Helping your brain function better with music
June 24, 2018 4:11 AM Subscribe
The unexpected is what makes an impression Surprises fires up the neural signals in the brain way more than an expected outcome. It is no different when listening to music and the notes take a different path.
The key ingredient in any artform is the judicious and strategic deployment of small surprises.
posted by Construction Concern at 8:55 AM on June 24, 2018 [7 favorites]
posted by Construction Concern at 8:55 AM on June 24, 2018 [7 favorites]
I suspect that this ultimately stems back to evolutionary advantage: those among our distant ancestors who perked up at an unexpected sight or sound would have been more alert than their neighbours who, well, did not become anybody’s ancestors.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:59 AM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by ricochet biscuit at 8:59 AM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
I find this sort of analysis equal parts intriguing and infuriating. Intriguing because, like many humans, I am fascinated with how things work. Infuriating because in breaking down beauty so (because what is music if not beauty in sonic form?), it is rendered no longer beautiful, the magic is removed, it's a lab specimen, killed so it can be understood.
That said, I suppose it does explain why I found it so easy to pass on the recent Music To Do Nothing To thread
posted by philip-random at 9:14 AM on June 24, 2018
That said, I suppose it does explain why I found it so easy to pass on the recent Music To Do Nothing To thread
posted by philip-random at 9:14 AM on June 24, 2018
it's a lab specimen, killed so it can be understood.
I understand where you’re coming from, but the song is still alive after the analysis, unlike the lab specimen. And the analysis can provide new vistas of understanding and exploration.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:26 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
I understand where you’re coming from, but the song is still alive after the analysis, unlike the lab specimen. And the analysis can provide new vistas of understanding and exploration.
posted by Celsius1414 at 10:26 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
The key ingredient in any artform is the judicious and strategic deployment of small surprises.
True enough, but "surprises" only work from a base of familiarity. People can be extremely resistant to developing a sense of the familiar in anything outside a narrow range of accepted conceits. Anything that comes from outside that comfort zone reads as inherently "foreign" and disagreeable for not reaffirming existing prejudices. For example, a gamelan ensemble, to many in the US, is just "noise" because it is all surprise to them for not matching their accepted norms. Mass media in that sense can facilitate prejudice by its heavy emphasis on repetition of conventions, where even the variations or "surprises" conform to familiar tropes. It asks little of the audience and reaffirms their narrow sense of expectation as what is acceptable.
I would also challenge a bit the idea that understanding is antithetical to beauty. What may be lost in appreciation for the more routine can be more than gained back in added appreciation for the more complex and challenging. That is if one has and takes the time to put effort in to appreciation rather than relying on the works to fit who you already are. There's nothing inherently wrong with the latter, not everyone has time or interest to put in additional effort in appreciation, but using the self as measure without that effort is akin to asking the works, and their world they represent, to conform to you. There isn't much opportunity to expand oneself or the artform through that method.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:26 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
True enough, but "surprises" only work from a base of familiarity. People can be extremely resistant to developing a sense of the familiar in anything outside a narrow range of accepted conceits. Anything that comes from outside that comfort zone reads as inherently "foreign" and disagreeable for not reaffirming existing prejudices. For example, a gamelan ensemble, to many in the US, is just "noise" because it is all surprise to them for not matching their accepted norms. Mass media in that sense can facilitate prejudice by its heavy emphasis on repetition of conventions, where even the variations or "surprises" conform to familiar tropes. It asks little of the audience and reaffirms their narrow sense of expectation as what is acceptable.
I would also challenge a bit the idea that understanding is antithetical to beauty. What may be lost in appreciation for the more routine can be more than gained back in added appreciation for the more complex and challenging. That is if one has and takes the time to put effort in to appreciation rather than relying on the works to fit who you already are. There's nothing inherently wrong with the latter, not everyone has time or interest to put in additional effort in appreciation, but using the self as measure without that effort is akin to asking the works, and their world they represent, to conform to you. There isn't much opportunity to expand oneself or the artform through that method.
posted by gusottertrout at 10:26 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
So, Autechre makes me a genius?
posted by Chocomog at 11:16 AM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by Chocomog at 11:16 AM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
Interesting.
As an amateur musician, I sometimes find that I play much better when I'm listening to something else than I do when I try to focus on it, and give it my full attention.
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 12:32 PM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
As an amateur musician, I sometimes find that I play much better when I'm listening to something else than I do when I try to focus on it, and give it my full attention.
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 12:32 PM on June 24, 2018 [1 favorite]
philip-random, I don't think you're particularly wrong, but I'd say it's an inevitability for a lot of people who get really into any art form, especially if they're trying to create, themselves. A lot of musicians lose their taste for various types of pop music once they figure out how they work on several levels. Of course there are always people in any genre that push boundaries, but the predictability of the majority of radio songs can become downright grating.
