Music is Just Organized Noise
July 15, 2016 3:29 AM Subscribe
Culture, not biology, decides the difference between music and noise. “Consonance seems like such a simple phenomenon, and in Western music there’s strong supposition that it’s biological... But this study suggests culture is more important than many people acknowledge.” Study originally published in Nature.
I heard about this on the radio the other day - interesting! I’m reminded of the article from last year about Why Pygmies Aren't Scared By The ‘Psycho’ Theme.
posted by misteraitch at 3:46 AM on July 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by misteraitch at 3:46 AM on July 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
I guess none of the listeners to "Western music" surveyed were fans of jazz or metal...
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:12 AM on July 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by eustacescrubb at 4:12 AM on July 15, 2016 [6 favorites]
Interesting research, though I'd quibble that it's not really about noise but about dissonance. Sure, when people don't like music they call it "noise", but they don't mean that literally, just like when people say food tastes like shit they don't mean it literally tastes like feces. I suspect if you played the Tsimane some Merzbow, they would find it to be noise. Also, things can be noise and music at the same time (like Merzbow).
But that's not a dig on the research, which is pretty darn interesting, just on science reporting being science reporting (while I can't read the Nature article, the abstract doesn't use the word "noise" even once).
posted by Bugbread at 4:17 AM on July 15, 2016
But that's not a dig on the research, which is pretty darn interesting, just on science reporting being science reporting (while I can't read the Nature article, the abstract doesn't use the word "noise" even once).
posted by Bugbread at 4:17 AM on July 15, 2016
FTA: “So many scientists argue biological reasons for consonance, but the music community believes it’s a cultural invention.”
That's not really my experience of the music community, but OK. If anything science (in the form of psychoacoustic studies) is more consistently open minded about the role and perception of dissonance than music theory. For example, the "pleasantness" of an interval changes with how long you listen to it, where a listener exposed to a longer drone will be more open minded about enjoying dissonance (as in, the biological dissonance response, a specific sensation caused by ambiguous signals within a critical band).
posted by idiopath at 5:09 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
That's not really my experience of the music community, but OK. If anything science (in the form of psychoacoustic studies) is more consistently open minded about the role and perception of dissonance than music theory. For example, the "pleasantness" of an interval changes with how long you listen to it, where a listener exposed to a longer drone will be more open minded about enjoying dissonance (as in, the biological dissonance response, a specific sensation caused by ambiguous signals within a critical band).
posted by idiopath at 5:09 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I guess none of the listeners to "Western music" surveyed were fans of jazz or metal...
Mind you, even Western music from before the Renaissance sounds a bit strange.
posted by sukeban at 5:18 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Mind you, even Western music from before the Renaissance sounds a bit strange.
posted by sukeban at 5:18 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
My favorite band still sucks, according to MIT
posted by chavenet at 5:40 AM on July 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 5:40 AM on July 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
Thank-you for this ... As a musician and nerd this is something I've often wondered about!
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:09 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by ZenMasterThis at 6:09 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yeah, it's not the best writeup, and we'll need to do a lot more research before we can make any definitive statements about the matter – but it's interesting.
I listen to a lot of unconventional and experimental music. Some of the music that I think is quite beautiful is often described as "noise" (or similar) by other folks. On the other hand, much of the popular music that I hear in grocery stores, etc. often sounds like noise to me – I mean, I can perceive the rhythmic and harmonic structures, but they are abrasive and unpleasant to my ear. So I wouldn't be surprised if fundamental musical preferences are a lot more culturally determined than we sometimes suppose – if someone like me, who is very much a Westerner, can develop an appreciation (and even preference) for alternate musical norms via exposure, then...
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:15 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
I listen to a lot of unconventional and experimental music. Some of the music that I think is quite beautiful is often described as "noise" (or similar) by other folks. On the other hand, much of the popular music that I hear in grocery stores, etc. often sounds like noise to me – I mean, I can perceive the rhythmic and harmonic structures, but they are abrasive and unpleasant to my ear. So I wouldn't be surprised if fundamental musical preferences are a lot more culturally determined than we sometimes suppose – if someone like me, who is very much a Westerner, can develop an appreciation (and even preference) for alternate musical norms via exposure, then...
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:15 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
I can perceive the rhythmic and harmonic structures, but they are abrasive and unpleasant to my ear.
Autotune guarantees consonance, and autotune sucks.
posted by flabdablet at 6:22 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Autotune guarantees consonance, and autotune sucks.
posted by flabdablet at 6:22 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
A possible corrollary: if exposure and education can change how we experience music, then lack of musical education or limited variety of music exposure can be seen as a form of neglect.
posted by idiopath at 6:30 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 6:30 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Arrrrrgh.
'Culture' does not 'decide' anything. Culture is an abstraction from human behaviour. An abstraction from human behaviour cannot decide human behaviour; that would be circular. Science communicators owe it to us to stop reifying culture just because it makes an easy headline. It might sound a bit pedantic in the context of this study, but this reification is what makes otherwise very smart people go looking for cultural explanations for things where none exist—like Malcolm Gladwell deciding that a handful of aviation incidents could be put down to Korean culture. As the writer in that link says, 'culturalism destroys individual agency. Under culturalism, a huge group of individuals are rendered into a homogeneous mass of automatons'.
Yes. When we say that 'culture decides', we risk falling into an essentialist, other-ising view of the people in those 'cultures'. Often this is tinged with shades of exotification, orientalism (because writers loooove doing this with e.g. 'Confucian culture') or just plain racism. Just write 'the difference between music and noise is understood differently by different groups of people' unless you have a more specific reason why, which, oh look, 'The Tsimane tribe doesn’t play music in groups, and thus, does not create multi-tonal harmonies. This habit allowed their ear to develop without the predilection for consonance'. Why was this story not headlined 'Whether you play music in groups determines where you draw the line between music and noise'? It's a more interesting headline too, I think, but writers / subeditors / whoever cannot resist the easy 'culture' bait. Well, they need to do better.
/rant
posted by Panthalassa at 6:40 AM on July 15, 2016 [13 favorites]
'Culture' does not 'decide' anything. Culture is an abstraction from human behaviour. An abstraction from human behaviour cannot decide human behaviour; that would be circular. Science communicators owe it to us to stop reifying culture just because it makes an easy headline. It might sound a bit pedantic in the context of this study, but this reification is what makes otherwise very smart people go looking for cultural explanations for things where none exist—like Malcolm Gladwell deciding that a handful of aviation incidents could be put down to Korean culture. As the writer in that link says, 'culturalism destroys individual agency. Under culturalism, a huge group of individuals are rendered into a homogeneous mass of automatons'.
Yes. When we say that 'culture decides', we risk falling into an essentialist, other-ising view of the people in those 'cultures'. Often this is tinged with shades of exotification, orientalism (because writers loooove doing this with e.g. 'Confucian culture') or just plain racism. Just write 'the difference between music and noise is understood differently by different groups of people' unless you have a more specific reason why, which, oh look, 'The Tsimane tribe doesn’t play music in groups, and thus, does not create multi-tonal harmonies. This habit allowed their ear to develop without the predilection for consonance'. Why was this story not headlined 'Whether you play music in groups determines where you draw the line between music and noise'? It's a more interesting headline too, I think, but writers / subeditors / whoever cannot resist the easy 'culture' bait. Well, they need to do better.
