Its because of Dopamine. I think everyone knows this. The same is true for Social media as well.
That's the answer to "how" not "why".
In science and nature, there is only "how".
We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
81–90 of 180 posts
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too. And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356
This is fascinating! Can any of you with musical anhedonia watch either of these songs and explain how you feel? https://youtu.be/SS0NHlWgi5w?t=3m22s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi5A9OCAyIk
Nice selection of tunes btw, at least they resonated an emotional response with me, but I love music.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#83> There is something that still rings true of Mattheson’s general idea. We do tend to associate some musical features with being uplifted and others with melancholic reflection, both of which might afford a certain subsequent pleasure to listeners. I have always wondered if we know how much of the emotion associated with music is learned from culture. To put it another way, is a sad song inherently sad? Or is it sad…
I have the same question about major and minor keys. It's pretty easy to play something somber in C-major, and something happy in A-minor... This is opposite to the conventional wisdom about keys, and I think it's a cultural thing. When you play them right on top of each other, the three notes which are a half step lower do seem to sound sadder in comparison, but I think that says more about descending vs ascending t…
Given your second paragraph... are you perhaps confusing tonality with chord quality? Amin (the chord) is a diatonic chord of C major (the tonality).
Also, it's easy to play "random" chords from a tonality and end up in a different mode without even realizing it. E.g.: A minor (the key, also known as A aeolian) has the exact same diatonic chords as C major (but the reference, i.e. tonal center, is A instead of C).
A large part of tonality is chord position in the piece, which is also greatly influenced by dynamics, melody, accompanying instruments, harmony, harmonic progression (both immediate/local and global)...
Also: Cmaj7 (the chord) is C-E-G-B and Emin6 is E-G-B-C (notice the similarity?), but E-G-B-C can also be interpreted as Cmaj7 in first inversion depending on context. Sometimes roots are omitted from chords so E-G-B (Emin at first sight) could be interpreted as Cmaj7(no root). Just like C-E-G could be a rootless Am7 (A-C-E-G with omitted A). They are often used as substitutes of one another in jazz.
Music is just too complex and musical language (chord names etc.) is just a hack developed around traditions and conventions, not science. It's mostly notation of intention, since everything can be twisted to mean something else.
The more music theory I know, the less definite answers to musical questions are.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree. For an example I would say that roadworks or traffic or other people’s conversations do not really elicit an emotional response however many people would likely prefer quiet. I think it is unreasonable to assume that if someone were to say “well I prefer quiet, I guess,” they mean that they have some great emotional response to being in the quiet making them love it. It would be more reasonable to assume…
> It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise. We are actually agreeing; however I'm saying that this is a preference. Wikipedia refers to anhedonia as an inability to have pleasure about something. However, valence [1] as a measurement identifies affect dimensions as a polar system - (to quote Wikipedia) "Stress is negative valence and opp…
So, if I neither like, nor dislike music, but simply don't care whether it exists or not, then that is anhedonia?
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#85I recommend checking out Adam Neely's channel, where he touches on some similar concepts:
https://youtu.be/6c_LeIXrzAk https://youtu.be/9q4MWdHhgfM https://youtu.be/V5WfgMVtueo
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Me too. And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17846356
I have a question for musical anhedonics: Do you find it harder to enjoy movies? Typically the score does so much _work_ in the name of emotional manipulation, that I wonder if it would make movies less enjoyable. More specifically I wonder if you would like certain movies (Spielberg) less and other movies (Er, Um. Who doesn't use scores that much?) more?
How would I know? I don't have an emotional response to music and never have, so what would I compare it to?
You know, I also don't dream. I wonder if there is a name for never dreaming and if there is any link between not dreaming and not having an emotional response to music.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
>We are servants to our genes If so then how do you explain phenomena like suicide and celibacy?
It is commonly assumed that evolution tries to maximize its outcome using a greedy algorithm. In fact it seems to be a random walk across all possibilities, with unviable branches dying out over time. Suicide may also be a second order effect of other factors. For example, suicide usually has a cultural basis: you feel some sort of shame, or maybe you think your future outcomes aren't good culturally. But that means…
>Suicide usually has a cultural basis
Yes -- hence copycat suicides. But cultural, not genetic. Ideas, not genes.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It would be more reasonable to assume that they are basically indifferent and would rather not have the distraction/noise. We are actually agreeing; however I'm saying that this is a preference. Wikipedia refers to anhedonia as an inability to have pleasure about something. However, valence [1] as a measurement identifies affect dimensions as a polar system - (to quote Wikipedia) "Stress is negative valence and opp…
So, if I neither like, nor dislike music, but simply don't care whether it exists or not, then that is anhedonia?
Medically diagnosed apathy was the term I was thinking of while driving
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#89Related: recent studies have shown that there are people with "musical anhedonia", and that this condition may affect 3 to 5% of the world population [1]. These people "get" music, meaning that they can learn to sing or play an instrument, remember and recognize melodies etc., but they are completely unable to receive any pleasure from it. As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to mu…
I was riding with a new coworker to lunch. Trying to get to know him better, I asked what kind of music he likes. Music is such an important part of many people's life that this is often a good opener. He hesitated for a while and said, "I don't know... quiet I guess?" I think his response caused a full hard reboot of my cranial OS. It was the first time I'd ever met anyone whose relationship to music was so fundamen…
I'm in between. I do get enjoyment from music, but don't listen to it except when driving, which I didn't do for the six years before last week. I don't actively seek it out or wear headphones for walking/working/exercising.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#90For harmony I have no clue, but for rhythm I have a serious belief that it's a side product of our mechanical balance processing unit (and also why dance goes with it). Just data from years of learning drumming, de-synchronization (ability to think about and move different limbs in ~parallel) is extremely valuable in every activity. You're probably smarter and more efficient because you process your movements and your perception quite differently.