The Power of Human Expectation

[Emporius]

Just a nice little video showing a common musical bond between us all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

 

[lefty]

wowee bobby.

 

[lame-o]

you tend to get what you expect.

 

[dfc05]

That's pretty cool. I'm not sure if this actually indicates something truly hard-wired in humans though, or simply the millenia-long dominance of the modern Western musical scale. If I remember correctly, very early plainchant (e.g. Gregorian chanting) used a slightly different scale system based on modes. I'd guess other forms of traditional music around the world may have used different scales as well. And then there's atonal stuff like Schoenberg which is totally weird (I seriously question whether Schoenberg actually liked his own music or if he wrote atonal stuff just to be weird and different). So it may be learned rather than innate. But the dominance of the modern scale could still indicate that people have a particular liking for that particular scale, which would be interesting. Maybe there's a physical basis for why it's pleasing, e.g. based on frequencies and the way the little sensory hairs in our ears respond to certain frequencies? I was never good at waves and frequencies so I don't know. Anyhow, it's still a cool experiment .

Just found this article which is pretty interesting: http://news.cnet.com/Is-the-affinity-for-music-innate/2100-1008_3-5836298.html

 

[Viperidae]

That's pretty cool. I'm not sure if this actually indicates something truly hard-wired in humans though, or simply the millenia-long dominance of the modern Western musical scale.

Hard wired.

But the dominance of the modern scale could still indicate that people have a particular liking for that particular scale, which would be interesting.

'Modern' scale? The pentatonic scale goes back to the Greeks and likely as early as written history.

Maybe there's a physical basis for why it's pleasing, e.g. based on frequencies and the way the little sensory hairs in our ears respond to certain frequencies?

Yes.