/rant
posted by Panthalassa at 6:40 AM on July 15, 2016 [13 favorites]
Culture may not decide, but it certainly does dictate.
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:51 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 6:51 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Culture is an abstraction from human behaviour. An abstraction from human behaviour cannot decide human behaviour; that would be circular.
But there's a feedback loop. Humans express cultural ideas through their actions – and then other humans are exposed to those expressions (and therefore the underlying ideas), which helps to shape their own thinking, perceptions, valuations, etc.
It's obviously not 100% deterministic – few things are in the humanities, and individuals can and do deviate from the norms of their own cultures – but cultural influence is obviously an important part of the picture. Musical systems are similar to languages, in that you learn to "understand" different grammars through exposure.
If I may risk stretching the analogy, this is why people commenting on unfamiliar genres often say things like "it all sounds the same to me". Well, Korean all sounds the same to me, too – but that's only because I don't understand the language well enough to tell the difference between a political diatribe and a love poem (let alone more subtle gradations of meaning).
Why was this story not headlined 'Whether you play music in groups determines where you draw the line between music and noise'?
Well, even that doesn't accurately describe the findings of the study – the researchers were evaluating preferences for harmonic consonance vs. dissonance, not for "noise" (whatever that means), and it doesn't sound like they even tried to isolate "a musical culture of playing in groups" vs. "a musical culture of playing solo" as a possible causative factor.
But, yes: headlines are generally written by editors, and (especially on the web) they're written to attract clicks (even from relatively distinguished outlets such as NPR). It's one of many problems with popular science reporting, which is generally awful. It won't change until the incentives that drive this kind of journalism change.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:57 AM on July 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
But there's a feedback loop. Humans express cultural ideas through their actions – and then other humans are exposed to those expressions (and therefore the underlying ideas), which helps to shape their own thinking, perceptions, valuations, etc.
It's obviously not 100% deterministic – few things are in the humanities, and individuals can and do deviate from the norms of their own cultures – but cultural influence is obviously an important part of the picture. Musical systems are similar to languages, in that you learn to "understand" different grammars through exposure.
If I may risk stretching the analogy, this is why people commenting on unfamiliar genres often say things like "it all sounds the same to me". Well, Korean all sounds the same to me, too – but that's only because I don't understand the language well enough to tell the difference between a political diatribe and a love poem (let alone more subtle gradations of meaning).
Why was this story not headlined 'Whether you play music in groups determines where you draw the line between music and noise'?
Well, even that doesn't accurately describe the findings of the study – the researchers were evaluating preferences for harmonic consonance vs. dissonance, not for "noise" (whatever that means), and it doesn't sound like they even tried to isolate "a musical culture of playing in groups" vs. "a musical culture of playing solo" as a possible causative factor.
But, yes: headlines are generally written by editors, and (especially on the web) they're written to attract clicks (even from relatively distinguished outlets such as NPR). It's one of many problems with popular science reporting, which is generally awful. It won't change until the incentives that drive this kind of journalism change.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 6:57 AM on July 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
Culture isn't determinative. There are always individuals here and there who stubbornly insist on not giving in completely or to actively challenging cultural norms, but it's absurd to ignore the massive role peer pressure and the well documented strong tendency of humans to learn by rote imitation have in shaping beliefs, behaviors, and experiences at the individual level.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:58 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by saulgoodman at 6:58 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
And what escape from the potato planet said: it's not circular because culture is a macro phenomenon. Individual human behavior operates at a lower level of organization/abstraction. It's a strange loop type thing, like Hofstader wrote about.
posted by saulgoodman at 7:01 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by saulgoodman at 7:01 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Sounds are made for spaces were people gather, and in those spaces culture happens.
blues was born in the juke joints, and borrowed from the trains snuffing outside. It was made to be played in small clubs. Rock and roll, the same. Arena rock sounds like it was made to mean things to extremely large crowds. Orchestra, Chamber music, monastic chanting, african polyrhythm, on and on, were made for particular spaces.
It's easy to forget that in the age of the .mp3, but music has a spatial context. So i would think that the meaning that music has is usually defined by a particular space where the culture is developed.
posted by eustatic at 7:20 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
blues was born in the juke joints, and borrowed from the trains snuffing outside. It was made to be played in small clubs. Rock and roll, the same. Arena rock sounds like it was made to mean things to extremely large crowds. Orchestra, Chamber music, monastic chanting, african polyrhythm, on and on, were made for particular spaces.
It's easy to forget that in the age of the .mp3, but music has a spatial context. So i would think that the meaning that music has is usually defined by a particular space where the culture is developed.
posted by eustatic at 7:20 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
Slight tangent but this amusing drama about the first performance of Beethoven's Third Symphony includes the memorable quote "It's an exciting noise, but is it music?"
posted by Segundus at 7:20 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Segundus at 7:20 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
This could be fascinating, but I really tend to take any study working with what researchers claim are "a native Amazonian society with minimal exposure to Western culture," especially trying to use these people as kind of blank state non-culture humans, as having a very high chance of being complete shenanigans, either on the part of the researchers or the people being researched.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:27 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:27 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
"non-culture" is self evidently bullshit, unexposed to a specific well known culture is different. But one wonders if it wouldn't suffice to play gamelan for US undergrads and verify that they recognized none of the emotional content.
posted by idiopath at 7:39 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 7:39 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
The tritone is composed of the first and fourth notes of a major scale, with the latter being sharp. Rarely used in western music, it’s considered one of the most dissonant tones. The Tsimane tribe rated this tone as pleasurable, while western listeners rejected it outright.
Am I missing something? The tritone is all over western music as part of the dominant 7th. In pop/rock/blues it becomes stripped of functional harmony and is used for non-structural effect. Here are the Beatles from 1964 playing a song with the tritone practically smashing your face in for the first three chords in isolation, and then continuing throughout the harmonic fabric of the entire song. The song has 'pleasure' as its explicit theme too.
posted by Coda Tronca at 7:42 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
Am I missing something? The tritone is all over western music as part of the dominant 7th. In pop/rock/blues it becomes stripped of functional harmony and is used for non-structural effect. Here are the Beatles from 1964 playing a song with the tritone practically smashing your face in for the first three chords in isolation, and then continuing throughout the harmonic fabric of the entire song. The song has 'pleasure' as its explicit theme too.
posted by Coda Tronca at 7:42 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
The Tsimane tribe doesn’t play music in groups, and thus, does not create multi-tonal harmonies.
Doesn't a single musician playing on a multi-stringed instrument create multi-tonal harmonies? Is the implication here that harmonic instrumental music only follows from a previous tradition of vocal harmony created by group singing?