In one sense, this is good an natural, as it pushes you to find ever more challenging and esoteric music. In another sense, it leads to people calling you pretentious or snobby and makes it harder to enjoy music at clubs and weddings.
posted by es_de_bah at 3:14 PM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
In one sense, this is good an natural, as it pushes you to find ever more challenging and esoteric music. In another sense, it leads to people calling you pretentious or snobby and makes it harder to enjoy music at clubs and weddings.
posted by es_de_bah at 3:14 PM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]
..."surprises" only work from a base of familiarity ... For example, a gamelan ensemble ...
Yes, and it can be fully impossible to get the "surprise" without considerable familiarity with the context. In both East Indian and Ghanaian music the "familiar" part can be so familiar that it is actually not even present, but only implied, and the "surprises" are implied as well.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:39 AM on June 25, 2018 [2 favorites]
Yes, and it can be fully impossible to get the "surprise" without considerable familiarity with the context. In both East Indian and Ghanaian music the "familiar" part can be so familiar that it is actually not even present, but only implied, and the "surprises" are implied as well.
posted by StickyCarpet at 5:39 AM on June 25, 2018 [2 favorites]
I'm trying to decide if an article on ambiguity is deliberately being a bit ambiguous. I'm thinking: probably.
If that Nokia ringtone is successful because of ambiguous phrasing, or that that the Bach cello piece is a "puzzle" of phrasing; shouldn't serialism be more popular? Or any sort of contemporary music with non-stop time signature changes?
And way at the bottom of the footnotes there's a random comment about the brain essentially being able to gate out noise, which seems like, in theory, it should also allow people to enjoy more "adventurous" music. But that's obviously not the case for the majority of people, even though lots of untrained listeners have been inadvertently exposed to all sorts of non-standard stuff through movies (eg Ligeti, horror movies). Now that I'm writing this, I'm wondering if there have been any studies done on the effects of less familiar music/noise music/etc on the brain. Hmmm....
I don't know. I guess I'm attempting to interpret this from more of a macro level that's not really supported by the research. I've never quite reconciled my personal experience of loving new music that I have no context for, nor have any idea where it's going while listening (I essentially like the non-stop surprise of it all), with the fact that most other people don't experience music that way. I don't think I have any sort of special brain going on, soo.... [shrug]
I'll just leave this just as ambiguously as I started...
I guess...
posted by TrickOrTreat at 7:24 PM on June 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
If that Nokia ringtone is successful because of ambiguous phrasing, or that that the Bach cello piece is a "puzzle" of phrasing; shouldn't serialism be more popular? Or any sort of contemporary music with non-stop time signature changes?
And way at the bottom of the footnotes there's a random comment about the brain essentially being able to gate out noise, which seems like, in theory, it should also allow people to enjoy more "adventurous" music. But that's obviously not the case for the majority of people, even though lots of untrained listeners have been inadvertently exposed to all sorts of non-standard stuff through movies (eg Ligeti, horror movies). Now that I'm writing this, I'm wondering if there have been any studies done on the effects of less familiar music/noise music/etc on the brain. Hmmm....
I don't know. I guess I'm attempting to interpret this from more of a macro level that's not really supported by the research. I've never quite reconciled my personal experience of loving new music that I have no context for, nor have any idea where it's going while listening (I essentially like the non-stop surprise of it all), with the fact that most other people don't experience music that way. I don't think I have any sort of special brain going on, soo.... [shrug]
I'll just leave this just as ambiguously as I started...
I guess...
posted by TrickOrTreat at 7:24 PM on June 25, 2018 [1 favorite]
There is a seemingly innate quality in how different people react to the unfamiliar in art and, I assume, life though the two may not be entirely connected. Some seem to grasp or accept the "logic" of strange works easily or willingly, while others balk at attachment to the unfamiliar. Maybe it comes from some learned behavior early on in one's childhood, or maybe it is something some are just born with, but finding satisfaction in unusual works does come more readily to some. Which is, I suppose, why some take to art as a form of expression more than others. The very nature of it relying on non-discursive/emotional/presentational "logic" rather than the "discursive" more linear mode of ordinary language and science. That, very crudely, is how Susanne Langer tried to summarize the different types of thought involved, which I think is a compelling take.
A lot of people, maybe most, though seem to require some substantial grounding for anything ambiguous, unexpected, or non-linear. They enjoy the resolution of the ambiguity more than the ambiguity itself and/or accept ambiguity within a more easily categorized structure that limits its reach. Escher's stairways, for example, are unmistakably stairs and the space strongly defined as "real", they just defy the expected logic of our physical world. They can be grasped from a more categorical linear perspective even as they defy some element of normal experience. They are strongly grounded, therefore, in the familiar though they don't "work" in those same terms. Escher's drawings tend towards a kind of basic paradox of the "Which end is up?" sort or in demonstrating a movement from one state to another; an act of becoming. They aren't quite asking the viewer to understand the image in as carrying layered meaning as much as demonstrating the flux of "meaning" in more linear terms via progression.
