12 ms·

The strange phenomenon of musical frisson

68 points by d_a_robson 11y ago

ArekDymalski 11y ago
Original title is "The strange phenomenon of musical 'skin orgasms'". Article is anecdote based with rudimentary connections to some research.
- herendin 11y ago
  Yes, that article didn't have the explanation promised by the title.
- sctb 11y ago
  We changed the submission title from "Have you had a skin orgasm? Psychologists can now explain the strange feeling" to the one closer to the article's.
doctoboggan 11y ago
If you are interested in finding more music that induces "frisson" there is a subreddit devoted to it here: reddit.com/r/frisson There is a similar phenomenon (at least I feel it is similar) known as ASMR where someone experiences similar feelings in response to someone's voice. The voice is often soft, whispering, or close up. Of course there is a subreddit for that as well. I experience both and feel they are related. I have yet to hear a good explanation for why some people experience ASMR, and I don't think there have been any legitimate scientific studies exploring the sensation. One theory I've heard is that it is designed to reward a pupil who is being taught something in a one on one lesson.
- atom-morgan 11y ago
  I was hoping someone would touch on this. The article title reminded me of ASMR, which I experience, but I've never felt it as intensely when I listen to music even though I played drums a lot until a few years ago. It seems the trigger is different but the physical sensation may be very similar.
  - meowface 11y ago
    ASMR and frisson are two distinct sensations and are typically caused by different things, even though they share some similarities.
  - jbrooksuk 11y ago
    I too experience ASMR when listening to some kinds of music, even if I don't particularly like the genre, it still has an effect on me.
- Mahn 11y ago
  > I have yet to hear a good explanation for why some people experience ASMR I have the theory, though obviously not the means to prove it, that in reality we all experience ASMR, but not everyone can identify it when it happens, so those who deny experiencing it are simply not aware, so to speak. I think this may be the case because, for me, it took me a while to realize what ASMR was in the first place, and only then I understood that I do in fact experience it too, only never thought much of it.
- veritas3241 11y ago
  ASMR for me only happens when somebody is physically explaining something to me, usually when leaning over my shoulder. It happens at restaurants sometimes. It happened a lot in school as well which anecdotally fits with your last statement. My fiancee thinks it's weird.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Thanks for the subreddit link, didn't know about /r/frisson, only knew about /r/asmr. The song that gives me frisson/ASMR nearly every time I listen to it is Glamorous Sky (the Mika Nakashima version), usually with the falsetto bit in the chorus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsFO9jr9XFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsFO9jr9XFU I also found I could trigger long waves of it in myself and influence where it went when I went for a meditation retreat. I get it at random other times as well. It's a great feeling. :-)
inanutshellus 11y ago
No... but now I want one!
temp420 11y ago
One type not mentioned is when you are kind of internally vocalizing (singing, but making no sound, just matching the pitch with your vocal cords without blowing any air) along with the song. While doing this when the singer goes to a pitch I would not be able to follow it makes me feel strange in a pleasant way. Björk - Yoga does this to me repeatedly starting from around 00:37. Sometimes you can do this not only for actual lyrics, but other instruments as well. Try to "sing internally" the instrument in the song Röyksopp - Vision One starting at 1:48. This is euphoric to do while high.
- williamhpark 11y ago
  Do you mean humming?
  - temp420 11y ago
    It's different in humming in that it makes no sound at all. In humming you let the air pass, here I guess I'm pushing air up to vocal cords but blocking it before it proceeds from the throat.
karlb 11y ago
Even if music can be “auditory cheesecake,” I don't believe that that's an adequate explanation for it. The book “Why Do People Sing: Music in Human Evolution” proposes a theory that's both outrageous but also has (I believe) a ring of truth to it. The following article summarizes the theory: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/
- astazangasta 11y ago
  The world is littered with evolutionary just-so stories, that like a good horoscope bring all the right details together and sound just right, but are total hooey with no evidence. The fact is we know little about how we evolved and determinations like this are nearly impossible, no matter how fun they sound. See also the Aquatic Ape theory, etc.
  - dceddia 11y ago
    This seems to be a trend lately (or maybe one I was unaware of before) - finding some sort of evolutionary reasoning to justify this or that. It's very pronounced in self-help literature, books about psychology, etc. But it seems to be spreading to all sorts of fields. Clearly they're pretty hard to verify in a lot of cases, and I'm starting to wonder how many of these evolutionary "we are this way because our ancestors did X and were hunted by Y" theories are mostly fluff.
    - innguest 11y ago
      Most mainstream material that is presented to the public, even through schools and particularly through the media, is fluff. For instance in History, the pyramids were not built by slaves, Germany won the Great War in 1916 but the Entente did not accept a peace agreement, the Civil War wasn't about slavery at all, Hamilton borrowed from the French to start the national debt on purpose, etc.
