Why Does Music Feel So Good?
phenomena.nationalgeographic.com
Why Does Music Feel So Good?
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#2I like how an undergraduate neuroscientist takes the same approach I would to learning about the brain. Throw that fucker in Google.
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#3My largely uninformed guess: Music is so massively rewarding because it trains/fuzzes our pattern matching engines, in a particularly effective and advantageous way that cannot be found "in nature". This is the same reason why jokes/humour are so enormously valued by the brain.
It also explains why only nerds like listening to breakcore.
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#4People like to guess a pattern (i.e. "from the first 5 secs I think the song will go like this and I'll like it") and like when they're right. That's also why we tend to like more songs we've already heard several times (even though we didn't like them a lot in the beginning).
Summary of the article: http://tldr.io/tldrs/516bfd54649fcf9e0a000de0/why-does-music...
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#5The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music?
I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway!
(Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#6The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music? I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway! (Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)
In terms of my little framework, you're exercising the pattern engine by making predictions and immediately having them validated. Notice how some people will try to sing along to a song even when they've never heard it before, and how the best pop songs make this very easy to do.
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#7The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music? I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway! (Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)
In terms of my little framework, you're exercising the pattern engine by making predictions and immediately having them validated. Notice how some people will try to sing along to a song even when they've never heard it before, and how the best pop songs make this very easy to do.
This fits in with an observation (internally, of myself, so probably not scientifically valid) that when I dance to music, it starts to feel like I'm creating the music with my movements. Of course I'm just moving to what I know the music is going to do, but it feels good when you feel like you're doing the opposite.
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#8The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music? I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway! (Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)
Another question that has puzzled me is why do we sometimes sing or hum a tune totally randomly?
And why do we choose to sing or hum that tune?
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#9The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music? I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway! (Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)
Is this true for everyone, though? I've sung in choirs and played various instruments over the years, so my experience of music is almost always one of deconstructing it, and so my unconscious motivation to hum along (or tap my fingers or beatbox) is to facilitate picking apart the different voices and instruments.
But not everyone has that musical background, so maybe not everyone is so compelled as you or me to sing along.
Re: Why Does Music Feel So Good?
#10The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to sing along to music? I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the original sound anyway! (Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to myself ! :)
Another question that has puzzled me is why do we sometimes sing or hum a tune totally randomly? And why do we choose to sing or hum that tune?
More fuzzing I guess.