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We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

aeon.co

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Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#111
post #108
post #2

Related: 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…

> As someone who gets a significant amount of his daily joy from listening to music... I, in turn, find this somewhat astonishing. Not only is it so different from my own experience, it's difficult to understand. When you're enjoying a piece of music, you can at least imagine what it would be like not to feel anything. For me, though, when I see people enjoying music, it's so confusing. What am I "supposed" to be fee…

You really ought to try acid sometime.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#112
post #107
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson 2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

How does this compare to an orgasm?

It's maybe a little like the aftershocks of one, or someone nibbling on your ear / nipple. It's an all-over skin tingle, felt especially on the arms and scalp, and a transcendental emotional feeling.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#113
Long before writing, people had oral histories. Those were more reliable using rhyme (sort of an error-correction scheme). Setting it to music made it even less error-prone, and so better transmission of information gave a survival advantage.

Hence, we like music.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#114
post #107
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson 2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

How does this compare to an orgasm?

It's a different kind of experience, but definitely clustered in the "feelings of intense pleasure" cluster. I'd say that musical frisson is much more of an emotionally driven feeling that encompasses a much larger part of the body. The intensity ranges all over the place from a small feeling of "nice!" to intense, almost physically disabling, feelings of absolute bliss that have left me weeping like I'd just experienced an overwhelming introduction to an infinite god. But most of the time it happens it's just a crawling feeling of pleasure waves along the upper back, shoulders, back of the neck and arms and a general feeling of happiness and joy.

In my case, there's sometimes feelings of "consciousness expansion", and "universal connection", similar to stories I've read from among various drug users or people who've experienced intense religious experiences -- at times I've felt intense focus, explosive creativity, and an "overclocked" sensation like my brain had been turned up to a faster performance ratio -- often for those moments of he frisson I can be intensely productive in creative pursuits. But it falls away as the frisson dissipates. I do not know if this is universal or not, there's pitifully little understanding of this phenomenon and sharing of information.

It's a very personal feeling, I don't know that I could ever do it with other people around, and it's tied to very specific passages of music that seem unique to the frissoner. As you can guess it's very addictive, and when I was younger I would spend hours auditioning albums looking for "frissonable" moments I would play over and over again for hours -- usually just a few seconds of some passage that would trigger it. However, pursuing this seems to "use-up" the feeling and after a while the passage would lose its triggering power.

If the universe was about to end, and I was allowed to have one final pleasurable experience replayed, selected from any orgasm of frisson I've ever had, I'd definitely pick from among my most intense frissons.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#115
post #112
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this compare to an orgasm?

It's maybe a little like the aftershocks of one, or someone nibbling on your ear / nipple. It's an all-over skin tingle, felt especially on the arms and scalp, and a transcendental emotional feeling.

> and a transcendental emotional feeling

Yeah, the feelings along those lines are really really powerful...and slippery, they slide away as the frisson goes away. :(

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#116
post #2

Related: 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…

Finally, I have a name for it! If all of music simply disappeared right this second and there was never again a melody, song, etc. forever more, I wouldn't miss it for one second. I understand music evokes something in other people, I just don't understand why or how or what that "enjoyment" consists of. It does absolutely nothing for me. I've tried just about every genre of music that I've been aware of, but it's al…

Interesting I was wondering why there is "ear candy" that would catch me, even though I did not understand most of the song meaning or background or history. And I was caught by the ear candies of different genres except folk. Folk would not catch me much. Most of the 1 hit song of some band or singer would catch me. (lll¬ω¬)

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#117
post #107
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson 2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

How does this compare to an orgasm?

I get this too. I call it eargasm and have a folder full of music files that have triggered it. Anytime I hear a new one I save it in my eargasm playlist.

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#118
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 enjoy music but I realizes that the ROI of listening to music is on uplifting my mood. I rather listen to a podcast or NPR now cause I get something to ponder on or form an opinion about on my commute. I rather listen to music socially with people in the car though. From the field of neuroscience, we know that music affects the brain like a drug of sorts. I believe Steven Pinker said in a book of his that music rel…

That's understandable, but he specifically asked what kind of music his coworker likes. If you asked someone what their favorite movie is and they brought up a completely different activity they enjoy to pass the time, like programming, you'd find their response more than odd, no?

Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?

#120
post #101
post #2

Related: 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…

There's also a small percentage of people (maybe In some people who experience it, it can be an absolutely overwhelming experience -- like strapping your brain to wings made out of lightning bolts. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisson 2 - http://theconversation.com/why-do-only-some-people-get-skin-...

Uh, that second link says studies have reported that from 55% to 86% of people can experience it.
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