Do you know anyone, with free will, who does not listen to music at all? Personally, I have heard about people like this, but I have never meet anyone with this specific feature. Untill recently, when I was playing MMORPG (I will not mention name of a game, because I am ashamed that I still play it) I decided to share a song with a playere I have been playing for sometime. After sending him link to the mentioned song, I received simple answer “I don’t really listen to music”. I started a conversation, why does he not listen to any artist, any band, any music at all, and why does he spend his whole life in complete silence. And that was the moment, when this question occurred – “Why do people even listen to music?”. It has become strange for me at the time, that humans like to listen sounds composed in arranged in a scheme and they feel things when they do. They become more confident, start to think in a different way, it calms them or makes them angry. Music affects humans in every possible way, depends, of course, on a genre they listen at the moment – but why?

This question, as every good question, looks for answers on many levels. Of course, I am not first to look for an answer, and research at the subject are work at progress for a long time, some of questions has been answered. For example, this explanation from 2001 given by Anne Blood and Robert Zatorr from McGill University of Montreal. They showed, using magnetic resonance, that in brains of people who have been listening to their favorite music, parts called limbic and paralimbic has been activated. In short explanation, these parts are responsible for euphoric experiences, caused with dopamine rush (dopamine is one of neurotransmiters present in our brains). Same effect can be provoked with eating tasty food, having sex or taking drugs. It just makes us feel good. We can assume that words of many artists, that music is like addictive drug, are true.

BUT WHY? It is easier for us to understand, why activities like eating good food or having sex, is awarded with rush like this. This is just an element of our survival – without it our spiece could not last. Reproduction and eating – basics of survival of a kind. In that case, why sequence of sounds, which in no clear way helps us survive, make us feel all of these things that music brings to us?

Truth is, we still do not know. But there are few theories that cast a dim light on this seemingly negligible subject. I listen to music, just because I like listening. Are you sure you are not fooling yourself? The most popular theory amongst scientists, who study matter of processing music with human mind is one postulated in 1956 by Leonard Meyer. To sum it in few words, it says that emotions experienced while listening to music, brings it down to what we expect, and if we receive it. He based his work on former psychology publications pertaining emotions/feelings, saying that they rise if we can not fulfill our demands. Anger and frustration arises, and analogical, when we manage to realise them – for example with nice dinner, line of coke or sex – positive experienes are stronger in relation to strength of emotion caused with demand. And that was what Meyer took as a base for this thesis. Music are sonic patterns, which beget our brains to predict what will happen next. If we guessed right, brain rewards itself with dopamine rush. Never-ending jumping between predictions and effects, which revive our minds with pleasant game of emotions.

Why should we concern ourselves, if our predictions are right or not? Your life does not depend on it. True, but once it just might have. David Huron, musicologist from Ohio State University states, that predicting future events in our surroundings, based on interpretations of what we hear and see, having only partial informations, might have been key to our survival. And, plot twist, it still is, for example while we cross a road or drive a car. In the end, flash of a car light or horn of some bastard who should not have drivers license, is a clear signal for us to watch our steps. Braiding in those predictions emotions, from evolution point of view, might have been really smart move! In ancient times, our ancestors did not have possibility to think, if a roar they have just heard was made by lion or by a monkey. Passing logical part of our brain with short-cut to primitive limbic parts responsible for emotions, processing sound might have result in adrenaline rush, preparing us to run or to fight.

The most presumable theory is one, saying emotions while listening to music comes from bending, triming and manipulating our expectations, but it is not easy to confirm. Still, it is just theory, but the mankind is sooooo resouruceful (wars, genetic selection, wars, religions, space flights, wars, civilisation, some more wars, whole technology, bla, bla, bla, bla, and at the top of all of it – wait for it – SOME MORE WARS AND KILLING! YAY!) that someday it might be proven right anyway. But back to the topic, why is it hard to confirm? One of reasons may be just simple fact, that music offers so many possibilities to create and change our existing expectations, so it is not known what should be measured and compared. It is too individual! We count on arising melodies to arise to infinity – maybe not into infinity, nothing can reach this phenomena. We expect from music harmony, not irritating grinding of molecules. However, what we think is pleseant today, 100 years ago would had been called cacophony. We expect rhythm to repeat itself and we are surprised with rock ‘n roll syncopation (a musical effect caused by off-beat or otherwise unexpected rhythms), goes from for example 5/8 to 4/4. Ergo, our expectations are complicated, ever changing dependence between progression of respective parts of a track, how comparable with another tracks and styles and how simillar they are to everything we have ever heard.

One of the offshots from Mayer’s theory is fact, that emotions in music are defined with culture. To have any expectations regarding way of how track will sound in the future you need to know rules – strict rules of music in said culture, you need to be able to identify what is normal. And at this point everything go full bananas, because it differs culture from culture, country to country. In eastern Europe, simple rhythms like Waltz are these natural ones. On the other hand, people living in western world happily dance to rhythms, which seem tremendously hard for us, compared with others. We all develop strong, subconscious belief, which notes sounds good, is it in sequences or in chords. Since different cultures use different scales and trims, one truth can be said – there is nothing like universal truth to musical predictions for every human.

That being said, I want to add something – music is not only positive vibrations. If you listen to music everyday, you must know that it can cause whole gamma of feelings – strating with anxiety, going further and meeting anger, sadness or longing, irritation with DJ who does not want to play your favourite song in a club, ending with boredom with repetitiveness in your best music genre. The last part is a hard thing for musicians and artists. I mean, boredom in music, as said earlier. They stand before difficult task of fitting ability to predict schemes in track in a perfect way. They do it wrong – music is boring as f*ck. They over do it – listener can not have any predictions regarding progression of a song – which is why many people can not listen to modern atonal music. (Avant-garde sucks IMHO)

Everything I wrote might rationalise a lot of reflections, about feeling emotions while listening to specific music. Lately, Meyer’s ideas got back-up in form of brain scans made by Zattor and his associates, which have shown that dopamine rush while listening to some song for a first time are strictly depended from communication between emotional and logical parts of brain.

But there is more! Our emotional response might be conditioned by basicaly everything! Even something so trivial like fact if we listen in a group or alone, if specific song reminds us of a expirience from the past, be it good or bad like: “Hey love, they are playing our song!” turns to depression and anxiety five years later. But it is still the very same song.

We could dream up another excogitations and spit another theories flooding yourself with sticky coating of complacency tearing down shroud that covers true nature of reality, but behind long, sophisticated words and sentences fulfilled with fake confidence about said sentences hides one, major detail. Despite this whole article, we still do not know about what kind of emotions we talk about. More precisly – what do we really feel while we listen to music. We recognise sad melodies when we are not sad. And even if we feel this way, it is not sadness caused with some big loss – it might be pleasant even if it causes cry. Some compositions, like Bach’s or Mozart’s might make one feel strong emotions, too hard to describe, too hard not to feel. Ergo, we will probably never understand why people listen to music, why does it stimulate world of our emotions, unless we will have better picture of what this world really is.

and as always

yours forever

sph1nx