
Why Does Music Feel So Good? - jkat
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/11/why-does-music-feel-so-good/
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rlu
Somewhat tangential, somewhat related: people listen to music a lot, and yet
the great majority of people do so with their stock iPod earbuds - or cheap
alternatives.

I don't like to consider myself an Audiophile (and I really don't think I
would classify as one anyways) but I don't understand why people are okay with
paying hundreds of dollars (sometimes over $1,000) on HD TVs and yet stick
with free headphones or cheap speakers. I personally think I listen to music
more than I watch TV shows or movies - and I reckon this is true for many
others as well. Why don't other people spend money on good sound equipment to
have a better listening experience?

For example, I have a pair of Sennheiser HD600s which MSRP at about $400 I
think. My friends find this ridiculous. I also have a $100 amp and a $70 DAC.
So I've spend almost $600 on this audio equipment. I bought these 2.5 years
ago and don't plan on replacing them any time soon (definitely content with
what I have).

I don't really expect my friends to immediately plunge into what I have ($600)
but they could try out a more 'beginner' pair like Sennheiser HD 555s which
cost like $120.

$120 is, I think, more than reasonable for the sound difference you'd get
using those headphones. Those are what I had prior to my HD 600s for close to
five years and then decided I wanted to try something even better.

I suppose some of my friends HAVE spent ~$100 on Beats headphones, though this
just makes me sad as they're complete crap compared to other headphones you
could get for $100.

I dunno. I'm not trying to sound like I'm ranting but I do find it interesting
that so many people find it wasteful to spend money on audio equipment when
they spend so much time listening to music.

~~~
coldtea
> _I don't like to consider myself an Audiophile (and I really don't think I
> would classify as one anyways) but I don't understand why people are okay
> with paying hundreds of dollars (sometimes over $1,000) on HD TVs and yet
> stick with free headphones or cheap speakers._

I cannot understand this myself. I mean, why pay thousands of dollars for HD
TVs, period.

As for the cheap headphones part, who cares. They like the beat and the
feeling of the music, not the details and the subtlety of the recording.

That's why they don't listen to jazz or classical that much.

What exactly musical subtlety do you miss on Justin Bieber, Metallica, Hip
Hop, Skillrex, 99% of what passes for R&B today etc, by using cheap
headphones? You'll miss some low-fi sampled, bit-crushed drum loops? Two-note
synth motifs?

~~~
lobster_johnson
> _I mean, why pay hundreds of dollars for HD TVs, period._

Can you get a good HD TV for less than "hundreds of dollars" (not sure where
the limit is, $199?) that is any good, though?

Sure, there are cheap TVs. The cheapest LED TV in the 40-44 range on Amazon is
$349, and it's some cheap no-name brand I have never heard of. It's probably
not very good.

Of course, most people probably don't know much about what differentiates TV
quality. I frequently see people watch horribly badly calibrated TVs (with
things like motion smoothing turned on), and I frequently see people watch
non-widescreen broadcasts stretched to 16:9. Whenever I ask, they say they
don't see any difference, and some people even get upset when I offer to fix
the settings.

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JonnieCache
My largely uninformed guess: Music is so massively rewarding because it
trains/fuzzes our pattern matching engines, in a particularly effective and
advantageous way that cannot be found "in nature". This is the same reason why
jokes/humour are so enormously valued by the brain.

It also explains why only nerds like listening to breakcore.

~~~
brador
Or it might be because the beats and repetition help synchronize brain
sectors. Allowing refined, less fuzzy, thinking.

~~~
GuiA
Sorry for my potential utter ignorance, but this sounds a lot like woowoo.

Do you have any source that refers to such a thing as "synchronization of
brain sectors" that leads to "refined, less fuzzy thinking"?

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lukifer
I recently read a piece that I feel explains the phenomenon quite well [1]. In
short: we evolved rhythmic music as a defense mechanism, to unify the tribe
into acting a large meta-organism for the purpose of aggression displays
against predators and other tribes. As with a lot of other social behavior, it
feels good to be part of something larger than yourself, and music connects us
emotionally, physically and rhythmically to one another.

This may not tell the whole story, but I believe it's a strong component,
particularly given the historical relationship between religion and music.