  - stuxnet79 11y ago
    This is exactly it. A lot of these speculations are not scientifically tractable.
xacaxulu 11y ago
And time for me to go home and test this out!! Now I actually have something to look forward to!
batou 11y ago
Yes. It's probably why I play a synthesizer. It's like, excuse the analogy, a giant audio dildo. Korg M3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeUN0W3WI0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeUN0W3WI0o (this is not me, I'm nowhere near this) Edit: further thoughts. It's certain chord transitions, pads and vocals that do it.
nmkn 11y ago
"Others have found that making music and dancing together produces more altruistic and cohesive groups, with one study finding that chill-inducing music is particularly good at promoting altruism in the lab’s subjects. Maybe it is the rush of endorphins from a skin orgasm that helps promote the communal goodwill." Gah, cynic in me is coming out. Call me DJ Overlord. Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care. Okay sweet. Now everyone lets...
astazangasta 11y ago
For fuck's sake, who has ever said "skin orgasm", you shameless click-baiting jerks. The word has been "frisson" for centuries, its not even that obscure.
- simplemath 11y ago
  ASMR is the nomenclature in vogue for this now. Frisson still wins.
  - Zikes 11y ago
    ASMR enthusiasts will be quick to point out that it is a sensory experience that may induce frisson, but is not strictly defined by it.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Are you only just now noticing the Newspeak in popular culture? There is now a dearth of synonym usage, and an uncanny aversion to vocabulary expansion. The effect is most noticeable by training your eyes and ears to detect usage of the "doubleplusgood" precursor, "amazing". Count the instances of "amazing" where a better, more descriptive adjective could have been used in its stead. I have heard rumors that this narrowing of vocabulary may be intentional, in order to make English-language media more accessible to non-native speakers. I have trouble believing in them without my foil hat. But with it on, the hypothesis sounds so plausible that it makes me want to memorize an entire thesaurus--as though I were one of the book-preservers in Fahrenheit 451--while we still have them.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
huuu 11y ago
"..heady emotional cocktail.." When I experience this I feel like I choke or have to vomit. And I don't think it has to do with music (alone) but with the cocktail of emotions. Music will trigger all kinds of emotion so it is very likely you will experience a skin orgasm while listening to music. But for example seeing something beautiful can also trigger this. I like to think of it as a kind of short circuit of emotions. Too much to handle.
noir_lord 11y ago
I love music but have never experienced anything like what is described in the article from music (sadly). However I do experience something that sounds similar from reading a really good book, getting lost completely in a world created in your head from the words on the page approaches the sublime, some authors get me every time, Terry Pratchett could do this more than anyone else, finishing his books I feel like I've stepped out of his world and back into ours, it borders on a sense of loss.
- busterarm 11y ago
  Sudden, short outbursts of cheering or applause do it to me pretty consistently. Listening to the first 7 minutes of X Japan's The Last Live (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdPQZqDF_Jk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdPQZqDF_Jk) where they introduce the band (and 140,000 people wail in unison) does it to me every single time without fail. Once it happens you figure out pretty quickly what your triggers are.
  - aeze 11y ago
    Saw X Japan last October in NYC, they were amazing.
    - busterarm 11y ago
      Me too. Indeed they were!
  - mturmon 11y ago
    Nice observation. I pretty reliably get goosebumps from the first few seconds of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" from Live at Budokan (also featuring crowd noise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8 Your link of the screaming Japanese fans, and the glam and the theatrics, reminded me. (Plenty of other effects, like soft-loud dynamics, can induce it for me.)
    - bentcorner 11y ago
1_player 11y ago
I can feel them pretty often, depending on the mood and the song. Some song may give me frisson one day and not the other. One day, after taking an hallucinogen I put on Maggot Brain by the Funkadelic... the ordinary frissons turned into full body orgasms -- orgasm is slightly incorrect, more like pleasure waves riding up my spine and radiating through my body, nothing sexual. I'm a (mediocre) musician, I could feel physical tension when waiting a chord progression resolution, and physical pleasure when the music reached the tonic, or when the chorus started after the breakdown. My recollection is obviously a little vague, but I think I've rolled on my bed 50 times in full body orgasm for the duration of the album. That was quite a transcendent experience. As a little aside, I've started entering a bad trip when the album finished, stuck in the thought loop that I must stop the music at the correct point, when the melody and all the tension is resolved. But I had also ingested another substance at that point, and that's a story for another time. EDIT: and weirdly enough, ASMR don't seem to do anything for me. I just feel mildly uncomfortable when a total stranger is whispering stuff to me.

