Psychological functions of music (and why music can make us angry).

These psychological functions generally fall into three types, intellectual, emotional and physical. There are of course many functions to music, generating income, drawing attention to an event etc. but this blog is concerned with interactions between music and its audience, individually or in groups. The word function has a number of definitions for the moment I will take one which has a bias to our sensibility (sensitivity to sensory stimuli.)

Function: an activity that is natural to or the purpose of a person or thing

On an intuitive basis one would assume that listeners are rarely participants of one type only – trying to force individuals into one group is rarely helpful, as e.g. educationalists discovered when trying to educate people as visual, aural and kinetic learners. A table is offered below of characteristics belonging to each listening type and each reader can pick characteristics which relate to themselves. It was while drawing up the table that two more interesting questions came to mind, what purpose do these psychological functions serve, and where in the listening process do they take place?

On the latter question I determined that one required a three part model that consisted of

Frequency     Process          Response

Frequency was used in place of music as these days a composition can consist of any combinations of sound sources from highly organised to chaotic. Once we have an input the listener must consider the material, sort it, chunk it, store it, compare it…all in real time, like a surfer adjusting all the time to the whims of the sea. There are some who would prefer the terms thinking, sensing, evaluating and perhaps include the use of intuition too, but it all comes down to process in the end. Response is our evaluation of the experience and will take the form of acceptance or rejection (or various degrees between the two). Response also brings into play bias, an issue which requires a few comments, but will be considered a little later in the blog.

Turning to the first question what purpose do these psychological functions serve there seemed to be only one answer, they are for self-regulation. Self-regulation is the fine art of keeping our personality in good condition, making adjustments to improve our perspectives and life-balance. As one ponders this the role of bias becomes increasingly clear and opens the possibility of understanding why certain individuals are so abusive and combative when discussing music.

We are at least in some measure consciously aware of these psychological functions when we reach out for a disc, a score or even a pen to compose some music. The performer similarly will, through experience, understand the expectations of the audience, and may even enhance these through dress codes and mannerisms.

When we examine the responses of people to music we will see that the three functions can occur simultaneously if not equally.  We may well eagerly await a cocktail of different responses, and respond accordingly if these expectations are not met. The research into the psychological functions of music is ongoing and there are a wealth of different responses and expectations, but the consensus is that these can be reduced to the following categories;

·         Emotional regulation

·         Awareness and intellect

·         Physical responses

·         Creating social relationships (intellectual or emotional)

 

This table is not exhaustive, but if offers sufficient scope to illustrate types of expectations. Let us take a few examples, social contact through music can be seen in sports (singing of national anthems), work songs (weaving, planting), military (marching, war songs, protest songs). Music can be used to stimulate action or reduce it, religious music can be of either sort. Music also assists people on the individual level, it may help reduce the anxiety regarding death or understanding our mortality. On a lighter note we all understand that music brings pleasure, both on emotional and physical levels.

As we develop our inner library of musical works and styles functions become expectations, and as stated these expectations can have both positive and negative outcomes, most music lovers have been asked (or asked) in their past, “how can you listen to that?”

Since music recordings became available at a reasonable price the vast majority of teenagers have been subjected to this question, usually followed by a demand to turn the volume down. All music enthusiasts know that this statement can be highly charged and lead to rifts and arguments. We sometimes forget that while music may enable social wellbeing it can also be intrusive and become a socially negative experience.

A better version of this usually rhetorical question is “why do you listen to that….?”  It brings into play the above discussed psychological factors.

As we increase our scope of listening we also develop expectations about what we are about to experience. When these experiences are fulfilled we feel positive emotions, when they are not the reactions are negative and may become aggressive. Our expectations can encompass different types of sound, e.g. acoustic v electronic, the length of engagement, tempo and a myriad of other factors on their own or in combination. Little wonder then that cliques build up around specific genres, which in turn consolidate expectations. Members of such groups often generate the most aggressive criticisms of other styles, particularly closely related styles.

