Its because of Dopamine. I think everyone knows this. The same is true for Social media as well.
I love The Dopamines! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI_n3flJDL0
We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
141–150 of 180 posts
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#142Hmm, I was hoping for something more contemporary that I could relate to, but was disappointed that it focused on pieces written centuries ago...like most formal musical theory. Anyway, this passage stuck out to me: """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 affor…
Any of those sets on soundcloud that you know of?
Well you're lucky I read this comment right as my morning coffee kicked in; it really depends on your taste I guess, but I'll try to be as broad as I can. Most of the sets I've heard/been at were not recorded, so syndicated radio shows from the time are the best approximate of what would have been played.
* Eric Prydz at Ultra Music Festival 2014 https://soundcloud.com/eric-prydz/eric-prydz-live-ultra
Lots of more-recent converters to the Prydz fanbase point to this set as being the "A-ha" moment of getting his music. He somehow manages to fit in a lot of different-yet-cohesive moods into 60 minutes, and the final song is a (live?) mash-up of two of his classics that is really, really clever and satisfying.
* Above and Beyond BBC Radio 1 Essential Mixes
* 2004 https://soundcloud.com/aboveandbeyond/r1-essential-mix-of-th...
* 2011 https://soundcloud.com/above-6/above-beyond-bbc-radio-1
Take your pick of 2011 or 2004 depending on whether you want to tackle more-poppy, modern 128BPM or a more classic, lo-fi acid-influenced 138BPM. I think the bootleg of Massive Attack's Teardrop from 2011 is a very special track, can't really speak highly enough of it...
* Yotto at ABGT250
* SoundCloud https://soundcloud.com/b-rizzzle/yotto-abgt250-live-at-the-g...
* YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtL1Ff0T6IM
I included a YouTube link because the audio doesn't do the gorgeous setting justice - sunset at The Gorge, Washington State, if you can get past the interesting rave attire that Americans seem to feel compelled to wear at festivals. Fine Day is an absolute classic, very airy and day-dreamy; bonus for the recording capturing the crowd singing along.
* Undercatt at Watergate https://soundcloud.com/undercatt/undercatt-watergate-berlin-...
Club instead of festival or Essential Mix. Again, ends on a very classy, satisfying track that rewards you for sticking through to the end. A bit more techy and minimal than my other choices.
* Sasha at Watergate https://soundcloud.com/last-night-on-earth/sasha-presents-la...
Same club, one year earlier. Again, more techy and minimal. The track around 28 minutes, "Trigonometry" is a perfectly drawn out with a very intense climax, and absolutely deserves the "progressive" moniker - unfortunately it's the radio show and Sasha talks over the track hah. This is only a middle snippet of the full 4 hour set.
* Lane 8, Anjunadeep Edition 28 https://soundcloud.com/anjunadeep/anjunadeep-edition-28-lane...
Something a bit poppier, but deep. Just like the Eric Prydz UMF set, a lot of Lane 8 fans point to this radio edition as being their "A-ha" moment. Very, very classy and restrained, but with some darker, more emotional moments.
* Armin van Buuren, Amnesia Ibiza 2008 https://soundcloud.com/rave_on/armin-van-buuren-live-armin-s...
If you can handle modern (post-2000) trance, then this is definitely one of _the_ sets to listen to. Really runs the full gambit of the genre as it was in 2008, starting slower and poppier, and ending with a very intense final two hours.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Listening to silence is different from listening to music? They're both categories of "things you'd want to hear."
If you asked someone what their favorite kind of pizza is and they responded with "chocolate milkshake", you wouldn't be at a loss for words? They're both categories of food.
I think you're missing the point. To me music isn't qualitatively different to any other sound sequence, or lack of sound. "Silence" is something you can listen to, just as much as "running water", "conversational din", or "Beethoven's 5th". Yet because it is structured in the form of certain integer ratio harmonics, 95% of the population treats it as something categorically different. Objectively, that is what's weird here.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
The first one is interesting - if I heard it on the radio I wouldn't think twice about it, but seeing a video is different. Watching the guy play the guitar gives me a sense of how difficult it must be to play - which means I appreciate the music because I appreciate the technical skill of the person playing it. The second one does nothing for me - it's just dull. Can you explain how you feel when you listen to those…
Sure! When I see Derek Truck play guitar in that first video, I feel about his playing how BB King says he feels, like this was one of the best things I've ever heard.