68 points by d_a_robson 11y ago

Original title is "The strange phenomenon of musical 'skin orgasms'". Article is anecdote based with rudimentary connections to some research.

herendin 11y ago
Yes, that article didn't have the explanation promised by the title.
sctb 11y ago
We changed the submission title from "Have you had a skin orgasm? Psychologists can now explain the strange feeling" to the one closer to the article's.

doctoboggan 11y ago

If you are interested in finding more music that induces "frisson" there is a subreddit devoted to it here: reddit.com/r/frisson There is a similar phenomenon (at least I feel it is similar) known as ASMR where someone experiences similar feelings in response to someone's voice. The voice is often soft, whispering, or close up. Of course there is a subreddit for that as well. I experience both and feel they are related. I have yet to hear a good explanation for why some people experience ASMR, and I don't think there have been any legitimate scientific studies exploring the sensation. One theory I've heard is that it is designed to reward a pupil who is being taught something in a one on one lesson.

atom-morgan 11y ago
I was hoping someone would touch on this. The article title reminded me of ASMR, which I experience, but I've never felt it as intensely when I listen to music even though I played drums a lot until a few years ago. It seems the trigger is different but the physical sensation may be very similar.
- meowface 11y ago
  ASMR and frisson are two distinct sensations and are typically caused by different things, even though they share some similarities.
- jbrooksuk 11y ago
  I too experience ASMR when listening to some kinds of music, even if I don't particularly like the genre, it still has an effect on me.
Mahn 11y ago
> I have yet to hear a good explanation for why some people experience ASMR I have the theory, though obviously not the means to prove it, that in reality we all experience ASMR, but not everyone can identify it when it happens, so those who deny experiencing it are simply not aware, so to speak. I think this may be the case because, for me, it took me a while to realize what ASMR was in the first place, and only then I understood that I do in fact experience it too, only never thought much of it.
veritas3241 11y ago
ASMR for me only happens when somebody is physically explaining something to me, usually when leaning over my shoulder. It happens at restaurants sometimes. It happened a lot in school as well which anecdotally fits with your last statement. My fiancee thinks it's weird.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
Thanks for the subreddit link, didn't know about /r/frisson, only knew about /r/asmr. The song that gives me frisson/ASMR nearly every time I listen to it is Glamorous Sky (the Mika Nakashima version), usually with the falsetto bit in the chorus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsFO9jr9XFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsFO9jr9XFU I also found I could trigger long waves of it in myself and influence where it went when I went for a meditation retreat. I get it at random other times as well. It's a great feeling. :-)

inanutshellus 11y ago

No... but now I want one!

temp420 11y ago

One type not mentioned is when you are kind of internally vocalizing (singing, but making no sound, just matching the pitch with your vocal cords without blowing any air) along with the song. While doing this when the singer goes to a pitch I would not be able to follow it makes me feel strange in a pleasant way. Björk - Yoga does this to me repeatedly starting from around 00:37. Sometimes you can do this not only for actual lyrics, but other instruments as well. Try to "sing internally" the instrument in the song Röyksopp - Vision One starting at 1:48. This is euphoric to do while high.

williamhpark 11y ago
Do you mean humming?
- temp420 11y ago
  It's different in humming in that it makes no sound at all. In humming you let the air pass, here I guess I'm pushing air up to vocal cords but blocking it before it proceeds from the throat.

karlb 11y ago

Even if music can be “auditory cheesecake,” I don't believe that that's an adequate explanation for it. The book “Why Do People Sing: Music in Human Evolution” proposes a theory that's both outrageous but also has (I believe) a ring of truth to it. The following article summarizes the theory: http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/ http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/

astazangasta 11y ago
The world is littered with evolutionary just-so stories, that like a good horoscope bring all the right details together and sound just right, but are total hooey with no evidence. The fact is we know little about how we evolved and determinations like this are nearly impossible, no matter how fun they sound. See also the Aquatic Ape theory, etc.
- dceddia 11y ago
  This seems to be a trend lately (or maybe one I was unaware of before) - finding some sort of evolutionary reasoning to justify this or that. It's very pronounced in self-help literature, books about psychology, etc. But it seems to be spreading to all sorts of fields. Clearly they're pretty hard to verify in a lot of cases, and I'm starting to wonder how many of these evolutionary "we are this way because our ancestors did X and were hunted by Y" theories are mostly fluff.
  - innguest 11y ago
    Most mainstream material that is presented to the public, even through schools and particularly through the media, is fluff. For instance in History, the pyramids were not built by slaves, Germany won the Great War in 1916 but the Entente did not accept a peace agreement, the Civil War wasn't about slavery at all, Hamilton borrowed from the French to start the national debt on purpose, etc.
- stuxnet79 11y ago
  This is exactly it. A lot of these speculations are not scientifically tractable.