It's also interesting that a group that lives in the Western hemisphere and creates its own music is described as having "limited access to Western music." I understand that "Western" here is used to mean "European-influenced," but I do think it's ironic, especially since blues, jazz and rock would be understood and Western music despite the enormous influence of African culture in shaping them, while the music of the Tsimane, apparently developed by individuals in the Western hemisphere with "limited access" to anything outside it is not.
posted by layceepee at 7:44 AM on July 15, 2016
Doesn't a single musician playing on a multi-stringed instrument create multi-tonal harmonies? Is the implication here that harmonic instrumental music only follows from a previous tradition of vocal harmony created by group singing?
It's also interesting that a group that lives in the Western hemisphere and creates its own music is described as having "limited access to Western music." I understand that "Western" here is used to mean "European-influenced," but I do think it's ironic, especially since blues, jazz and rock would be understood and Western music despite the enormous influence of African culture in shaping them, while the music of the Tsimane, apparently developed by individuals in the Western hemisphere with "limited access" to anything outside it is not.
posted by layceepee at 7:44 AM on July 15, 2016
The findings, published today in Nature, may end longstanding arguments over whether or not musical preference is biological.
This is just terrible, terrible science writing. Oh for fuck's sake they're not going "end arguments" or "settle" anything. That's not what research does.
posted by desuetude at 7:46 AM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
This is just terrible, terrible science writing. Oh for fuck's sake they're not going "end arguments" or "settle" anything. That's not what research does.
posted by desuetude at 7:46 AM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
Am I missing something? The tritone is all over western music as part of the dominant 7th
I'm sure they meant de-contextualized from a broader harmonic structure. The tritone is all over western music but primarily only within a couple particular harmonies, of which it is only a part. My guess is that they mean the interval isolated.
posted by Lutoslawski at 7:47 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I'm sure they meant de-contextualized from a broader harmonic structure. The tritone is all over western music but primarily only within a couple particular harmonies, of which it is only a part. My guess is that they mean the interval isolated.
posted by Lutoslawski at 7:47 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Another great example to study this phenomenon without othering the subjects: play sacred harp recordings to people who have not participated in shape note.
posted by idiopath at 7:48 AM on July 15, 2016
posted by idiopath at 7:48 AM on July 15, 2016
It's easy to forget that in the age of the .mp3, but music has a spatial context. So i would think that the meaning that music has is usually defined by a particular space where the culture is developed.
...and that's both a literal space, and the accompanying cultural space (which is obviously part of your meaning, but I think it's worth making explicit).
As with language, the specific symbols that comprise a given musical system are relatively arbitrary. Not entirely arbitrary – for example, it seems reasonable to suppose that we're biologically predisposed to respond to busy, kinetic music with excited emotional states. But that aside, there's no particular reason that a blues scale played on an electric guitar should have the particular meaning that it does, except that those were the instruments and techniques available (culturally and materially) to the musicians who invented the form.
And, like the elements of language, the elements of music are constantly evolving, interbreeding, getting borrowed in new contexts, etc. That in itself demonstrates that our understanding of those symbols is plastic.
(There are even those who say that music evokes such deep emotional responses because it emulates the cadence of the human voice. I don't know whether that's backed by research, but it's an interesting idea – and it could mean that this notion of "musical forms as languages" is more than just a metaphor.)
This raises an interesting question: now that we consume so much of our music in private, devoid of any spatial (or even cultural) context, what does that bode for the future of music? How do we agree on the "meaning" of a new genre or technique, absent any shared experience or context for it? Obviously, we still aren't experiencing new music entirely in a vacuum – even online, we can still share and compare our reactions to it, and negotiate the process of defining its semiotics that way. But it does seem like a significant shift in the way that meaning is synthesized on a collective level.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
...and that's both a literal space, and the accompanying cultural space (which is obviously part of your meaning, but I think it's worth making explicit).
As with language, the specific symbols that comprise a given musical system are relatively arbitrary. Not entirely arbitrary – for example, it seems reasonable to suppose that we're biologically predisposed to respond to busy, kinetic music with excited emotional states. But that aside, there's no particular reason that a blues scale played on an electric guitar should have the particular meaning that it does, except that those were the instruments and techniques available (culturally and materially) to the musicians who invented the form.
And, like the elements of language, the elements of music are constantly evolving, interbreeding, getting borrowed in new contexts, etc. That in itself demonstrates that our understanding of those symbols is plastic.
(There are even those who say that music evokes such deep emotional responses because it emulates the cadence of the human voice. I don't know whether that's backed by research, but it's an interesting idea – and it could mean that this notion of "musical forms as languages" is more than just a metaphor.)
This raises an interesting question: now that we consume so much of our music in private, devoid of any spatial (or even cultural) context, what does that bode for the future of music? How do we agree on the "meaning" of a new genre or technique, absent any shared experience or context for it? Obviously, we still aren't experiencing new music entirely in a vacuum – even online, we can still share and compare our reactions to it, and negotiate the process of defining its semiotics that way. But it does seem like a significant shift in the way that meaning is synthesized on a collective level.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
play sacred harp recordings to people who have not participated in shape note.
Links, please? Your newsletter, it intrigues me.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:51 AM on July 15, 2016
Links, please? Your newsletter, it intrigues me.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:51 AM on July 15, 2016
I'm sure they meant de-contextualized from a broader harmonic structure.
I guess, but if you do that then you are not dealing with the thing called 'music.' The thrill of the descending 7th chords in blues songs arises partly because they are in conflict with listeners' expectations built up through common practice functional harmony.
posted by Coda Tronca at 7:58 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I guess, but if you do that then you are not dealing with the thing called 'music.' The thrill of the descending 7th chords in blues songs arises partly because they are in conflict with listeners' expectations built up through common practice functional harmony.
posted by Coda Tronca at 7:58 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
escape from the potato planet:
my theory is non- participants are likely to misinterpret the emotional intent of this, for example.
posted by idiopath at 8:06 AM on July 15, 2016
my theory is non- participants are likely to misinterpret the emotional intent of this, for example.
posted by idiopath at 8:06 AM on July 15, 2016
So, this finding is not particularly new or novel; but it is interesting and it does add to the decently- sized body of work in ethnomusicology/neuroscience showing that musical perception is largely cultural, e.g. that it's learned and not innate. And probably this shouldn't surprise anyone. It's pretty easy to look around at the different tonal structures in world music and see that Western harmony is only one particular way of breaking the frequency spectrum into musical elements that can be found to be pleasurable. Consonance and dissonance, while in Western theory have mathematical definitions, are actually relative.
There are only a small handful of truly innate, universal constraints on the perception of musical elements, and these are dictated by the physical limits of the auditory system. Our ability to hear a frequency as a pitch, for example, is constrained to relatively low frequencies. Louder things tend to sound higher. It's these sorts of basic things that are fixed; what we find pleasurable beyond that is really driven entirely by exposure.
The auditory system depends on external stimuli for development - well into young adulthood. There's ample evidence around the basic elements of this - without sound the auditory nerve atrophies and dies, for example. Without input, other brain areas will overtake the auditory cortex. These things are easier to measure than something complex like music perception, but I think the known principle that experience really drives auditory development can be reasonably extrapolated to posit that the sounds we feel ought to go together, the basis of our perception of music, is really nurture, not nature. What you grow up listening to is, largely, what you're going to think sounds like music.
