I've had a theory for a while now that music is related to Kolmogorov complexity, or in other words how compressible it is. Random noise that we find unpleasant is very incompressible. On the other hand, simple sound patterns that we find boring such as Do Re Mi is very compressible. What we call music sits in the middle, and is maximizing the amount of signal. In this way, we can view humans as information seeking machines, which is why we like music.
I don't know. I'm inclined to think that it's more visceral. At least a good part of its appeal, and the oldest. There's the famous example of slaughterhouses using calm, predictable music and consonant harmonies to calm their animals.
It is this way with all art. If you ask someone to describe a work which is “good art” or “well designed”, it usually takes longer to describe than things which are considered too simple (easily compressed) and also longer to describe than things which are considered too random (easily compressed). But not all things which take this Goldilocks amount of words to describe are considered well designed, just some of them. So art is also more than that.
I've read a paper which had a similar theory - music is a reward hack for the brain - the brain is a prediction machine, and it gets rewarded when it correctly predicts stuff. Music is highly predictable due to it's rhythmic mathematical structure, thus very easy to predict, with a lot of content to predict (hundreds of events per minute) thus you get a lot of reward from it.
As an example, EDM music is highly predictable, and highly popular.
African tribal drum music is also highly predictable, while also being complex in poly-rhythmic ways.
> and it gets rewarded when it correctly predicts stuff.
Yet it's way more fun if the music evolves and takes twists you don't expected. I actually get quite aggressive from to predictable music, basically most modern pop music, but I guess that's highly subjective. For me good music must be intellectual exhaustive.
Interesting. I think there is a relationship to expectations/predictability but we also enjoy subversion of those expectations like syncopation in a second verse or bridges, etc.
Isn't the easier explanation that music/sound/rhythms has a social function for much of human history, and since humans are social creatures, we find safety and meaning in such sounds?
This reminded me of how I keep hearing that major doesn't really sound happy, and minor doesn't really sound sad, it's purely cultural. (But Bouba does really sound round... :)
That doesn't sound right to me, but in that case maybe the speech thing is cultural too? It would be interesting to test it in other cultures. (Preferably ones that haven't been exposed to western music, if there still is such a thing!)
Otherwise unspecified "major chords" are generally assumed to be major triads, and thus not tetrachords at all, which require four notes. I tried finding this section in the sources, but I couldn't find it. I wonder what's meant by this. Could it really mean that major triads are less pleasant than all tetrachords? That's surprising, since many tetrachords contain major triads.
> Major chords (which is what people who grew up hearing Western music tend to rate as positive), the Kalash instead describe as “strange,” rating them as less pleasant to listen to than “the most dissonant [of] all the possible tetrachords possible within the octave”.
"Tetrachord" typically refers to a series of four notes separated by a perfect fourth, not simultaneous notes, coming out of the music theory of the ancient Greeks. Although that may not be the intended meaning here.
The quote is not calling a major chords a tetrachord; it's comparing major chords to the set of tetrachords (whatever the quoted person has in mind; the linked paper isn't immediately accessible to me), despite not being a member.
i, like the author, tend to find the theories of how/why music works unsatisfactory. in a sense, it has to be some kind of side-effect of capabilities that evolved via natural selection, but i find explanations for visual art operating that way more satisfying than music operating that way. music seems to be better analogized to the written word. we can engage with the written word "visually" (eg graffiti) but most of the time we don't quite do that -- what we do (stare at pieces of paper with funny squiggles in them and hallucinate) is far more abstract. music seems to be like that, too.
This first song is pretty western for Chinese music even if it is made by someone from China, which I am assuming it is I have no idea. Also this playslist has a lot of non-Chinese music in it, there's a Final Fantasy song for example, and likely quite a bit of AI generated music. I am not an expert in Chinese music but this doesn't seem very representative. I have a feeling this playlist makes you feel those ways because that was the feeling the person who put this together was going for, it just happens to have some songs from Chinese artists and was probably put together by someone who is Chinese.
It does not seem to be traditional Chinese music, at least. Or at least my understanding was that the major-minor tonality you can hear in the linked piece did not play a (any?) role in traditional Chinese music.
The question is: do the bees see music and art in their structures. I doubt it. One of the defining characteristics of music and art is that they have no obvious direct connection to reproductive fitness.
If you found Schopenhauer's thoughts on it interesting, I'd recommend giving The Birth of Tragedy a read to see where a young Nietzsche took it, relating it to poetry.
For real, it's about the only thing that reliably causes ego dissolution and bliss for me. And I've spent decades with various meditation practices. Nothing beats music.
I have no clue how common an experience this is, but I quite literally get goosebumps when listening to music sometimes if it inspires strong enough emotion for me. I mentioned this to my friend who I played in a band with once, and later when we were listening to something I really liked I held up my arm to show him, and he was shocked because I guess he thought I did not mean literally literally. The hair on my arms genuinely stands up at the end and produces goosebumps purely because of what I feel when listening to music that resonates strongly enough with me; some sections of some songs produce it fairly reliably if I haven't listened to it recently.
This happens to me all the time! I'll be in the car with my wife and a song I really like will come up, and the section hits and I'll say "Goosebumps!" and show her my arm. She also did not believe me until I physically showed her.
They are often songs that are attached to important emotional events in my life, sure, but there are also songs that come out of nowhere and still give me goosebumps. Some things are just that moving!
Same for me; the frisson at particular passages of a song or piece is almost completely predictable. There might be a few dozen such passages for me; I haven't really thought about it.
It's weird cause there's this whole set of things (favorite bands/live shows/albums/etc) that most people are really into and care a lot about and it's a big absence in my life.