To digress a bit, music is harder to talk about than some of the other arts and isn't my area of expertise, but if how people respond to other arts does correspond at all then it might be easier to see where the differences lie from how people talk about the things that cause difficulty or dissatisfaction. Reading people's complaints over movies, for example, one can get a strong sense of how expectation and convention plays into understanding. A movie that breaks expected form too radically loses many viewers for "failing" to adhere to the usual logic of films they are familiar with. Others, of course, appreciate them for that trait and find satisfaction in following how the patterns and concepts differ from the norm, finding meaning as much in what is absent as what is there in many cases. The difference is perhaps in giving oneself over to the work to find its own logic, rather than relying on one's pre-existing sense of acceptability to provide the meaning. It's seeing the work as two things at once, both its reality and one's own in a way.
Going back to music then the sense of familiarity or groundedness might come from the need for familiar patterns and/or following a more basic quasi-mathematical progression that fits the listeners normal experience. There is no one method to appreciation of course, nor some clear measure of "rightness" over merit because of the different histories and knowledge we all bring to the works. Some people love music and don't much care for other arts and find comfort in its abstraction and more mathematical elements, while others appreciate it more like the other arts finding meaning in its "emotional logic" matched against their experience, and some don't care for it much at all or use it to fit their already decided wants.
My personal belief is that the way to get the most out of any work is to apply oneself to engaging its world rather than waiting for things that fit yours, but, outside of getting more from the work and what it may be expressing, there isn't any particularly compelling reason for that to be a more important undertaking than many other things people can do with their time and also find meaning in. It matters in talking about the works perhaps, but not as a measure of life well spent or anything so romantic. At the same time I do still bristle at the idea that art appreciation requires nothing from its audience and everyone's thoughts on or feelings about a work are all effectively equal. Authority, in its grand and defining sense, is rightly dead, but expertise still matters.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:42 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
A lot of people, maybe most, though seem to require some substantial grounding for anything ambiguous, unexpected, or non-linear. They enjoy the resolution of the ambiguity more than the ambiguity itself and/or accept ambiguity within a more easily categorized structure that limits its reach. Escher's stairways, for example, are unmistakably stairs and the space strongly defined as "real", they just defy the expected logic of our physical world. They can be grasped from a more categorical linear perspective even as they defy some element of normal experience. They are strongly grounded, therefore, in the familiar though they don't "work" in those same terms. Escher's drawings tend towards a kind of basic paradox of the "Which end is up?" sort or in demonstrating a movement from one state to another; an act of becoming. They aren't quite asking the viewer to understand the image in as carrying layered meaning as much as demonstrating the flux of "meaning" in more linear terms via progression.
To digress a bit, music is harder to talk about than some of the other arts and isn't my area of expertise, but if how people respond to other arts does correspond at all then it might be easier to see where the differences lie from how people talk about the things that cause difficulty or dissatisfaction. Reading people's complaints over movies, for example, one can get a strong sense of how expectation and convention plays into understanding. A movie that breaks expected form too radically loses many viewers for "failing" to adhere to the usual logic of films they are familiar with. Others, of course, appreciate them for that trait and find satisfaction in following how the patterns and concepts differ from the norm, finding meaning as much in what is absent as what is there in many cases. The difference is perhaps in giving oneself over to the work to find its own logic, rather than relying on one's pre-existing sense of acceptability to provide the meaning. It's seeing the work as two things at once, both its reality and one's own in a way.
Going back to music then the sense of familiarity or groundedness might come from the need for familiar patterns and/or following a more basic quasi-mathematical progression that fits the listeners normal experience. There is no one method to appreciation of course, nor some clear measure of "rightness" over merit because of the different histories and knowledge we all bring to the works. Some people love music and don't much care for other arts and find comfort in its abstraction and more mathematical elements, while others appreciate it more like the other arts finding meaning in its "emotional logic" matched against their experience, and some don't care for it much at all or use it to fit their already decided wants.
My personal belief is that the way to get the most out of any work is to apply oneself to engaging its world rather than waiting for things that fit yours, but, outside of getting more from the work and what it may be expressing, there isn't any particularly compelling reason for that to be a more important undertaking than many other things people can do with their time and also find meaning in. It matters in talking about the works perhaps, but not as a measure of life well spent or anything so romantic. At the same time I do still bristle at the idea that art appreciation requires nothing from its audience and everyone's thoughts on or feelings about a work are all effectively equal. Authority, in its grand and defining sense, is rightly dead, but expertise still matters.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:42 AM on June 26, 2018 [1 favorite]
« Older Free trip to slightly alternate universe provided... | The most Instagrammable view in New York City... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
There's also a Trent Reznor quote that stuck with me since I read it as a kid. Something along the lines of: I never want the music to sound to safe. If it sounds too smooth, I put in something unsettling. Something to put you on edge.
posted by es_de_bah at 8:43 AM on June 24, 2018 [3 favorites]