I spend a lot of time thinking about cochlear implants and music perception. These are people who are getting auditory input from music that is completely different than normal listeners. CI users don't really get much in terms of pitch, for example. But with experience many of them learn to find certain types of music very pleasurable, even though what they are actually 'hearing' from that music is quite different than what you or I might. What to us might sound much more like noise, to them, with experience, can be heard as something quite musical.
It's a little odd to me, honestly, that Western science needs to spend so much time, money and energy discovering that Western harmony might not be some innate function of a more highly evolved brain, and that perhaps there are other equally valid and valuable musical systems.
One of my ethnomusicology professors in undergrad used to tell a story about when he was in Western Africa studying a type of African drumming. One of his colleagues told one of the drummers that a lot of American musicians, when they listened to African drumming, couldn't understand why the drummers couldn't play on the beat. The African drummer asked him why Americans couldn't play off the beat.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:13 AM on July 15, 2016 [11 favorites]
There are only a small handful of truly innate, universal constraints on the perception of musical elements, and these are dictated by the physical limits of the auditory system. Our ability to hear a frequency as a pitch, for example, is constrained to relatively low frequencies. Louder things tend to sound higher. It's these sorts of basic things that are fixed; what we find pleasurable beyond that is really driven entirely by exposure.
The auditory system depends on external stimuli for development - well into young adulthood. There's ample evidence around the basic elements of this - without sound the auditory nerve atrophies and dies, for example. Without input, other brain areas will overtake the auditory cortex. These things are easier to measure than something complex like music perception, but I think the known principle that experience really drives auditory development can be reasonably extrapolated to posit that the sounds we feel ought to go together, the basis of our perception of music, is really nurture, not nature. What you grow up listening to is, largely, what you're going to think sounds like music.
I spend a lot of time thinking about cochlear implants and music perception. These are people who are getting auditory input from music that is completely different than normal listeners. CI users don't really get much in terms of pitch, for example. But with experience many of them learn to find certain types of music very pleasurable, even though what they are actually 'hearing' from that music is quite different than what you or I might. What to us might sound much more like noise, to them, with experience, can be heard as something quite musical.
It's a little odd to me, honestly, that Western science needs to spend so much time, money and energy discovering that Western harmony might not be some innate function of a more highly evolved brain, and that perhaps there are other equally valid and valuable musical systems.
One of my ethnomusicology professors in undergrad used to tell a story about when he was in Western Africa studying a type of African drumming. One of his colleagues told one of the drummers that a lot of American musicians, when they listened to African drumming, couldn't understand why the drummers couldn't play on the beat. The African drummer asked him why Americans couldn't play off the beat.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:13 AM on July 15, 2016 [11 favorites]
I guess, but if you do that then you are not dealing with the thing called 'music.'
Well, not dealing with a thing called 'western' music.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:16 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Well, not dealing with a thing called 'western' music.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:16 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
On further thought, proving that Americans don't understand gamelan or sacred harp would be formally equivalent, but within a larger cultural exchange it is less satisfying. There are music theory folks who are arrogant about the "perfection" of European classical music in terms of expressing a specific feeling. To show that someone unfamiliar with the form is unable to interpret it is a kind of intellectual revenge against stuffy assholes who many of us have had to deal with.
posted by idiopath at 8:23 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 8:23 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
To show that someone unfamiliar with the form is unable to interpret it is a kind of intellectual revenge against stuffy assholes who many of us have had to deal with.
Oooh, I like this.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:28 AM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
Oooh, I like this.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:28 AM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
Well, not dealing with a thing called 'western' music.
There aren't harmonic structures in non-western music?
posted by Coda Tronca at 8:33 AM on July 15, 2016
There aren't harmonic structures in non-western music?
posted by Coda Tronca at 8:33 AM on July 15, 2016
There aren't harmonic structures in non-western music?
Of course; but if you wanted to know whether people of various cultures find the tritone consonant or dissonant, you wouldn't play everybody a dominant seventh chord. I might be misunderstanding you.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:36 AM on July 15, 2016
Of course; but if you wanted to know whether people of various cultures find the tritone consonant or dissonant, you wouldn't play everybody a dominant seventh chord. I might be misunderstanding you.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:36 AM on July 15, 2016
I think I might be labouring a pretty banal point, which is that context (local to the individual piece or general to the individual's exposure) is pretty much everything in the perception of music, and so playing an interval or chord in isolation is pointless. (I'll go off to read the main paper now!)
posted by Coda Tronca at 8:38 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Coda Tronca at 8:38 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
No I totally agree with that. I think there's a good argument to be made that using completely de-contextualized intervals and asking "good or bad" is not a great measure of differing perceptions of music.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:41 AM on July 15, 2016
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:41 AM on July 15, 2016
unless you are talking about music that is basically just a de-contextualized interval!
posted by idiopath at 8:54 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by idiopath at 8:54 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
It's a little odd to me, honestly, that Western science needs to spend so much time, money and energy discovering that Western harmony might not be some innate function of a more highly evolved brain, and that perhaps there are other equally valid and valuable musical systems.
Once we get into modern thinking (big "once," I know), I don't think the issue is whether the brains of non-Westerners are less evolved. There's a broader, stickier question here: is our recognition of beauty entirely shaped by culture and personal experience, or does it, to some extent, arise from an underlying biological reaction to certain structures? (Of course, a strict culture-biology dichotomy is not valid, but let us assume there is some distinction to be made there.) When you look at the leaves on the trees in Cambridge in the fall, why do you find the red heartstoppingly beautiful? A thousand years ago, you might have argued that both the human brain and the tree were made by God, with the brain being created specifically capable to respond to a particular beauty in God's handiwork as reflecting a higher order or good. Now, you wonder whether it is personal associations, cultural significance...or perhaps something in the nervous system that responds to it. Or, all of the above and more.
So, a similar question about consonance and dissonance, and what the implications are of the existence of cultures which don't recognize the distinction at all (are there any? I don't know) or don't place much value on it. It's unfortunate that the question has such a backdrop of Western cultural imperialism, but it's still an interesting one. I'm not up on the latest philosophy of aesthetics, but this is reminding me that I'd like to read more.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Once we get into modern thinking (big "once," I know), I don't think the issue is whether the brains of non-Westerners are less evolved. There's a broader, stickier question here: is our recognition of beauty entirely shaped by culture and personal experience, or does it, to some extent, arise from an underlying biological reaction to certain structures? (Of course, a strict culture-biology dichotomy is not valid, but let us assume there is some distinction to be made there.) When you look at the leaves on the trees in Cambridge in the fall, why do you find the red heartstoppingly beautiful? A thousand years ago, you might have argued that both the human brain and the tree were made by God, with the brain being created specifically capable to respond to a particular beauty in God's handiwork as reflecting a higher order or good. Now, you wonder whether it is personal associations, cultural significance...or perhaps something in the nervous system that responds to it. Or, all of the above and more.
