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I heard somewhere - reference long lost, sorry - that repetitive music makes us happy, but slightly unpredictable repetitive music keeps us really happy. It's
by jen729w 12y ago
I heard somewhere - reference long lost, sorry - that repetitive music makes us happy, but slightly unpredictable repetitive music keeps us really happy.
It's like the brain has a threshold; under the repetitive threshold is boring, but too far above it is also boring. We need this middle ground where breakdowns or middle-eights or whatever they're called have this magical property.
This supposedly explains the popularity of jazz. Which leaves me personally baffled, but there you have it. The sciences!
- mushishi 12y agoIf you are interested in this kind of psychological phenomena in music, check out book "Sweet Anticipation": http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sweet-anticipation http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/sweet-anticipation
- Springtime 12y agoThere was a Nautilus article about this posted on HN recently [1], it's an interesting read about our mental expectations of musical patterns. [1] http://nautil.us/issue/2/uncertainty/composing-your-thoughts http://nautil.us/issue/2/uncertainty/composing-your-thoughts
- bitwize 12y agoOne of the most exciting things about Imogen Heap's music is that her songs tend to be repetitive enough to allow our brains to grasp the pattern, and just as we had done so, they take a left toin at Albacoikey and do something completely different. Imogen Heap is a fucking genius.
- musername 12y ago>We need this middle ground where breakdowns or middle-eights or whatever they're called have this magical property. It's called off-beat, If you mean rhythmic elements like the second base in the arch-typical Drum And Base, the and in One-and-Two-and-...
- musername 12y agothe third and to be precise
- fjk 12y agoThe first thing I thought about while reading the article was minimalist classical music, like Philip Glass. I think Glass does the repetitive/unexpected thing exceptionally well, though it's often subtle. If you're already familiar with Glass (or if you like Beck) you might want to check out Beck's song from Rework, an album of remixed Glass: https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78 https://soundcloud.com/dunvagenmusic/nyc-73-78 It's repetitive, but has enough of the unexpected mixed in to make it a stimulating listen.
- eridius 12y agoI'd never heard of Rework_ before but I love Glass. Thanks for the link! In fact, I think this is now going to be a spur-of-the-moment extra christmas gift to my father.
- cdvonstinkpot 12y agoThe band Underworld has some old techno inspired by Glass. Dark, minimal. Very good if you like that kindof stuff. 'Second Toughest in the Infants' album-era.
- keithpeter 12y agoThe second thing I thought about was Brian Eno and his attempt to 'learn' a sound recording of a city street by listening to the recording many times. He began to anticipate certain sounds and hear them as belonging to a structure. I'm not finding a Web reference. It was described in a book by David Toop
- rittersport3 12y agoThis is great, thanks for sharing! Can you recommend more songs like that?
- beat 12y agoJazz is built on very deep yet very simple structures - specifically, 4/4 swing rhythms, and circle-of-fifths harmony. I'll try to explain something of how swing rhythm works here, so you can grasp the depth of "slightly unpredictable repetitive" it offers, and the appeal of jazz (and its descendants, rock/country/R&B). Swing is actually the simplest expression of a three-against-two polyrhythm. I don't know if this will format well on HN, but here's a try... x-x-x-x-x-x- x--x--x--x-- This is 12 subdivisions, divided into twos and threes. Where the twos and threes line up are interesting focal points. You can see them on the downbeat (start) and backbeat (middle). Now, let's try to express 3 against 2 in a lighter way... | x--x-xx--x-x :|| or even x--x--X--x-x This last one is really interesting. The capital X (backbeat) is played with an accent to show a triplet-cycle lineup, and the trailing x is an "anticipation beat" into the next downbeat. With just those two things, you can express polyrhythm. But unlike this notation, a beat isn't a fixed point in time! Rather, it's a region of probability where a sound might occur. Sounds can start anywhere in their beat, and attack or decay slowly or quickly, and evolve over multiple beats. This matters for the timekeeping instruments. Bass instruments tend to attack slowly, and high-pitched percussion like cymbals and snare drums attack very quickly. This creates a tension between the bass sense of time and the treble sense of time, tension that can be exploited musically. So the backbeat and trailing anticipation beats that help define the underlying polyrhythm? They can be played early, or late. This can make the music feel faster or slower than it actually is! Compare reggae and ska. They use exactly the same rhythmic structures. But in reggae, the guitar "skank" and the snare drum arrive very late, dragging the beat. In ska, they arrive early, pushing the beat. So reggae sounds relaxed, and ska sounds excited. Same beat, different meaning, just by manipulating the polyrhythmic emphasis. The emphasis can also be manipulated by making the polyrhythm more or less explicit. Blues often has a very hard triplet feel. A lot of rock is very square and barely swings at all. The beauty is that this is incredibly simple and repetitive, but offers an infinite variety of emotional expressiveness. This is why the American beat has dominated popular music for century. (As an aside, this is why so much drum machine music sounds painfully stiff - it lacks the core tool of expression)
- cheald 12y agoThis isn't a direct response to your points, but thank you for this! I'm a self-taught bassist, and I come from a very musical family, but I have no theory training at all. I love the form you've given to the things that I've come to just kind of intuit over the years of playing. One of my favorite things to do on the bass is to play around with that "region of probability" - to jump the beat, or to wait until the last possible moment to resolve something before moving on with the riff. It's fun. It makes the music sound unpredictable-yet-familiar, alive, and exciting. When my drummer and I start playing around with this, really fun things start happening. I've never really known how to express it before, but this gives me a wonderful way to conceptualize it. Thank you!
- Xcelerate 12y ago> repetitive music makes us happy, but slightly unpredictable repetitive music keeps us really happy. Chopin's music does this really well. He's always changing the expected chord right at the last second to throw you off and then eventually comes back to it. There's a good TED talk about it.
- nileshtrivedi 12y agoI would guess that a broader idea applies to all fields of aesthetics. A thing is beautiful when it has the right combination of familiarity and surprise. It fits well with te idea of the brain as a pattern-matching machine.