[1]: <http://www.meltingasphalt.com/music-in-human-evolution/>

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saddino
There have been several pieces (from classical to classic rock) that have
actually caused me to break out in tears. Not teary eyes mind you; gushing
waterworks at specific resolution points. Amazingly, this is reproducible, but
the severity of the effect depends on my mood. After reading this, my best
guess is that this is tied to an especially intense release of dopamine. My
maternal grandfather shared this peculiarity and both of us have had awkward
moments where we try to explain that we are quite OK -- "it was just the
music" (an explanation often met with puzzled expressions).

~~~
bane
It's called Frisson (I have it also)

There used to be a great Wikipedia page on it, but the deletionists got to it
at some point and turned it into this content free page
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_chill>

There's a slowly growing body of studies into it.

There's also a reddit devoted to it <http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson> but I've
found that what causes one person to frisson doesn't necessarily cause
another.

This book has a bit on it
[http://books.google.com/books?id=uyI_Cb8olkMC&lpg=PR5...](http://books.google.com/books?id=uyI_Cb8olkMC&lpg=PR5&ots=ig7ydC48uK&dq=frisson%20music&lr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false)

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thomseddon
The question that has always puzzled me is why do we feel compelled to _sing
along_ to music?

I mean, we are invariably worse singers so it surely makes it sound worse and
this is besides the fact that signing ourselves drowns out much of the
original sound anyway!

(Note: this is not to say I'm a silent listener, i'm a big fan of singing to
myself ! :)

~~~
JonnieCache
In terms of my little framework, you're exercising the pattern engine by
making predictions and immediately having them validated. Notice how some
people will try to sing along to a song even when they've never heard it
before, and how the best pop songs make this very easy to do.

~~~
drivers99
This fits in with an observation (internally, of myself, so probably not
scientifically valid) that when I dance to music, it starts to feel like I'm
creating the music with my movements. Of course I'm just moving to what I know
the music is going to do, but it feels good when you feel like you're doing
the opposite.

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hobs
I like how an undergraduate neuroscientist takes the same approach I would to
learning about the brain. Throw that fucker in Google.

~~~
willismichael
No! Please don't waste yet another super genius on an advertising company.

~~~
xnxn
The fucker being referred to here is the research topic, not the
neuroscientist:

> After Salimpoor had the car epiphany, she rushed home to her computer and
> Googled “music and the brain.”

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dougk16
Read "This Is Your Brain On Music" by Daniel Levitin.

Some interesting points/arguments that I remember from reading it several
years ago:

\- In many languages, the word "sing" is the same as the word "dance".

\- It's relatively recently in our history that the majority of people have
become only listeners of music, instead of creators.

\- As humans evolved, one's ability to sing, dance, and play instruments well
displayed good physical, intellectual, and emotional health to the opposite
sex, and so gave you an evolutionary edge.

\- Something about how even the most non-musically-inclined people can extract
the beat from a song better than a computer and repeat it later perfectly
(memory is hazy on this one...I'm probably saying something stupid here).

That's all I remember for now...references are in the book of course. Very
good read.

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louischatriot
People like to guess a pattern (i.e. "from the first 5 secs I think the song
will go like this and I'll like it") and like when they're right. That's also
why we tend to like more songs we've already heard several times (even though
we didn't like them a lot in the beginning).

Summary of the article: [http://tldr.io/tldrs/516bfd54649fcf9e0a000de0/why-
does-music...](http://tldr.io/tldrs/516bfd54649fcf9e0a000de0/why-does-music-
feel-so-good-phenomena)

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shaydoc
Interesting reading. I have always loved music, pretty much anything. I just
wonder if our genetics and DNA plays a large part in this. I often observe my
little daughter's reaction to music, and its truly amazing to see how she will
spontaneously smile and dance when a really good piece of music comes on.
First time I really noticed big time was when the opening bars of Bruce
Hornsby's "The way it is" came on the radio, she just loved it :-)

I wonder if we all get beginners templates of what we will like via our gene
pool :-)

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meritt
Someone needs to put together a Spotify playlist of these 60 songs.

~~~
kafkaesque
I put a Spotify playlist together but only found 56 songs.

There were more than one version of a few songs, and I couldn't cross-
reference the audio on the researcher's site. I'll do it tonight, unless
anyone gets to it before I.

~~~
meritt
Link to playlist? :)

~~~
kafkaesque
[http://open.spotify.com/user/573v3n/playlist/4Fd7kTb26UIs7GY...](http://open.spotify.com/user/573v3n/playlist/4Fd7kTb26UIs7GYo0QDCIj)

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zwieback
Thank you! Updating my Spotify list now. I was looking for tips from SXSW but
am tired of whiny indie rock, this works much better.

Just noticed #4 swapped artist and title.

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trustfundbaby
I thought this was a closely related article that got more into the actual
science behind our predilection for music
<http://www.mcgill.ca/channels/news/why-we-buy-music-225868>

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randomdata
While there may be no scientific basis, I do like the explanation I read on
another site: Mating calls. While we can certainly form relationships without
music, music does often seem to play a large role in our mating processes.

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breakupapp
playing music also makes you feel a lot better

