Music and sound
dmunger | November 17, 2005One of the gimmicks of the 1948 film Words and Music was the question of which is more important in a song—the words or the music.
Source: SoundtrackCollector
The movie, a fictionalization of the lives of the legendary team of Broadway writers Richard Rogers (music) and Lorenz Hart (words), only addresses its titular conflict obliquely. The implicit answer, of course, is that you can't have one without the other.
Or can you? While it's difficult or perhaps impossible to scientifically determine whether words or music is more important in a song, Isabelle Peretz, Monique Radeau, and…
dmunger | November 3, 2005Just listening to music, despite the hype associated with the "Mozart Effect," appears to have little influence on IQ or other abilities. It does seem to make us more aroused and put us in a better mood, which can improve performance on tests, but it doesn't actually make us any smarter. But what about actual long-term training in music? Clearly musical training can make us better able to perform and appreciate music, but can it also improve our performance in areas? With its mathematically based notation system, music has been shown to improve mathematical reasoning skills. But surely music…
dmunger | October 24, 2005Psychologists have known for decades that people perceive music as happier when it's played faster, and in a major key (mode). Take a listen to the following sound clips I created using a synthesized flute. Each plays the same melody three times—first in a major mode, then a minor mode, then a "whole tone" middle ground. The only difference between the two clips is that the second clip is played twice as fast.
Clip 1 (slow)
Clip 2 (fast)
For most people, the second clip sounds happier than the first overall, and the major mode portion sounds happiest within each clip. But what matters most—…
dmunger | September 15, 2005Music can be used to convey a range of emotion, from sadness to happiness, from anger to fear. We use music to help fall asleep at night, and to wake up in the morning. Its effect on our mood may be enough to improve our performance on a range of intellectual tasks. But where do these effects come from? Are we born with an association between music and emotion, or does it develop as we grow older?
Studies have found some evidence for an appreciation of music even in infants. Babies as young as 9 months old prefer musical scales to monotonic scales—the notes in the western musical scale do not…
dmunger | September 7, 2005How do we reconcile the variety of results that have been found with respect to the Mozart effect—the idea that the music of Mozart can lead to improved performance on spatial ability tests? With some researchers appearing to have found no effect at all, and others claiming dramatic effects, who are we to believe? In just the research we've reviewed here at Cognitive Daily, we've got Ivanov and Geake reporting a pronounced effect for both Mozart and Bach, Jackson and Tlauka arguing that there's no Mozart effect for route learning, and McKelvie and Low declaring "final curtains for the Mozart…
dmunger | September 2, 2005One of my best friends in college played music incessantly—whether he was studying, writing papers, completing organic chemistry problem sets, or swilling down cheap beer, whatever he did was accompanied by a nonstop 1980s synth-pop beat. This apparently did him no harm, because after graduating at the top of his class, he went on to get a PhD and a law degree, with full scholarships paying for both.
I could never study with him because the music always broke my concentration. I preferred to study to the gentle background noise of the campus coffee shop. There was one exception to this rule:…
dmunger | August 29, 2005The "Mozart Effect" hit the mainstream media by storm in the mid 1990s, in the form of a bestselling book by the same name. A Google search for the topic still reveals a slew of products designed to exploit the effect—to increase IQ, or overall well-being, or even physical health.
The psychological basis for the effect is a 1993 study by a team led by Frances Rauscher, which found a much more limited effect: scores on a spatial IQ test were 8 to 9 points higher after listening to a Mozart sonata, compared to testing following exposure to relaxation stimuli. The result was astounding: simply…
dmunger | June 28, 2005Though you'll never hear her tell you, Greta is an excellent musician. She's a brilliant English horn and oboe player, and she can also handle the piano keyboard. When a nonmusician hears her play, they'll often tell her how they wished their parents had made them practice when they were younger (unfortunately, our kids Jim and Nora don't seem to appreciate this logic when we tell them it's time to practice!). Everyone appreciates a good musician, but if the responses of our own children are any indication, few of us are willing to put in the practice it takes to learn to perform well.
We all…
dmunger | June 24, 2005I like rock music, but my father-in-law doesn't. My son Jim likes horror movies, but his mom doesn't. While some of our preferences can be explained easily—for example, we usually don't like things that cause us pain—others are more difficult to understand. When there's not an obvious reason for a preference, mere exposure to an item can lead to preference. Studies have found this "mere exposure effect" for words, photos, objects—nearly anything, really.
What's less certain is what causes the mere exposure effect: two competing explanations have been proposed. The first is the uncertainty…
dmunger | May 30, 2005The allure of music has been a recurring question for psychologists. Why do we see the need for music? Is music like language, or is it something entirely different? The attempts to answer the latter question have generated mixed results. Musicians with brain damage have retained musical ability while losing language ability. Some patients with a condition called amusia can recognize songs from their lyrics but not from the melody. On the other hand, healthy people remember melodies better when they are repeated with their original lyrics instead of the words from other songs.
Listen to the…
dmunger | April 30, 2005We often think of music as expressing emotions, and research has backed this notion up. But typically the research has focused on melodic instruments: sweet, sorrowful violins; bright, happy guitars; melancholy, wailing oboes. So what about percussion instruments: drums, cymbals, tympani—can they express emotion too?
Listen to the following short music clips. As you listen, try to determine what emotion they are expressing. Think of it as a multiple choice test. You get to choose between solemn, tender, fearful, angry, sad, or happy.
clip 1
clip 2
clip 3
clip 4
Source: courtesy of Travis…
dmunger | April 6, 2005Listen to these two musical excerpts and note any differences you discern:
Ave Maria, version 1
Ave Maria, version 2
(Source: courtesy of Mayumi Hamamoto and Kyota Ko)
If you're a typical nonmusician, you will probably notice some sort of difference between the two excerpts. Maybe one seems to be played at a different tempo, or with different instrumentation, or is a bit longer or shorter. You probably won't think either clip sounds unpleasant, and you might not notice any differences at all.
If you are a professional musician, on the other hand, you may find the second clip so appalling that…
dmunger | January 20, 2005Today's reading is "Musical Soundtracks as a Schematic Influence on the Cognitive Processing of Filmed Events," by Marilyn G. Boltz of Haverford College (Music Perception, Summer 2001).
All film is illusion. The illusion of motion is created by a sequence of static frames. The illusion of a three-dimensional world is created by a two-dimensional photograph. What role does music play in maintaining that illusion? A big one, it turns out. Marshall and Cohen (1988) found that by showing cartoons where the only "characters" were a triangle, a circle, and a square, changing the music could change…