The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her. The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#145Related: 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-...
Interesting to know what it's called, thanks. I have a few pieces of music that trigger this for me, up to shivers and tears in the eyes (though not at overwhelming/lightning-bolt levels.)
On the other hand, I'm utterly unresponsive to poetry.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia ( http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337 ) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :) There's actually quite a lot of…
> Whenever aphantasia (absence of visual mental imagery) or musical anhedonia ( http://www.pnas.org/content/113/46/E7337 ) come up on HN, I can count on someone to be surprised to discover that that's what they are and that when other people talked about "seeing things in their mind's eye" or being emotionally moved by a song it wasn't just another idiom or metaphor but quite literal. :) That's exactly what's happeni…
> I always just kind of assumed people were just using overly flowery speech to describe music!
Yes! I realised this a few years ago. When people say "that's a sad song", they really mean that the song makes them sad in and of itself.
Whereas, for me, the only way a song can make me sad is if it brings back sad memories - i.e. if I had previously heard the same song on a sad occasion.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#147Earlier 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?
> Do you find it harder to enjoy movies?
Quite possibly. I do enjoy watching a movie on occasion, but there are many other things I would rather do with my time. It turns out that compared to most people, I don't watch many movies - I've seen well under 100 of the "IMDb Top 1000 Movies of All Time" [1].
I've never considered this to be related to music, but I guess it could be.
[1] https://www.listchallenges.com/top-1000-greatest-movies-of-a...
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
Music is a form of communication. What I experience in certain pieces of music is a connection with a particular set or category of feelings that verbal language is simply unable to describe with an equivalent clarity and it's a sort of empathy shared with the composer. edit: Can you guess what people might feel from this piece? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWKq_kg2Ws
> Can you guess what people might feel from this piece? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XWKq_kg2Ws
That's a difficult one. It didn't make me feel anything, so I really do have to guess what other people might feel.
For example, I have to think about occasions on which similar pieces of music are generally used. A solo piano like this piece is often sad, but on the other hand, this piece has a higher tempo than most sad songs.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would I know if it is harder for me to enjoy movies than for somebody else? I don't like "music movies" such as High Fidelity, 8 Mile, School of Rock, Blues Brothers. They are just average comedy/drama flicks for me. Maybe normal people like them more? For a while if someone asked me what music I like, I replied film music. I do enjoy film music but maybe just because the music makes me remember the movie? I'm de…
Interesting. I also have mostly soundtracks in my playlists, for when I feel like listening to music at all (usually to drown out distractions). It's all soundtracks of things I've watched and enjoyed, and puts me in the mood of the memory of the movie or TV show its from. The music itself doesn't do very much at all for me directly.
This mirrors my own experience exactly. I too listen to a lot of soundtracks, from movies or from video games that I have enjoyed. Although music doesn't provoke an emotional response on its own, it has an incredible ability to being back emotional memories.
For a similar reason, when choosing music to listen to, I generally listen to the same songs again and again - those which have a connection to my past. It is very hard to feel anything about a new piece of music.
This means that I may regularly listen to one track by a particular artist, but have no interest in any of their other songs. I don't even like listening to remixed or live versions of songs that I enjoy - they are sufficiently different that they do not evoke any memories and hence are uninteresting to me.
Re: We know music is pleasurable, the question is why?
#150Related: 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 hate when people ask me that! Haha! I like some music, sure, but by and large it doesn't come into my life. I don't go to concerts (don't see the point and when I have, have not enjoyed them anywhere near as much as others who came with me), I don't have spotify, I couldn't tell you the last time I listened to an album, in the car I prefer talk radio to be on.
I wouldn't say I'm fully unable to appreciate music. But... I dunno, I can get by without.