This reminds me of when I did ketamine therapy. For some reason, the ONLY tether to reality that stayed intact during the k-hole was the ambient drones/loops coming through the headphones. Even during the experience I found this insane. Why should that one particular sense be carried through when everything else was left so far behind as to feel incomprehensibly alien?
Music is not "pure abstraction" detached from concrete reality. Music has objective properties communicated via audible medium, and what's more, of a quantitative nature. It expresses order. The more beautiful music is, the more integrity, proportion, and clarity it has.
Indeed, we might say music moves our senses and through them shifts our passions; our intellects through expressed order and pattern which we abstract from it; and our wills by appealing to our desire for beauty. Accordingly, we can rank music based on where the effect is greatest. Does it appeal more to the carnal or to the higher faculties?
That neurons play a role is not at odds with the above. It is fallacious to lump the existence of neurons and their role in human apprehension of reality with some kind of intellectually poor metaphysical stance like materialism.
I was intrigued by your (philosophical) comment and I'm interested in what kind of music you usually listen to.
My thoughts:
> Music has objective properties communicated via audible medium, and what's more, of a quantitative nature.
I would argue that this is probably a western-classical view of music. Music can be quantified/measured, but those numbers are just a tiny part of the listening experience.
> It expresses order.
Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that "maximum order" is the most pleasing one. Expectation/resolution etc. may be important, but what if for example a tune does not resolve to expectations? Is it automatically "bad music"?
> The more beautiful music is, the more integrity, proportion, and clarity it has.
Beauty is in the eye (or maybe better in this case - the ear) of the beholder. And for me personally beauty isn't necessarily clarity. I like dissonance in music, maybe some atonality, quarter tones/microtonality, irregular rhythms and polyrhythms etc. These things somewhat violate the aesthetic value (beauty) and that is what makes it more interesting, at least to me.
Just my 2p, I'd be happy to hear your point of view :)
I don't know that it risks killing it, but I generally agree with your sentiment. Why can't we just be satisfied with the fact that we enjoy it? Why do we need an explanation for everything? We've removed so much mystery and awe from the every day already...
Well don't read anything related to music analysis, or something I discovered this week https://cklixx.people.wm.edu/teaching/math400/Chris.pdf
or for some books : "Exploring Musical Spaces. A Synthesis of Mathematical Approaches" or "Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformation"
I don't really experience it with music, because there it just makes me understand it better and create it, but I used to like reading before we started dissecting it in school, so I can see how it can be similar for people with other pleasurable experiences, like music or a painting.
As an example, EDM music is highly predictable, and highly popular.
African tribal drum music is also highly predictable, while also being complex in poly-rhythmic ways.
Yet it's way more fun if the music evolves and takes twists you don't expected. I actually get quite aggressive from to predictable music, basically most modern pop music, but I guess that's highly subjective. For me good music must be intellectual exhaustive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Injection_locking
The minor third communicates sadness in speech, mirroring its use in music
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20515223/
This reminded me of how I keep hearing that major doesn't really sound happy, and minor doesn't really sound sad, it's purely cultural. (But Bouba does really sound round... :)
That doesn't sound right to me, but in that case maybe the speech thing is cultural too? It would be interesting to test it in other cultures. (Preferably ones that haven't been exposed to western music, if there still is such a thing!)
So we just kinda pretend that it exactly equals 19.
> Major chords (which is what people who grew up hearing Western music tend to rate as positive), the Kalash instead describe as “strange,” rating them as less pleasant to listen to than “the most dissonant [of] all the possible tetrachords possible within the octave”.
The quote is not calling a major chords a tetrachord; it's comparing major chords to the set of tetrachords (whatever the quoted person has in mind; the linked paper isn't immediately accessible to me), despite not being a member.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/15/writers-on-music/
Cann't say something more, but it just made me a bit sad, and feel some nostalgia, and find how times flies over the years
Share the link below:
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=sD115Li2Jl8&si=reD6a3Cjvt3...
That's part of the premise of the movie "The History of Future Folk".
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2245195/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2oKGSmr9oo
Bridge of Waves: What music is and how listening to it changes the world, by W.A. Mathieu, is a sound book about how music is possible.
They are often songs that are attached to important emotional events in my life, sure, but there are also songs that come out of nowhere and still give me goosebumps. Some things are just that moving!
It's weird cause there's this whole set of things (favorite bands/live shows/albums/etc) that most people are really into and care a lot about and it's a big absence in my life.
Indeed, we might say music moves our senses and through them shifts our passions; our intellects through expressed order and pattern which we abstract from it; and our wills by appealing to our desire for beauty. Accordingly, we can rank music based on where the effect is greatest. Does it appeal more to the carnal or to the higher faculties?
That neurons play a role is not at odds with the above. It is fallacious to lump the existence of neurons and their role in human apprehension of reality with some kind of intellectually poor metaphysical stance like materialism.
My thoughts:
> Music has objective properties communicated via audible medium, and what's more, of a quantitative nature.
I would argue that this is probably a western-classical view of music. Music can be quantified/measured, but those numbers are just a tiny part of the listening experience.
> It expresses order.
Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that "maximum order" is the most pleasing one. Expectation/resolution etc. may be important, but what if for example a tune does not resolve to expectations? Is it automatically "bad music"?
> The more beautiful music is, the more integrity, proportion, and clarity it has.
Beauty is in the eye (or maybe better in this case - the ear) of the beholder. And for me personally beauty isn't necessarily clarity. I like dissonance in music, maybe some atonality, quarter tones/microtonality, irregular rhythms and polyrhythms etc. These things somewhat violate the aesthetic value (beauty) and that is what makes it more interesting, at least to me.
Just my 2p, I'd be happy to hear your point of view :)