At least on current forum unfortunately there is still no function to identify the tone of what someone says 😉
There was an article in the Audio Amateur magazine that went into detail on this subject. See if you can find it and you’ll have a better prospective.
Do a web search: Zappa Conceptual Continuity lyrics
There's a lot into Zappa that people are not truly aware of.
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Fully agree.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/37200/chapter-abstract/327375591?redirectedFrom=fulltext
This article provides an overview on two human universal features, music and language, which can be vocal, gestural, and written down. Both are hierarchically structured, being constituted by acoustic elements (words or tones) that are combined into phrases (utterances or melodies), which can be further combined to make language or musical events. The languages and musical styles can be described as forming families within which patterns of descent, blending, and development can be reconstructed. Communication with babies and infants has a particularly high degree of musicality. This is known as infant-directed speech (IDS) or “motherese”. The key characteristics of IDS are the extended articulation of vowels, heightened pitch, and exaggerated pitch contours. Several researches has shown that these are not simply used to facilitate the acquisition of language by infants but the musicality of speech has its own function in terms of its emotional impact on the infant. The infantile musical capacities could be a spin-off from language acquisition and the musicality of IDS is considered to be critical to the acquisition of language. The studies of those suffering from brain damage or congenital conditions show that music and language have significant degrees of independence in the brain, even a double dissociation.
My answer to the question of "Why does music have such a hold over us" is in line with the previous poster who stated that music appeals to the basal or primal part of our brain, but my answer is shall we say tweaked in a slightly different direction.
I will try to make this brief, because to give my answer in full would require two one-hour lectures--lectures I delivered when I was invited as a Guest Lecturer in a Neuro-Psych sciences course at Brown University, almost three years ago.
Our ear-brain system, in the larger sense of including the skull bones and sinuses, passively and actively EQs ambient sounds--the stretch between max cut and max boost is about 17dB! You will not be surprised to learn that the boost is centered on the band of "Intellgibility Frequencies," from 1,000 to 4,000Hz.
When Ice Age Cave Mommy hears a twig snap in the woods, she does not have to think over where the sound came from. A "biological computer" in her head, which runs on a very fast clock, compares the arrival times from left and right ears, and involuntarily directs her eyes in that direction.
Furthermore, when Ice Age Cave Mommy hears the wail of a lost toddler, her limbic system drops everything else, and puts her whole body and psyche into Fight or Flight Mode. Opera composers have been exploiting this hard-wired human reaction for as long as there have been operas. It's usually the Act I Big Soprano Aria.
So, the short version of my explanation is that music "rides along free" on neural wiring that was designed to be our first line of defense--that's because hearing, unlike vision, works in the dark, and even works when you are asleep.
That's why, when our cognitive functions are in decline, one of the last things to go is the memory of songs or music that meant much to us in our early years.
Which is also why my most famous music production was titled "Songs My Mother Taught Me."
amb,
john
So to the op, this is intrinsic to our nature which explains our taste in music, fully formed by our environment/demographics. If you're brought up in a household listening to classical music your whole upbringing, you're going to love it..maybe not while influenced by your peers during formative years but you will no doubt appreciate it later, also having acquired a taste for peer influenced music.
"Why does music have such a hold over us?"
In my opinion, as we know everything that concerns the brain and therefore involves the neuroscience results as particularly complex and if/when an answer is given then a world of further fascinating questions opens.
There are times when science identifies the "how", but it cannot explain the "why".
And "because we like to listen to music" it seems not to be an exception.
However the state of the art of the scientific answer seems to be the following: because music has been shown to activate the neural circuit of the reward.
In other words the brain treats music as a source of pleasure similarly to how it does with the others primary needs of man, releasing dopamina.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6397525/
It seems definitive as interesting, but science still seem not able to give other kind of answers as about why one likes Frank Zappa's music and another not?
Apart from all these considerations and more or less scientific surveys what personally fascinates me a lot is the fact that starting from the beating of one's heart and one' mother's heart, continuing with the "motherese" (the cadenced way of talking about the mother to her baby) and continuing again with personal experience and cultural imprinting, and therefore as you said environmental conditioning, of each of us can structure their own personal musical tastes in a totally mysterious way.
What I also find singular is the fact that only music is "used" as an aesthetic experience "of pleasure" (or, as a cultured guy would say: hedonistic) repetitive and deliberate that in addition many of us try to enhance and improve as much as possible through a most accurate sound reproduction.
It seems to me that it does not happen with anything else who involves our other senses, not in that repetitive and deliberate way of pleasure.
Maybe because as I already said elsewhere, listening to Music causes pleasure to both the soul - sensations, memories, emotions evoked by musical content - and the body - that's the good instrumental and voice sounds that physically enters our ears giving the pure pleasure of hearing...
In my opinion, as we know everything that concerns the brain and therefore involves the neuroscience results as particularly complex and if/when an answer is given then a world of further fascinating questions opens.
There are times when science identifies the "how", but it cannot explain the "why".
And "because we like to listen to music" it seems not to be an exception.
However the state of the art of the scientific answer seems to be the following: because music has been shown to activate the neural circuit of the reward.
In other words the brain treats music as a source of pleasure similarly to how it does with the others primary needs of man, releasing dopamina.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6397525/
It seems definitive as interesting, but science still seem not able to give other kind of answers as about why one likes Frank Zappa's music and another not?
