Ever intrigued as to why music can evoke such strong feelings in us and those around us? What are the mechanisms behind it?

This bunch of people are trying to find the answer. Abstract below:



Clicky here for the full paper.

It might seem dry at first, but it's a fascinating read... Enjoy!

I'll take a look at that cheers. This kind of thing is really interesting (it's a little bit similar to my uni dissertation).

If music is a language then it is comparable to other languages...for example, body language and facial expressions. There were some studies done which show that babies, regardless of culture, automatically use the same facial expressions in certain situations - ie, there is some types of language which are universal to all humans. Whether music can ever all into this catagory is questionable though. Likely I will never be moved by Japanese Opera as I am to western music, since my response to western harmony is one which has been developed through a lifetime of exposure. That said, on a more basic level, of course frequencies affect us all in similar way. High screechy sounds generally grate on the nerves, for example. And wobble bass is likely to induce suicide...

Completely agree!



Ahh, sounds like you are allergic to boobstep, as am I lol
Either way, such research might actually yield insight into our basic thought processes and emotional mechanisms. Always an interesting research path to tread as far as I'm concerned!

Maybe you'll find this interesting:
http://www.torrentech.org/index.php?showtopic=126503

The first half are more about 19th century musicology discussion which may or may not be interesting to you, but the second half I compare music to language like body language/speech. But the thing is it's more about comparing music to languages than any scientific experiment. Actually as a dissertation it's pretty shit, but as a piece of polmic I think it's interesting.

Sounds interesting by your description of it. It's not because it's about classical music that it can' t be interesting, on the contrary. Thanks mate!

Actually it's not about classical music at all - the theories would apply to any music, it's just that such debate generally occured within the academic world of music, which for many centuries only entailed classical music. The whole idea of these musicological arguments is that they were intended to find a universal way in which music communicated. In fact, if the ideas of Hanslick, Treitler et al didn't apply to modern music as well then they fail in their task from the outset. That said, I think they fail anyway. But that's another question altogether