The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts
That really can depend on what music you’re listening to. Some music would have me confessing to horrendous crimes to make it stop. Certain frequencies are known to release serotonin, dopamine and endorphins. Minor and major chords can also evoke certain emotions in the listener.I like to classify music into two camps – music you can listen to only when you are in a certain mood, and music that is capable of changing your mood for the better.
What I don’t understand is why anyone takes pleasure in deafening music that makes your ears bleed, of whatever genre. Not just because I’m getting old – I’ve always hated it. Surely this must mean some part of the brain is being affected in a completely different way from the music itself?Same reason we enjoy listening to birds, or streams, or the wind rustling leaves … the sound helps fill our emptiness.
We are alone among species in having taken this basic communicative ability and overlaid it with an ability to generate novel sounds, to learn tunes and share them, and overlay the communicative melodies with other melodies to create songs. We’ve also invented new ways of generating tones using instruments, and new ways of enhancing the tones with dance. So there’s something intellectual about music.
Add the primal to the intellectual and you’ve got a recipe for generating emotions in your audience. It’s not surprising that out of all the emotions possibly generated by music, people – players and listeners – often choose the music they find enjoyable.The brain reacting to patterns it knows. Some it enjoys, and hearing them gives pleasure. New versions that are similar give intense pleasure. New versions that match what we didn’t like don’t.
This explains musical taste and taste for repetition – and also music growing on us with time. From initially only slightly pleasant, repetition reinforces the pleasure.Music is neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable by default. Any so-called “pleasure” is usually unlocked by the means of having the freedom to choose to listen on favourable terms.
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