So, a similar question about consonance and dissonance, and what the implications are of the existence of cultures which don't recognize the distinction at all (are there any? I don't know) or don't place much value on it. It's unfortunate that the question has such a backdrop of Western cultural imperialism, but it's still an interesting one. I'm not up on the latest philosophy of aesthetics, but this is reminding me that I'd like to read more.
posted by praemunire at 9:10 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
"dissonance" is of course an overloaded term, but there is a measurable psychoacoustic phenomenon that goes by that name, with a well tested and well documented physiological cause.
But I can't use that to prove dissonance is "bad" any more than knowing how pain receptors in the mouth work proves that spicy food is bad.
posted by idiopath at 9:23 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
But I can't use that to prove dissonance is "bad" any more than knowing how pain receptors in the mouth work proves that spicy food is bad.
posted by idiopath at 9:23 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
There are even those who say that music evokes such deep emotional responses because it emulates the cadence of the human voice.
That was one of the themes that dominated a lot of the philosophy of music coursework I did in college. But those arguments always seem to fall away from any definite conclusions or claims once you started really looking closely at them. Music is hard to talk about abstractly.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2016
That was one of the themes that dominated a lot of the philosophy of music coursework I did in college. But those arguments always seem to fall away from any definite conclusions or claims once you started really looking closely at them. Music is hard to talk about abstractly.
posted by saulgoodman at 9:33 AM on July 15, 2016
You could make a case that types of music which disregard breathing-derived phrasing/phrase rhythm in their melodies are always less accessible to listeners.
posted by Coda Tronca at 9:47 AM on July 15, 2016
posted by Coda Tronca at 9:47 AM on July 15, 2016
Just saying thanks for the post title.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:28 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 10:28 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I can't see it, but does the paper talk about temperaments at all? I'd always just assumed that the existence of different cultures happily using note ratios that sound completely off to other cultures meant it had to be pretty much entirely cultural, apart from octaves say.
posted by lucidium at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2016
posted by lucidium at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2016
I can't use that to prove dissonance is "bad" any more than knowing how pain receptors in the mouth work proves that spicy food is bad
If anybody can come away from Jamie Kime's glorious rejoinder to this Vai vs Zappa bit with the idea that dissonance is "bad", they have no soul.
posted by flabdablet at 10:33 AM on July 15, 2016
If anybody can come away from Jamie Kime's glorious rejoinder to this Vai vs Zappa bit with the idea that dissonance is "bad", they have no soul.
posted by flabdablet at 10:33 AM on July 15, 2016
The major triad, comprised of the first, third and fifth notes of a major scale, is the most popular chord in western music. The Tsimane, unfamiliar with harmonic composition, did not recognize this chord as more viable than its dissonant counterparts.
Hm, ok. But the most "popular" interval is probably unison - the same note. I'd be amazed if people all over the world didn't recognise that as somehow special and different from other intervals. Similarly the octave is extremely biologically hard-wired (and to a lesser extent fifths and major thirds), by the harmonic series, which is not only present in string and pipe resonators, but is embedded in the way our ears and auditory systems work. Treating all intervals, including unison, as purely culturally defined, is just silly. Having multi part harmony has nothing to do with it, either. Indian music has no multi part harmony, but has a much more accurate idea of pitch generally than western music, due to a powerful tradition of melody. I haven't read the nature article, but the write up seems overly keen to present other cultures in an othering way, and very lacking in the basics of where musical intervals come from, and whether any of them are defined in ways that are physical and biological, not just cultural.
posted by iotic at 10:41 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Hm, ok. But the most "popular" interval is probably unison - the same note. I'd be amazed if people all over the world didn't recognise that as somehow special and different from other intervals. Similarly the octave is extremely biologically hard-wired (and to a lesser extent fifths and major thirds), by the harmonic series, which is not only present in string and pipe resonators, but is embedded in the way our ears and auditory systems work. Treating all intervals, including unison, as purely culturally defined, is just silly. Having multi part harmony has nothing to do with it, either. Indian music has no multi part harmony, but has a much more accurate idea of pitch generally than western music, due to a powerful tradition of melody. I haven't read the nature article, but the write up seems overly keen to present other cultures in an othering way, and very lacking in the basics of where musical intervals come from, and whether any of them are defined in ways that are physical and biological, not just cultural.
posted by iotic at 10:41 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
iotic: we can prove on a biological level, or even the level of physics, that intervals are different from one another. We can't use biology or physics to explain the meaning we ascribe to them, or which differences are overlooked as incidental vs. others that are seen as significant.
posted by idiopath at 10:46 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by idiopath at 10:46 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
I can't read the whole original article, but there is so much missing here I don't understand how this says anything much.
One group of people? Doesn't this just speak to the opinions of one group of people? What kind of music do they normally listen to? How much is music a part of the culture? The article is vague.
They had no preference? That doesn't suggest to me what they seem to imply it's suggests. If they preferred dissonance that would be interesting. Cultural, maybe, but if I've never played video games and you let me play a few I'd say they all seemed fine. If the people they interviewed don't listen a lot of harmonic music maybe it's just not something they care about. "Yeah, all your chords sound fine asshole"
The article says they played isolated chords. To people who don't listen to harmonic music. This seems like taking the average American and showing them a tiny piece of various abstract paintings and asking them if they are pleasant or unpleasant works of art.
posted by bongo_x at 10:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
One group of people? Doesn't this just speak to the opinions of one group of people? What kind of music do they normally listen to? How much is music a part of the culture? The article is vague.
They had no preference? That doesn't suggest to me what they seem to imply it's suggests. If they preferred dissonance that would be interesting. Cultural, maybe, but if I've never played video games and you let me play a few I'd say they all seemed fine. If the people they interviewed don't listen a lot of harmonic music maybe it's just not something they care about. "Yeah, all your chords sound fine asshole"
The article says they played isolated chords. To people who don't listen to harmonic music. This seems like taking the average American and showing them a tiny piece of various abstract paintings and asking them if they are pleasant or unpleasant works of art.
posted by bongo_x at 10:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
The tritone has been a regular part of Western music since people decided it wasn't Satanic. Wagner used it, Bach used it, Debussy and Ravel used the hell out of it. The first two notes of "Maria" from West Side Story are a tritone. Primus uses the tritone in "Jerry Was A Race Car Driver." There is nothing exotic or unpleasant about the tritone unless you are a Gregorian monk.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:22 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:22 AM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
Treating all intervals, including unison, as purely culturally defined, is just silly.
however - in the equal tempered system we stray (in some cases) pretty far from the "pure" mathematical intervals of the harmonic series and our brains still forgive the cheating/straying from those ratios. This leads me to think that we have a high tolerance for departure from the harmonic series in terms of what we find pleasing/interesting/etc in music.
On a related note, Michel Chion's book Sound was released this year in English from Duke University Press, and is a fantastic philosophical, linguistic and musicological look at the topic, I highly recommend.
posted by gorbichov at 11:28 AM on July 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
however - in the equal tempered system we stray (in some cases) pretty far from the "pure" mathematical intervals of the harmonic series and our brains still forgive the cheating/straying from those ratios. This leads me to think that we have a high tolerance for departure from the harmonic series in terms of what we find pleasing/interesting/etc in music.
