Whether you're a scientist or a musician, there's something semi-sacrilegious about studying the science of music. Music is spiritual, it's secretive, it's a folk art encompassing amateurs and experts alike. It's not supposed to be a bunch of cold hard math or esoteric entropic distribution matrices, that kind of takes the fun out of it. On the other hand, it's irresistible to think you could find laws of human behavior hiding in there, even laws of the universe!
Music found to cause similar emotions and bodily sensations across cultures
Jan 2024, phys.org
- Happy and danceable music was felt in the arms and legs
- Tender and sad music was felt in the chest
- Music with a clear beat was found happy and danceable
- Dissonance in music was associated with aggressiveness
via University of Turku and University of Aalto in Finland and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China: Vesa Putkinen et al, Bodily maps of musical sensations across cultures, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2308859121
Mostly unrelated image credit: AI Art - Graffiti Typography - 2024 And is that f*cking "pinterest watermark"??
Live music emotionally moves us more than streamed music, show researchers
Feb 2024, phys.org
- Live performances trigger a stronger emotional response than listening to music from a device.
- Concerts connect performers with their audience, which may also have to do with evolutionary factors.
- A pianist changed the live music he or she was playing to intensify the emotional reactions in the amygdala.
- Researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to measure the activity in the amygdala of 27 listeners as well as the performer in real time.
- Based on these measurements, the pianist then immediately adapted his performance to intensify the audience's emotions further.
- Listeners were played a recording of the same music performed by the same musician but without the neurofeedback loop.
- Pleasant and unpleasant emotions performed as live music elicited much higher and more consistent activity in the amygdala than recorded music.
- The live performance also stimulated a more active exchange of information in the whole brain, which points to strong emotional processing in the affective and cognitive parts of the brain.
- A strong synchronization between subjective emotional experience and the auditory brain system was only observed when the audience was listening to the live performance.
- Only live music showed a strong and positive coupling between features of the musical performance and brain activity.
via University of Zurich: Trost, Wiebke et al, Live music stimulates the affective brain and emotionally entrains listeners in real time, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2024). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2316306121.
Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive since 1980, study finds
Mar 2024, phys.org
They analyzed the lyrics of 12,000 English-language rap, country, pop, R&B, and rock songs (2,400 songs per genre) released between 1980 and 2020, with additional analyses of 12,000 song lyrics on the online song lyric platform Genius:
- Lyrics have become simpler and easier to understand over time
- The number of different words used within songs has decreased
- The number of words with three or more syllables has increased in rap songs since 1980
- General increases in the repetitiveness of lyrics may have led to lyrics becoming simpler overall
- Lyrics have tended to become more emotional and personal over time
- Both emotionally positive and negative words increased in rap songs
- Emotionally negative lyrics increased for R&B, pop and country songs
- All genres showed an increase in the use of anger-related words
- The lyrics of older rock songs tend to be viewed more than those of newer rock songs
- The lyrics of newer country songs tend to be viewed more than those of older country songs
via Department of Music Pedagogy at Nuremberg University of Music, Department of Computer Science at University of Innsbruck, Human-centered AI Group at Linz Institute of Technology, Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence: Eva Zangerle, Song lyrics have become simpler and more repetitive over the last five decades, Scientific Reports (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-55742-x.
Why some types of music make people want to dance more than others
Mar 2024, phys.org
They discovered what they believe to be the mechanism in the brain that controls the desire to dance when prompted by music.60 adult volunteers listened to 12 melodies with different degrees of syncopation and rated each based on their desire to get up and dance.They found that melodies with a medium degree of syncopation caused the strongest desire to dance.29 adults wore magnetoencephalography helmets while they listened to different kinds of music.The researchers found that the auditory cortex primarily focused on rhythm, while the dorsal auditory pathway appeared to match the rhythm to the beat.This, the researchers suggest, indicates that the music-prompted desire to dance likely happens within that pathway, from which it is then passed on to motor areas that act on the impulse.Final thought - The researchers suggest their work cumulatively shows that the sudden desire to dance prompted by music with a medium amount of syncopation is the brain's attempt to anticipate beats among the syncopation — it causes the body to literally lean forward repeatedly. (You mean like Rain Man?)
via Aix Marseille Université in France and the University of Connecticut: Arnaud Zalta et al, Neural dynamics of predictive timing and motor engagement in music listening, Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adi2525
Body mapping links responses to music with degree of uncertainty and surprise
Apr 2024, phys.org
Researchers asked 527 participants to map where they felt sensations in their bodies and the emotions they had while listening to 92 unique chord progressions with varying degrees of uncertainty and surprise."Prediction and uncertainty affect heart and abdominal sensations"
- Certain chord progressions sparked sensations in the heart while others were felt more in the stomach
- Certain chords evoked aesthetic appreciation, leading to a decline in negative emotions of awkwardness and anxiety
- More predictable chord progressions brought on feelings of calmness, relief, satisfaction, nostalgia, and empathy
I wonder what chord progressions they're looking at, but they created an algorithm for chord progression, and as an untrained musician, it doesn't translate for me, although someone with a better understanding might get it.
Here's the algorithm:
These chord progressions were generated using a statistical-learning model to compute the Shannon information content and entropy, based on transitional probabilities of each chord using a corpus of 890 pop songs from the US Billboard.
Here's two samples of their chord progressions:
(1) sLuL-sLuL sequence (Figure 1A) representing the condition where the 1st–3rd chords have low surprise and uncertainty and the 4th chord has low surprise and uncertainty.(2) sLuL-sHuL sequence (Figure 1B) representing the condition where the 1st-3rd chords have low surprise and uncertainty and the 4th chord has high surprise and low uncertainty.
(There are 8 progressions in total, with variations on this theme)
On entropy, from the paper itself:
Entropy gauges the perceptual uncertainty a listener feels in predicting an “upcoming” chord based on prior chords, while information content quantifies the surprise experienced upon hearing the actual chord.
^This is the old Anatomy of a Joke formula.
via University of Tokyo: Bodily Maps of Uncertainty and Surprise in Musical Chord Progression and the Underlying Emotional Response, iScience (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.109498.
Sad music study tests the direct effect hypothesis of 'pleasurable negative emotion'
Apr 2024, phys.org
Yeah this is weird
Participants were asked to imagine if their sadness could be "removed" when listening to the music - which the majority self-reported they could do."We know that many people are quite apt when it comes to thought experiments, so it's a reasonable approach to use and, at worst, it should produce no results"After the imagined removal of sadness, participants were asked if they liked the piece of music any differently: 82% said that removing the sadness reduced their enjoyment of the music."Experiencing a wide range of emotions in a more or less safe environment could help us learn how to deal with what we encounter in the world.""Previous studies refer to an 'indirect effect hypothesis,' which means that people may experience sadness, but it is something else they enjoy - being moved."
via University of New South Wales: Emery Schubert et al, Liking music with and without sadness: Testing the direct effect hypothesis of pleasurable negative emotion, PLOS ONE (2024). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299115
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