrangement of our favorite sticks and rocks to hit together. And we just kept getting more creative from there.
Okay, but why do we love art of nature then? If you go further, some people love hyper-realistic art of nature, while others prefer surrealistic or abstractionist/minimalist stylized art of nature. If we talk about scale between absolute chaos and absolute order, art covers it all.
I think when we capture nature in a hyper-realistic way, the takeaway is control. We get to choose exactly what is included and what is not. It’s also about admiring the process that goes into it. We’re able to comprehend the work that went into making that possible. It also means that you get to stop time in the piece. You’re seeing that very specific part of reality that artist wanted you to see.
Cause it makes me feel funny and I like it duh
Please provide a synopsis of what the link presents. When you throw up a youtube link, we don’t know what we’re getting until we get it.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
I don’t know anything about specifics, or actual explanations, but I once heard it said that Art decorates space and music decorates time.