On a related note, Michel Chion's book Sound was released this year in English from Duke University Press, and is a fantastic philosophical, linguistic and musicological look at the topic, I highly recommend.
posted by gorbichov at 11:28 AM on July 15, 2016 [8 favorites]
It's easy to forget that in the age of the .mp3, but music has a spatial context.
If you've not already read it, I bet you'd enjoy David Byrne's excellent book, How Music Works . It starts with by addressing this very topic.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:29 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
If you've not already read it, I bet you'd enjoy David Byrne's excellent book, How Music Works . It starts with by addressing this very topic.
posted by Joey Michaels at 11:29 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
One question the title made me think of, but I think the article doesn't seem to address, is when we start perceiving something as music. i.e. Everything we hear is at a pitch, but when does our brain start identifying those pitches as music? The Speech To Song Illusion (slyt) is a super interesting illustration. (Does Byrne's book talk about this?)
posted by little onion at 11:30 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by little onion at 11:30 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
in the equal tempered system we stray (in some cases) pretty far from the "pure" mathematical intervals of the harmonic series and our brains still forgive the cheating/straying from those ratios
14 cents (the greatest deviation in 12-tET from the related justly intoned interval, in major and minor thirds and sixths) is not that far away. It's closer than most people can sing in tune. There are some settings, though - where the beating harmonics are very audible - in which most people, including westerners, will find equal tempered thirds dissonant.
posted by iotic at 11:39 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
14 cents (the greatest deviation in 12-tET from the related justly intoned interval, in major and minor thirds and sixths) is not that far away. It's closer than most people can sing in tune. There are some settings, though - where the beating harmonics are very audible - in which most people, including westerners, will find equal tempered thirds dissonant.
posted by iotic at 11:39 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
iotic: we can prove on a biological level, or even the level of physics, that intervals are different from one another. We can't use biology or physics to explain the meaning we ascribe to them, or which differences are overlooked as incidental vs. others that are seen as significant.
Perhaps, but all cultures ascribe meaning to things which are the same, or very similar, to each other. That's very deeply imposed by reality, it's not free-form. Much like colours - if two things are the same colour, all cultures will say so, no matter what meanings they ascribe to the exact hue. Likewise the idea of complementary colours probably has some physical basis and this is not entirely culturally determined. Culture can do a lot, but it can't completely rewrite the rules of what our senses perceive. Sitting people down and asking them if something sounds "pleasant" (however that might be interpreted by them) seems very flawed as a method for revealing anything at all about how this really works.
posted by iotic at 11:47 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Perhaps, but all cultures ascribe meaning to things which are the same, or very similar, to each other. That's very deeply imposed by reality, it's not free-form. Much like colours - if two things are the same colour, all cultures will say so, no matter what meanings they ascribe to the exact hue. Likewise the idea of complementary colours probably has some physical basis and this is not entirely culturally determined. Culture can do a lot, but it can't completely rewrite the rules of what our senses perceive. Sitting people down and asking them if something sounds "pleasant" (however that might be interpreted by them) seems very flawed as a method for revealing anything at all about how this really works.
posted by iotic at 11:47 AM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
'The Tsimane tribe doesn’t play music in groups, and thus, does not create multi-tonal harmonies. This habit allowed their ear to develop without the predilection for consonance'. Why was this story not headlined 'Whether you play music in groups determines where you draw the line between music and noise'?
Because culture itself is a shaping force. Most people here will be familiar with qawwali via Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - his troupe normally consisted of nine people or thereabouts. They had hundreds of years to develop western-style harmony and counterpoint but they never did. Similarly for Indian music both in the classical and folk styles. Perhaps there are key underlying reasons why they didn't (and continue not to, though this is changing a tiny bit in Indian pop due to Western pop music influence) see harmony as a necessary part of music, but it's unlikely to be as simple as "well they don't play with others." It's about as simplistic to answer western music's preference for equal temperament with "the Catholic Church did it".
posted by vanar sena at 11:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Because culture itself is a shaping force. Most people here will be familiar with qawwali via Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - his troupe normally consisted of nine people or thereabouts. They had hundreds of years to develop western-style harmony and counterpoint but they never did. Similarly for Indian music both in the classical and folk styles. Perhaps there are key underlying reasons why they didn't (and continue not to, though this is changing a tiny bit in Indian pop due to Western pop music influence) see harmony as a necessary part of music, but it's unlikely to be as simple as "well they don't play with others." It's about as simplistic to answer western music's preference for equal temperament with "the Catholic Church did it".
posted by vanar sena at 11:49 AM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Anyway, "Culture" is an empty word. The same "culture" that produced Beethoven and Bach also produced Stockhausen, Kraftwerk and Einstürzende Neubauten so tying concepts of dissonance or harmony to a whole culture sounds rather hollow.
posted by sukeban at 11:59 AM on July 15, 2016
posted by sukeban at 11:59 AM on July 15, 2016
in the equal tempered system we stray (in some cases) pretty far from the "pure" mathematical intervals of the harmonic series and our brains still forgive the cheating/straying from those ratios.
The level of 'forgiveness' is the window in which a lot of the compelling stuff happens, for singing.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:00 PM on July 15, 2016
The level of 'forgiveness' is the window in which a lot of the compelling stuff happens, for singing.
posted by Coda Tronca at 12:00 PM on July 15, 2016
little onion: "Everything we hear is at a pitch"
This is false. In fact most sounds we hear on a daily basis are unpitched. Much like rational numbers (there are an infinite number of irrational numbers for every rational), pitched sounds are a less common than unpitched, but we have a larger body of knowledge about them, and ascribe more nuance of meaning to them.
posted by idiopath at 12:05 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is false. In fact most sounds we hear on a daily basis are unpitched. Much like rational numbers (there are an infinite number of irrational numbers for every rational), pitched sounds are a less common than unpitched, but we have a larger body of knowledge about them, and ascribe more nuance of meaning to them.
posted by idiopath at 12:05 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I guess I'm saying I find the whole question wrong. If I give people who don't drink coffee Starbucks and Peet's and ask which one is better, does their choice become the "biological" choice and the other the "societal" choice? People who don't drink coffee, wine, or smoke cigars will say they're all kind of the same.
These kind of questions always seem to me to come from a position that there is some sort of societal pressure to like certain things instead of just a societal preference for things. Plenty of people in the West like dissonant music, just not the majority. That's two different things coming from two different directions.
posted by bongo_x at 12:05 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
These kind of questions always seem to me to come from a position that there is some sort of societal pressure to like certain things instead of just a societal preference for things. Plenty of people in the West like dissonant music, just not the majority. That's two different things coming from two different directions.
posted by bongo_x at 12:05 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Because culture itself is a shaping force
Sorry to go on, but I find this (Qawaali) an interesting example. Physics is also a shaping force in this case, in a way that is well studied. You could just as well phrase your question as "why doesn't western music use pure intervals?" If you tune to pure intervals, you can't have shifting harmonies without wolf intervals, and if you want to explore complex harmonic movement with a fixed scale of notes, your scale will have to be tempered. To me that information leads to a much fuller understanding of the bifurcation between (say) western and Indian classical traditions than either a culture-free ("people playing in groups") or totally "culturally free" (peoples tastes are totally formed by culture, which does whatever it wants) interpretation provide, by themselves.