xacaxulu 11y ago

And time for me to go home and test this out!! Now I actually have something to look forward to!

batou 11y ago

Yes. It's probably why I play a synthesizer. It's like, excuse the analogy, a giant audio dildo. Korg M3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeUN0W3WI0o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeUN0W3WI0o (this is not me, I'm nowhere near this) Edit: further thoughts. It's certain chord transitions, pads and vocals that do it.

nmkn 11y ago

"Others have found that making music and dancing together produces more altruistic and cohesive groups, with one study finding that chill-inducing music is particularly good at promoting altruism in the lab’s subjects. Maybe it is the rush of endorphins from a skin orgasm that helps promote the communal goodwill." Gah, cynic in me is coming out. Call me DJ Overlord. Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care. Okay sweet. Now everyone lets...

astazangasta 11y ago

For fuck's sake, who has ever said "skin orgasm", you shameless click-baiting jerks. The word has been "frisson" for centuries, its not even that obscure.

simplemath 11y ago
ASMR is the nomenclature in vogue for this now. Frisson still wins.
- Zikes 11y ago
  ASMR enthusiasts will be quick to point out that it is a sensory experience that may induce frisson, but is not strictly defined by it.
logfromblammo 11y ago
Are you only just now noticing the Newspeak in popular culture? There is now a dearth of synonym usage, and an uncanny aversion to vocabulary expansion. The effect is most noticeable by training your eyes and ears to detect usage of the "doubleplusgood" precursor, "amazing". Count the instances of "amazing" where a better, more descriptive adjective could have been used in its stead. I have heard rumors that this narrowing of vocabulary may be intentional, in order to make English-language media more accessible to non-native speakers. I have trouble believing in them without my foil hat. But with it on, the hypothesis sounds so plausible that it makes me want to memorize an entire thesaurus--as though I were one of the book-preservers in Fahrenheit 451--while we still have them.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

huuu 11y ago

"..heady emotional cocktail.." When I experience this I feel like I choke or have to vomit. And I don't think it has to do with music (alone) but with the cocktail of emotions. Music will trigger all kinds of emotion so it is very likely you will experience a skin orgasm while listening to music. But for example seeing something beautiful can also trigger this. I like to think of it as a kind of short circuit of emotions. Too much to handle.

noir_lord 11y ago

I love music but have never experienced anything like what is described in the article from music (sadly). However I do experience something that sounds similar from reading a really good book, getting lost completely in a world created in your head from the words on the page approaches the sublime, some authors get me every time, Terry Pratchett could do this more than anyone else, finishing his books I feel like I've stepped out of his world and back into ours, it borders on a sense of loss.

busterarm 11y ago
Sudden, short outbursts of cheering or applause do it to me pretty consistently. Listening to the first 7 minutes of X Japan's The Last Live (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdPQZqDF_Jk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdPQZqDF_Jk) where they introduce the band (and 140,000 people wail in unison) does it to me every single time without fail. Once it happens you figure out pretty quickly what your triggers are.
- aeze 11y ago
  Saw X Japan last October in NYC, they were amazing.
  - busterarm 11y ago
    Me too. Indeed they were!
- mturmon 11y ago
  Nice observation. I pretty reliably get goosebumps from the first few seconds of Cheap Trick's "Surrender" from Live at Budokan (also featuring crowd noise): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th370QmFtk8 Your link of the screaming Japanese fans, and the glam and the theatrics, reminded me. (Plenty of other effects, like soft-loud dynamics, can induce it for me.)
  - bentcorner 11y ago

1_player 11y ago

I can feel them pretty often, depending on the mood and the song. Some song may give me frisson one day and not the other. One day, after taking an hallucinogen I put on Maggot Brain by the Funkadelic... the ordinary frissons turned into full body orgasms -- orgasm is slightly incorrect, more like pleasure waves riding up my spine and radiating through my body, nothing sexual. I'm a (mediocre) musician, I could feel physical tension when waiting a chord progression resolution, and physical pleasure when the music reached the tonic, or when the chorus started after the breakdown. My recollection is obviously a little vague, but I think I've rolled on my bed 50 times in full body orgasm for the duration of the album. That was quite a transcendent experience. As a little aside, I've started entering a bad trip when the album finished, stuck in the thought loop that I must stop the music at the correct point, when the melody and all the tension is resolved. But I had also ingested another substance at that point, and that's a story for another time. EDIT: and weirdly enough, ASMR don't seem to do anything for me. I just feel mildly uncomfortable when a total stranger is whispering stuff to me.