I’m sitting here in front of my computer, listening to the radio, and “dancing with myself”. I can’t sit still when a song I like is playing.
It’s universal among humans. And some animals. Children (infants, even) will move around in response to music.
Does anyone know why?
Peace,
mangeorge
Hmm.
Hmm.
Lemme think, well, obviously we react very strongly to sound. Say you’re walking to the kitchen to get a glass of water, it’s dark, about midnight, you’re a bit groggy. All of a sudden someone leaps out of the dark and yells at you. What do you do? In that situation I jumped back and yelled at the top of my lungs.
Music is old. My guess is that people have spent a few thousand years finding the combinations of sound that cause pleasurable emotional responses.
I know a guy who actually HATES music. He cannot stand hearing music, ANY music. That’s the weirdest mental condition I ever saw.
obfusciatrist had a thread a couple months back about his dislike for music. It was in IMHO. I think it’s worth digging up.
Me? Um… Oh, all right. Here it is.
“Mathematics is music for the mind,
music is mathematics for the soul.”
I think it has something to do with catharsis. It’s an easily accessible emotional trigger. It’s also a matter of aesthetics. Anything pleasing to the senses is elevated to a higher realm. I also believe it’s a form of escapism. Why do people like art/literature/movies? Same thing. But since most (pop) songs are so abbreviated in form (unlike movies and books) you have more of a chance to replay them and become emotionally attached. To paraphrase Nietzsche, “Music makes life bearable.”
Then again, he was a big fan of Wagner, so maybe he’s not the best source.
For me it’s not why I like music but why I like certain melodies and not others. Why Bach’s Concerto for Two Violins in D minor and not (never ever) Symphonie Fantastique? Or why Counting Crows’ Around Here but not(never ever) Split Enz singing I See Red? Has it got something to do with brainwaves? Do people have in-born receptors for certain sounds? I find a lot of classical hard to like but I’m always trying. If I had a magic formula to use it would be great. Too many of those “if you like this, then you’ll like that” suggestions you see around are inaccurate as far as I’m concerned.
I don’t recall where I saw this info, but IIRC, there are two forms of human vocalization that exist at birth - one is ‘verbal’ (spoken language patterns, phonic sounds), the other is ‘musical’ (tone/melody, singing patterns). Both are required in order to form effective language/communication. Parents reward sounds that match the verbal/music combination that is used by their language. For instance, the upward rising tone at the end of a question, and the dropping tone for anger or disappointment. Sounds that go together in your language (meaningfully) are rewarded (by repetition), and ones that do not ‘fit’ become (relatively) extinct pathways. The feedback process is pretty well-studied, for example, looking at multiple-language acquisition in children vs. adults.
Because both of these language behaviors are very primitively wired parts of our development process, I suspect that anything that fires that part of your brain will have a BIG payoff in endorphins or other ‘brain drugs’. The feedback cycles to develop in infancy are WAY strong, a major biological push to grow toward communication. The feedback has to be pretty potent - ever notice what parents do when their kid isn’t paying attention and they aren’t at the ‘yelling at them’ stage? They sing… (“Gabriel. GABRIEL. Oh, Gaaa-brrri-eeel!” I do it all the time, because it WORKS.)
So, IMHO, you like music because that particular music makes your brain feel good. Your brain feels good because music is important to your development process as a human. You dance to it, or sit and grin at it, or get mellow, or do whatever the urge is that suits what part of your brain is going bonzo. There has to be a reason why some music triggers some people and not others, too - maybe some pathways got developed or stayed open, and others did not? Don’t know.
The question I have is why does the music feedback cycle remain, when others (like intensity of taste/flavor) die off? Of course, being flavor-obsessed might interfere with survival as an adult, where music appreciation isn’t likely to kill you (unless you zone out while listening to the lions roaring…).
That’s more what I was looking for, hedra. Makes sense to me. A lot of folks will boogie (a little) to music that they don’t really even care for. I find myself tapping my foot to elevator music, fer crying out loud. Hoping noboby will catch me at it. 
And you’re right. We do “sing” to babies. And they do sing back to us.
I don’t see how someone could hate music, though. Ambivalent, maybe. Could it be they’re closet classical music fans?
Peace,
mangeorge (endorphins? cool 
)
I made a instead of a