Qawaali is actually also interesting in this context due to its use of the (usually) equal tempered harmonium, which is not permitted in older traditional classical forms from the region. So in some ways it's more like Indian pop, as you mention, with a western influence combining with Indian/subcontinental aesthetics. In the case of Qawaali it's probably fair to say the traditional influence remains far stronger, with great limitations placed on what the harmonium can play, and its function in the music.
posted by iotic at 12:06 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Sorry to go on, but I find this (Qawaali) an interesting example. Physics is also a shaping force in this case, in a way that is well studied. You could just as well phrase your question as "why doesn't western music use pure intervals?" If you tune to pure intervals, you can't have shifting harmonies without wolf intervals, and if you want to explore complex harmonic movement with a fixed scale of notes, your scale will have to be tempered. To me that information leads to a much fuller understanding of the bifurcation between (say) western and Indian classical traditions than either a culture-free ("people playing in groups") or totally "culturally free" (peoples tastes are totally formed by culture, which does whatever it wants) interpretation provide, by themselves.
Qawaali is actually also interesting in this context due to its use of the (usually) equal tempered harmonium, which is not permitted in older traditional classical forms from the region. So in some ways it's more like Indian pop, as you mention, with a western influence combining with Indian/subcontinental aesthetics. In the case of Qawaali it's probably fair to say the traditional influence remains far stronger, with great limitations placed on what the harmonium can play, and its function in the music.
posted by iotic at 12:06 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Similarly the octave is extremely biologically hard-wired (and to a lesser extent fifths and major thirds), by the harmonic series, which is not only present in string and pipe resonators, but is embedded in the way our ears and auditory systems work. Treating all intervals, including unison, as purely culturally defined, is just silly.
I disagree with you that the harmonic series is embedded in the way our ears and auditory system work. Perhaps you might explain it more?
I also don't see how it would follow that even if that were true it would have much weight on what we understand as being musical, which is distinct from perception.
I also don't agree with the argument that Western music has some natural law about it because some common harmonies vaguely are aligned around the first few harmonics in the harmonic series. It's an old idea that I don't think anyone ascribes to.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:06 PM on July 15, 2016
I disagree with you that the harmonic series is embedded in the way our ears and auditory system work. Perhaps you might explain it more?
I also don't see how it would follow that even if that were true it would have much weight on what we understand as being musical, which is distinct from perception.
I also don't agree with the argument that Western music has some natural law about it because some common harmonies vaguely are aligned around the first few harmonics in the harmonic series. It's an old idea that I don't think anyone ascribes to.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:06 PM on July 15, 2016
The level of 'forgiveness' is the window in which a lot of the compelling stuff happens, for singing.
Agreed! and for lots of other instrumental music as well - Thomas Turino in Music as Social Life notes that lots of musical cultures purposely "widen" intervals in group/collective performance, and his interpretation of that phenomena is that it's done to encourage participation! so if you aren't a great instrumentalist, the music is forgiving of that fact - which then has the added effect of creating this wild sound that many people are drawn to.
posted by gorbichov at 12:09 PM on July 15, 2016
Agreed! and for lots of other instrumental music as well - Thomas Turino in Music as Social Life notes that lots of musical cultures purposely "widen" intervals in group/collective performance, and his interpretation of that phenomena is that it's done to encourage participation! so if you aren't a great instrumentalist, the music is forgiving of that fact - which then has the added effect of creating this wild sound that many people are drawn to.
posted by gorbichov at 12:09 PM on July 15, 2016
extremely biologically hard-wired (and to a lesser extent fifths and major thirds)
Unless perhaps you're referring to something like residual pitch, which does rely to some extent on harmonic relationships, but to say then that such relationships are 'extremely hard-wired' is overstating that phenomenon by quite a lot.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:12 PM on July 15, 2016
Unless perhaps you're referring to something like residual pitch, which does rely to some extent on harmonic relationships, but to say then that such relationships are 'extremely hard-wired' is overstating that phenomenon by quite a lot.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:12 PM on July 15, 2016
but we have a larger body of knowledge about them, and ascribe more nuance of meaning to them.
Chion goes into a fair amount of detail on this point in Sound, going so far as to say that philosophically, "musical" sounds only exist in opposition to "non-musical" sounds. Among other fascinating insights . . .
posted by gorbichov at 12:14 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Chion goes into a fair amount of detail on this point in Sound, going so far as to say that philosophically, "musical" sounds only exist in opposition to "non-musical" sounds. Among other fascinating insights . . .
posted by gorbichov at 12:14 PM on July 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
I disagree with you that the harmonic series is embedded in the way our ears and auditory system work. Perhaps you might explain it more?
I haven't got a direct cite to hand, but Benade in Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics mentions tests in which heterodyning of sine tones (difference tones), with the auditory system, can be isolated and even negatively interfered with to silence. This implies our hearing system is highly attuned to harmonic relations in an internal physical and biological way.
Harmonic relations happen all the time in physics, and musical instruments in particular. If you have anything vibrating (string, drum skin, metal tine etc) against something, harmonic intervals will be added. Anything distorting distorts "harmonically", basically. It's very fundamental and widespread in the way our hearing works.
I also don't agree with the argument that Western music has some natural law about it because some common harmonies vaguely are aligned around the first few harmonics in the harmonic series. It's an old idea that I don't think anyone ascribes to.
Who is saying that? I certainly don't hold that western music is more bound by the harmonic series than other cultures' musics. Often less so, in fact, due to the tempering.
posted by iotic at 12:18 PM on July 15, 2016
I haven't got a direct cite to hand, but Benade in Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics mentions tests in which heterodyning of sine tones (difference tones), with the auditory system, can be isolated and even negatively interfered with to silence. This implies our hearing system is highly attuned to harmonic relations in an internal physical and biological way.
Harmonic relations happen all the time in physics, and musical instruments in particular. If you have anything vibrating (string, drum skin, metal tine etc) against something, harmonic intervals will be added. Anything distorting distorts "harmonically", basically. It's very fundamental and widespread in the way our hearing works.
I also don't agree with the argument that Western music has some natural law about it because some common harmonies vaguely are aligned around the first few harmonics in the harmonic series. It's an old idea that I don't think anyone ascribes to.
Who is saying that? I certainly don't hold that western music is more bound by the harmonic series than other cultures' musics. Often less so, in fact, due to the tempering.
posted by iotic at 12:18 PM on July 15, 2016
One thing that intrigues me is that the Tsimane apparently didn't report being unable to judge whether particular chords were pleasant or unpleasant; it's just that their choices didn't reflect a preference for consonance over dissonance. So if they weren't judging the chords by that metric, I wonder what the quality of various chords were that led them to characeterize some as pleasant and others unpleasant.
posted by layceepee at 12:24 PM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by layceepee at 12:24 PM on July 15, 2016 [3 favorites]
I've not read Benade, but my guess is that the heterodyning he's referring to is phantom or residual pitch, where you can create a pitch percept by playing some combination of harmonics of that fundamental, usually best with the 3rd and 4th.
