Using brain images of people listening to short symphonies by an obscure 18th-century composer, a research team from the Stanford University School of Medicine has showed that music engages the areas of the brain involved with paying attention, making predictions and updating the event in memory. Peak brain activity occurred during a short period of silence between musical movements—when seemingly nothing was happening.
The researchers caught glimpses of the brain in action using functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, which gives a dynamic image showing which parts of the brain are working during a given activity. The goal of the study was to look at how the brain sorts out events, but the research also revealed that musical techniques used by composers 200 years ago help the brain organize incoming information.
http://med.stanford.edu/news_releases/2007/july/music.html
6 Comments
MINKword!
good music is a balance between giving people what they expect, and giving them a nice surprise.
snoozedoctorMink has found the lost chord. It is that repetition to draw you in and get you comfortable and then harmonic tension thrown in to snap you out of it. Common to almost all good music, even applying to a surprising number of the Beatles' more adventurous tunes.
MINKthis also explains why most people don't take kindly to new musical styles, because they don't know what to expect. they are listening for the triggers they usually hear, and ignoring the new triggers.
so they say "i can't dance to that" and carry on listening to the same stuff they know already. learning to love a new style is like learning a new language.
the only style that hits you obviously is pop, that's why it's pop. it's like nursery rhymes.
everything else takes effort, which puts people off and confines interesting music to "the underground".
snoozedoctorThere's good music to find in any genre. Your comment about unexpected twists is perfectly illustrated in the classic Beatle's tune "Penny Lane" that starts in the key of A major, bridges to the chorus in A minor, and then, (the only pop tune that I know that does this), modulates down a whole tone to G major for the chorus. All these changes are completely unexpected to our ears, and that's what makes it an enduring tune. It sounds simple, but it's anything but.
jonny*brain
siftbotAdding video to channels (Brain) - requested by jonny.
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