Can someone explain to me *why* we can perceive emotion in music? It's all kind of magical to me how music really is a universal language. (Erm, it is, right?) We can all recognise a happy tune, a tense tune, an aggressive one, and perhaps a contemplative or serene tune.
Why is that?
@JordiGH That's a really interesting question. Music is so much a part of culture that you'd think it would be less universal. You'd think that a happy song coming out of, say, the Chinese tradition wouldn't be obviously happy to someone immersed in German culture. And yet, most of the time, it translates fine.
@ink_slinger Although Chinese opera is kind of hard for me to understand... But I've head other kinds of Chinese music I think I can understand.
@JordiGH One thing that can make it a bit confusing when crossing cultural lines is that, in European music, minor keys usually connote sadness or some other "negative" emotion. That's less likely to be true in Asian music, from what I understand.
@JordiGH @ink_slinger yeah, highly formalized forms can be harder to process cross-culturally
@DialMforMara @JordiGH That makes sense since something like opera is transmitting a lot of cultural and even political information, not just basic human emotion.
@ink_slinger @DialMforMara Yeah, but.. have you *heard* the music? Chinese opera sounds really different!
@JordiGH @DialMforMara I've heard a bit, but I fully admit to not being very familiar with Chinese opera.
@JordiGH What makes this even more interesting is something I heard on a podcast several months ago, suggesting that some cultures have emotions that don't exist in other cultures, for a whole complicated list of reasons. If they expressed those emotions in song, would people from other cultures understand, despite not having a word for the emotion they're feeling?
If you can find that podcast, I'd really like to listen it!
@JordiGH I think it's a combination of a lot of different micro qualities (similar to vision!). One quality, e.g., is harmony or discord. Another is pace of change over time. Another is rhythm. As the simple qualities interact they convey something nuanced and complex.
@lawremipsum Yes, but is it good for the ears?
@JordiGH Music's feel is a cultural construct.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/the-jaws-theme-might-not-be-scary-for-tsimane-people/
Listen to this song. I don't have the lyrics anymore, but believe me, they're happy, not scary or anything. It's a celebration of a wedding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djQ5liBB5C8
I'm not much sure it's that universal.
Probably, globalization has melded some difference, but as far as I can remember, in Kenya music taste was pretty different from our. At least, I was unable to understand most of the messages.
I guess it's all depends on how musically isolated is a culture.
Actually, yawn is the only universal message I can think of.
As for "Kenya" I mean North Horr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Horr
@JordiGH *western* music is one type of music, it's not universal.
You'd probably be pretty confused listening to folk music from india for example
@JordiGH You might be interested in this video, in particular the later 5 mins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GeoDIVVP20M
@JordiGH I wonder if it's related to how animals may not understand the words you are saying, but will understand the way you are saying the words.
Let's #science the shit out of Mastodon. :)
You'll find answers to your question in "Music and social bonding: 'self-other' merging and neurohormonal mechanisms", by Bronwyn Tarr, Jacques Launay, and Robin I. M. Dunbar at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4179700/
If I can recommend a very accessible book by neuroscientist who asked himself very similar questions and wondered what is in our brains and our culture that causes different/same perception and understanding of music:
Daniel J. Levitin
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
@JordiGH
I have doubts about the universality of music. Certainly we learn to respond to certain tropes (keys, chord changes, etc) within musical traditions that don't necessarily translate
@derpayatz @JordiGH I think the answer is more complicated. It's a yes and no. There are musical properties beyond keys that can translate well across cultures: business, minimalism, calmness, harshness, softness, rhythm, consonance/dissonance (the last pair is already culturally more dependent), then there are keys and scales that are less likely to translate well. Nuances like microtonality of Indian sitar, etc..
@JordiGH we can't. its all cultural associations that start forming from very early on (lullabies etc). read the music instinct by philip ball
@JordiGH Angles from philosophical aesthetics: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/#MusiEmot
@JordiGH There are certain things in music that aren't innate (but instead learned) -- stuff that differs between western & eastern musical traditions, or some things like specific chord progressions that have gained meaning through use in sound tracks since the 1930s. To the extent that it is universal, I've heard people claim is has to do with pre-lingual mammal vocal communication.
@JordiGH I have a theory that music is actually what humans are built for.
It's what we do that makes us special in the universe and someday, when the aliens get here, we'll be famous for it on an intergalactic scale.
@viTekiM I think language is it! Which might be related to music. Birds seem to have some kind of language/music thing going on, and most humans speak a tonal language!
@JordiGH Would you buy that music is our "real" language? :)
@JordiGH https://youtu.be/GeoDIVVP20M This video may be of interest. It's very recent, and it approaches your question in a very interesting way.
@JordiGH I think there are multiple factors at play, but the two main ones are direct correlation to how music makes you feel and reproduction of codified music tropes.
How the music makes you feel: for example fast tunes makes you feel energetic or in a hurry or tense, because there are a lot of information to process. On the other side I can't imagine a sad tune having really fast paced beats. So that's one thing.
@JordiGH the second thing, reproduction of codified music tropes:
When you watch a movie, some choices have been made to associate a particular situation/scene with a music.
The goal is to convey a particular emotion. So initialy people simply used what made sense.
But with the massification of such medium, codes emerged. Now, when you hear a specific type of music, you associate it not only with the scene you're watching but also scenes of previous similar movies you watched before.
@JordiGH These codifications, these tropes, reproduces themselves and mutate slowly.
At least, that's the way I see it.
@JordiGH from the day of our conception we experience music during emotional situations in real life or in cultural works. Then we associate styles with specific feelings. ‘Thanks’ to cultural imperialism we are exposed to homogeneous music. Music is not a universal language. Music was diverse in the past, now it’s dominated by Western culture creating ‘universal’ consumers to buy a next 4-chord song.
Create a civilization around polychromatic music and you will say that polychromatic music is ‘universal’.
@JordiGH There are scholars who mostly attribute this to the bpm being similar/dissimilar to a calm heartbeat. The faster the bpm, the more aggressive a song feels, the closer to a calm heartbeat, the more serene it usually is.
See: Goldberg variations
@JordiGH Active research topic. Very interesting in how various tunes likes Lullabies are recognized as calming cross culturally.