And this is a cool phenomenon, but it also doesn't give a complete picture even of pitch perception, and I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say it implies our hearing system is highly attuned to harmonic relations in an internal physical and biological way. As it turns out, even our pitch perception is highly non-linear and depends on many things, not only the relationships between discrete frequencies.
I get that there's a temptation to go from basic acoustic properties of tubes and such to extrapolating a certain natural order to how musical harmony is arranged. And if you take a narrow enough view both of physics and of music then I suppose this is an ok working model in a spherical cows sort of way. I don't think that it's a very good way to understand music nor auditory perception.
I've heard some interesting music where the melodic lines are created by playing sinusoids in a frequency relationship of 1:22, hardly one anybody would call harmonic, but it causes a robust third tone to be generated by the cells in the inner ear, which you can sometimes hear and which became the melody of the piece. This is also music based on something deeply biologically embedded, and yet there is nothing harmonic about it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:40 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
And this is a cool phenomenon, but it also doesn't give a complete picture even of pitch perception, and I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say it implies our hearing system is highly attuned to harmonic relations in an internal physical and biological way. As it turns out, even our pitch perception is highly non-linear and depends on many things, not only the relationships between discrete frequencies.
I get that there's a temptation to go from basic acoustic properties of tubes and such to extrapolating a certain natural order to how musical harmony is arranged. And if you take a narrow enough view both of physics and of music then I suppose this is an ok working model in a spherical cows sort of way. I don't think that it's a very good way to understand music nor auditory perception.
I've heard some interesting music where the melodic lines are created by playing sinusoids in a frequency relationship of 1:22, hardly one anybody would call harmonic, but it causes a robust third tone to be generated by the cells in the inner ear, which you can sometimes hear and which became the melody of the piece. This is also music based on something deeply biologically embedded, and yet there is nothing harmonic about it.
posted by Lutoslawski at 12:40 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Ah, thank you idiopath. So my question refines to "We hear many pitched sounds that we don't identify as music, so what makes our brain start identifying pitched sounds as music?"
posted by little onion at 12:49 PM on July 15, 2016
posted by little onion at 12:49 PM on July 15, 2016
I get that there's a temptation to go from basic acoustic properties of tubes and such to extrapolating a certain natural order to how musical harmony is arranged.
The first interval in the harmonic series is the octave. Do you know of any culture that doesn't have the idea that octaves are a special relationship? And as I say, even more so for unisons. It's extraordinary to me that anyone would deny entirely the importance of simple harmonic relations and identities in the way we hear pitched sound, and thus form at least part of the basis for music.
In fact your 1:22 music example sort of tells against this: if it's a ratio, and it stimulates the biological response to that, then yes that very much falls under the category of a harmonic relation.
As it goes, of course music can be interesting without harmonic relations being observed. But they are there nevertheless, and have significance for everyone to some extent.
posted by iotic at 12:50 PM on July 15, 2016
The first interval in the harmonic series is the octave. Do you know of any culture that doesn't have the idea that octaves are a special relationship? And as I say, even more so for unisons. It's extraordinary to me that anyone would deny entirely the importance of simple harmonic relations and identities in the way we hear pitched sound, and thus form at least part of the basis for music.
In fact your 1:22 music example sort of tells against this: if it's a ratio, and it stimulates the biological response to that, then yes that very much falls under the category of a harmonic relation.
As it goes, of course music can be interesting without harmonic relations being observed. But they are there nevertheless, and have significance for everyone to some extent.
posted by iotic at 12:50 PM on July 15, 2016
Ah, thank you idiopath. So my question refines to "We hear many pitched sounds that we don't identify as music, so what makes our brain start identifying pitched sounds as music?"
I can't say. But I can report that it happens almost immediately after birth. Both of my kids immediately responded to singing calming them down or making them smile within the first 2 weeks of life. Can't say what that means in the context of this thread, but I think about it a lot.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:19 PM on July 15, 2016
I can't say. But I can report that it happens almost immediately after birth. Both of my kids immediately responded to singing calming them down or making them smile within the first 2 weeks of life. Can't say what that means in the context of this thread, but I think about it a lot.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:19 PM on July 15, 2016
"The findings, published today in Nature, may end start longstanding arguments over whether or not musical preference is biological."
posted by Bugbread at 5:37 PM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Bugbread at 5:37 PM on July 15, 2016 [4 favorites]
if it's a ratio, and it stimulates the biological response to that, then yes that very much falls under the category of a harmonic relation.
? any two frequencies have a ratio by definition of being two things. 'Harmonic' tends to have a different meaning, i.e. integer relationships...
And what do you mean by 'special' relationship of octaves? Most people tend to perceive octaves as sharing some quality, but it's not always a 2:1 frequency ratio; it depends on the actual frequencies. And then the significance given to this relationship varies tremendously across musics.
I study hearing and perception for a living, and my own view is that you can ascribe some good working models to peripheral filtering of acoustic signals, but they break down pretty quickly once you introduce any sort of complex stimuli. And that's the fun of it!
In any case, I fear I've gone too far afield.
The point I want to emphasize in this thread is this: there are some basic limiting factors on our auditory perception. There are some basic natural acoustic properties of objects in the world. But none of these factors suggest that Beethoven ought to mean more to you than Stockhausen, or Tibetan throat singing, or whatever.
Bach can be your favorite band that sucks just as Al Hansen can. I'm a musician and a hearing scientist and I swear by this philosophy.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:53 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
? any two frequencies have a ratio by definition of being two things. 'Harmonic' tends to have a different meaning, i.e. integer relationships...
And what do you mean by 'special' relationship of octaves? Most people tend to perceive octaves as sharing some quality, but it's not always a 2:1 frequency ratio; it depends on the actual frequencies. And then the significance given to this relationship varies tremendously across musics.
I study hearing and perception for a living, and my own view is that you can ascribe some good working models to peripheral filtering of acoustic signals, but they break down pretty quickly once you introduce any sort of complex stimuli. And that's the fun of it!
In any case, I fear I've gone too far afield.
The point I want to emphasize in this thread is this: there are some basic limiting factors on our auditory perception. There are some basic natural acoustic properties of objects in the world. But none of these factors suggest that Beethoven ought to mean more to you than Stockhausen, or Tibetan throat singing, or whatever.
Bach can be your favorite band that sucks just as Al Hansen can. I'm a musician and a hearing scientist and I swear by this philosophy.
posted by Lutoslawski at 11:53 PM on July 15, 2016 [2 favorites]
Reading these comments while listening to you-tube's auto play selection of Sacred Harp-related choral music. Good times.
posted by ovvl at 8:57 AM on July 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 8:57 AM on July 16, 2016 [2 favorites]
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There may be some evidence along these lines - I've read that Carnatic music, for example, favours complex development over time rather than the development of simultaneous complex harmony as Western orchestral music traditionally tends to do. I don't know enough about it to assess how true or relevant that is.
posted by Segundus at 3:42 AM on July 15, 2016 [5 favorites]