Apart from all these considerations and more or less scientific surveys what personally fascinates me a lot is the fact that starting from the beating of one's heart and one' mother's heart, continuing with the "motherese" (the cadenced way of talking about the mother to her baby) and continuing again with personal experience and cultural imprinting, and therefore as you said environmental conditioning, of each of us can structure their own personal musical tastes in a totally mysterious way.
What I also find singular is the fact that only music is "used" as an aesthetic experience "of pleasure" (or, as a cultured guy would say: hedonistic) repetitive and deliberate that in addition many of us try to enhance and improve as much as possible through a most accurate sound reproduction.
It seems to me that it does not happen with anything else who involves our other senses, not in that repetitive and deliberate way of pleasure.
Maybe because as I already said elsewhere, listening to Music causes pleasure to both the soul - sensations, memories, emotions evoked by musical content - and the body - that's the good instrumental and voice sounds that physically enters our ears giving the pure pleasure of hearing...
Isn't there a theory that song predates speech? Gibbons sing together. Early humans likely chanted to communicate before developing language. The oldest musical instrument known is the bird-bone flute (line of holes properly tuned) -- surely to imitate birdsong pitch but already capable of tonal music. This predates writing by ~10k years. Music is deep, deep down in our genes as well as society.
I think the "how" is irrelevant as the same tools are used for all other cognitive functions as well. It's really the "why" that drives it. As soon as you use the word "because" you leave the "how" and enter the realm of "why". None of the ways we act out are not a product of our environment. They are all learned. I suppose an example of the difference between how and why could be one's preference of music within the same genre. But as far as the op is concerned the real question would be how we would respond to music having only been introduced to it much later in life. What if you never knew it existed til you were 50 years old? And remember even deaf people can appreciate music through feeling it.
Although simplification is often useful for communication purposes, really human things seem always infinitely more complex than one can imagine at a first step and with Music as a topic to get out of the way seems even easier.
I agree that the environment interferes with any human behavior, but in my opinion profiles an even simplified scheme seems very difficult as there is both conditioning itself as an objective event and the interpretation that is given and it is precisely that subjective interpretation of the objective event that seems to complicate things, as it arises from one's own unique and non -repeatable experience.
Then there are probably also the instincts (of survival, of conservation of the species, of self-conservation) which in turn "condition" with almost absolute certainty human behavior.
To do so even more it seems the fact that a certain behavior (which is also conditioned by the environment) is observed all the more frequently if a reward corresponds to it.
And we return to the activation of the neural network of the reward.
It seems that everything that gives us pleasure affects our future actions to the repetition of that pleasure or even just to its possibility, that motivation, that is, so necessary for action.
Without the existence of a probable reward, even if only presumed or possible, it seems that nothing or almost moves.
Maybe there will be exceptions, but frankly I don't know.
Returning to the Music and mystery of how one musical tastes have been structured I think that two spheres of interest can also be identified: instinctive and educational, that is, educable.
The instinctive attitude for certain genres of music remains perhaps a mystery, but I believe that it is possible to bring closer, "educate", and then grow the interest in anything to anyone.
Believing in it, and dedicating yourself, one can learn and then even adapt, and step by step one may even come to feel pleasure in a kind of music that he thought could never do it.
And if that neural circuit of the reward is activated...
I agree that the environment interferes with any human behavior, but in my opinion profiles an even simplified scheme seems very difficult as there is both conditioning itself as an objective event and the interpretation that is given and it is precisely that subjective interpretation of the objective event that seems to complicate things, as it arises from one's own unique and non -repeatable experience.
Then there are probably also the instincts (of survival, of conservation of the species, of self-conservation) which in turn "condition" with almost absolute certainty human behavior.
To do so even more it seems the fact that a certain behavior (which is also conditioned by the environment) is observed all the more frequently if a reward corresponds to it.
And we return to the activation of the neural network of the reward.
It seems that everything that gives us pleasure affects our future actions to the repetition of that pleasure or even just to its possibility, that motivation, that is, so necessary for action.
Without the existence of a probable reward, even if only presumed or possible, it seems that nothing or almost moves.
Maybe there will be exceptions, but frankly I don't know.
Returning to the Music and mystery of how one musical tastes have been structured I think that two spheres of interest can also be identified: instinctive and educational, that is, educable.
The instinctive attitude for certain genres of music remains perhaps a mystery, but I believe that it is possible to bring closer, "educate", and then grow the interest in anything to anyone.
Believing in it, and dedicating yourself, one can learn and then even adapt, and step by step one may even come to feel pleasure in a kind of music that he thought could never do it.
And if that neural circuit of the reward is activated...
I think you are exaggerating now and you're making me regret having "trusted" you.
You will not force me to smear this thread.
My serious answer is above.
Dot.
And now Moderators can also delete everything as far as I'm concerned.
Regards
You will not force me to smear this thread.
My serious answer is above.
Dot.
And now Moderators can also delete everything as far as I'm concerned.
Regards
I stopped reading your post with any semblance of seriousness after that introduction since that's a false premise.
Ever notice how you remember all the words to a song that you haven’t heard in 20 years when you hear the music? That shows how basal the memories are. You are not remembering from your conscious mind but from a more primitive part. The words are not remembered for their meaning but for their sound.