Shirase, Miko R.D.

3-7 BMAE

Music Development, Assignment

Prof. Glinore Morales

29 January 2018

I have been fascinated a lot on how MUSIC affects our brain as humans who has the
ability and capacity to hear sounds and collectible sounds. When I was a student
earlier in high school, I read something similar to this article. I have opened up my files
where that particular document was and compared my understandings there and my
understanding in this article. These are the key ideas I interpreted, re-interpreted, re-
synthesised, and calculated. Since these are a lot, I managed to just put them up on
bullets and not elaborate each key point and idea anymore.

Your definition of “good” music, and what you expect from a song is 100% cultural and
habituated over time

•As children we develop schema for what we consider to be “normal” for music, based
on what we are exposed to in our particular environment and culture.

•A schema is a set of attributes for “normal" music (rhythms, meter, chords, genres,
phrase structure, song length, what notes follow what etc.). By the age of 5, children
have internalized rules about what music “should" sound like/“legal” sounds (e.g.
normal chord progressions and sounds)

•Some schema apply to most of a particular culture (e.g. standard chord progressions
that sound good in western music), and there are also person-specific mental schema
that develop from your own personal musical journey (in other words, your own taste)

•Schema evolve as kids get older. As this happens, they tire of predictable music and
search for music that holds more challenge (analogous to how people often start by
liking “EDM"/trance and then move on to more subtle genres)

•The stuff you listen to as a teen is what you think of as “your music” and sinks-in the
most

•We listen to what our friends listen to and music is a way to externalize the bonds we
form

“Good” music is simply an artist skillfully violating our expectations

•Our brains are constantly working hard to predict what is coming next in music. This
prediction is based on:

•What has already come before in the specific track (e.g. certain motifs/melodies etc.)

•What we remember will come next if we already know the track

•What we expect will come next if the genre or style is familiar based on previous
exposure to this style of music (i.e. pre-existing mental schema as noted above)

•Any additional information we have been given, such as a summary of the music that
we’ve read, Soundcloud comments etc.

•The deep emotions we feel when we listen to music are a result of having our
expectations violated

•These expectations can occur in any domain: timbre, pitch, contour, rhythm, tempo
etc., and can be substantial violations or minute violations

•In violating and meeting expectations, good music has to strike the right balance
between complexity (and hence novelty) and simplicity/familiarity

•Studies show that the more “complex" (this is a subjective and purely personal term)
music is, the more interesting we perceive it to be. Until it gets too complex and we are
lost / bored/confused.

•Non EDM example: The police: Combined reggae rhythms with rock patterns.

•Similarly with Rhythm, the brain predicts when the next beat is going to occur. As the
music unfolds, the brain constantly updates that estimate. A skillful artist can violate
that expectation in an interesting way. Our cerebellum finds pleasure in adjusting itself
to stay synchronized

•These expectations can even cause us to misperceive items in the music - the brain
infers parts of the music that aren’t there. - e.g. drum hits that aren’t there

•Skillful artists exploit this because they know, for example, our perception of a melodic
line will continue, even if its obscured by other instruments

•Timeless music violates our expectations just enough that they cause us to keep
coming back to it for many years (e.g. Beatles - Yesterday - 7 beats to a measure)

•Structure and form in music is an illusion created by the brain. There is nothing about
the music itself that necessarily creates the emotions and associations we have with it,
nothing about a scale/chord intrinsically causes us to expect resolution. These
associations are created by conditioning over time, and change with every new piece
of music we listen to.

•Some specific violations and expectations:

•A deceptive cadence: When you think the music will resolve to particular chord but it
resolves to a different one

•Gap fill: If there is a large leap upwards in the melody, the next note should come back
towards the home (e.g. Phantom pt 2, over the rainbow)

•Resolution: In melody, our brain has an idea about where it should resolve to at the
end

•[Given this, an overriding imperative when making music must be to make something
new and unexpected. This is what makes music inherently interesting.]

•Setting up and manipulating of expectations is the heart of music. [Hence why it is

crucial you do things like take one genre and filter it through another, and look for
something new]

•Music is based on repetition. When it is done skillfully, repetition is emotionally

satisfying to our brains and makes the listening experience pleasurable (hence why you
need things like a hook / a theme)

 Humans are insanely aware of tiny nuances and details in music

•Very tiny changes in loudness (e.g. hi hat velocity variations) and timing have a huge
impact on the emotional communication of music. We can perceive differences of just
a few ms. This is one reason why it is easier for a human drummer to produce a more
compelling pattern than quantized 808 patterns / why electronic artists spend time
implementing minute changes in velocity and amplitude to electronic drum patterns.

•Stevie Wonder - Superstition. Hi hat pattern is super nuanced and subtle (timbre/
rhythm/amplitude change frequently). This makes the drums breath/come alive

•Our brains get pleasure from these small violations in timing: We like new/unexpected
things.

•Timbral recognition is massively acute in humans. We can recognize hundreds of

different voices.

•When remembering songs, people are very good at remembering singers’ vocal
affectations and nuances [This is helpful for making stuff that will stick in people’s
heads / why it’s important for rappers to have a unique sound - fetty wap / Future /
snoop]

 Music is core to what it means to be human

•Music in some form has been present in every human society on record

•Musical instruments are among the oldest human artifacts on record.