We know that exposure helps us to adjust to new ideas, and the internet has brought innovations in music directly into our homes. This is not without problems, addiction to newness for its own sake may be found to have short-life satisfaction. The music industry also plays with our expectations from the quality of sound we experience to alternative performances and arrangements of well-known works. Research has opened up alternative methods of performance and timbres in early, Baroque and Classical music, all of which have altered expectations and sometimes redirected our preferences, making once favoured recordings into music that fails to meet the authenticity test.

It is possible that even within a specific social gathering that participants expectations may be wide and varied.  Let us consider music used in funerals, the music can be stylistically extensive. One person would find a hymn acceptable, another a piece of dance music, a third a popular song and a fourth a serious work. In each case the focus is on engagement with the deceased with the understanding that the celebration of that life reduces the anxiety felt by the participant. We intuitively understand that music activates associations, memories, experiences, moods, and emotions and as such it has a natural function at the end of our lives. There is no single piece of music that can be the perfect model for an individual’s passing, satisfying our expectations in such a case is very personal; for some the choices made may seem inappropriate.

Let us return for a moment to bias, and consider some recent research, the wiki entry for bias blind spot is helpful:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_blind_spot

In simple terms we believe that we can evaluate the degree of bias we apply to art, music, film etc. and that we are wholly aware of all the factors that sway us to one preference over another. The truth of the matter is far from intuitive and should leads us to some soul-searching.

On a practical level awareness of the main types of psychological functions can assist the composer, let us take the example of writing a piece of music for education, say a work for small ensemble with moderately challenging demands on technique. There is always the possibility of making it socially inclusive through audience participation and include physically stimulating characteristics by clapping or singing to an arranged melody. A recent Proms performance with the Dunedin Consort had the audience engaged with Bach’s Passion through an invitation to sing three sections of the chorales, while this was a part of Bach’s expectations its inclusion in a concert hall setting is unusual, it alters perceptions and challenges some expectations.

Understanding audience expectations can be to the composer’s advantage as it permits the element of surprise. One may argue that the surprise arises out of convention, only when we understand the rules do we respond fully to their being broken. However there are times when the composer feels inclined to break with expectation on a far more radical level. Those who have followed the tonal to atonal argument understand the gradual progression that took place, but to ease the change some composers made the intellectual blend more palatable by including dance elements (social interaction/ physical functions) within the new tonality. Stockhausen’s most popular work is (in my opinion) Stimmung, which meets all three functions, it is something to consider when reaching out for pen and manuscript.

In recent weeks Nurtan and I have been paying more attention to the first part of the listening process, the input. At the moment we are considering the term random in relation to music. It has already taken us many e-mails to clarify this starting point. At one point Nurtan said

….totally random sequences (white noise) is not recognisable as means of communication.

While I wholly agree with his point we are both aware that people choose to listen to random signals. Try typing in white noise on You Tube for a variety of results including keeping a baby quiet during a night’s sleep! All of this suggests only one thing to me, a recognition of sound as a means of self-regulation.

An earlier blog asked the question Why do we listen to music, the blog is now deleted but I include it below as it relates to the above:

Why do we derive pleasure from listening to music?

Music has existed in human societies since prehistory, perhaps because it allows expression and regulation of emotion and evokes pleasure.

The observations made in this blog owes much to the observations made in the article: 

From perception to pleasure: Music and its neural substrates: Robert J. Zatorre and Valorie N. Salimpoor.  It may be read in full at:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3690607/

In order to answer the question of why we derive pleasure from listening to music we must consider several aspects including physiological ones. We now understand that humans naturally produce dopamine when listening to music, this is a substance that creates in us a sense of wellbeing and pleasure.

If some readers found the previous blog on motivation difficult as it sometimes focused on our basic responses (such as our need for group recognition and a desire for leadership) the notion that pleasure in listening to music arises from the same source as sex, drugs, gambling and even food may not please everybody either. Research on brain activity notes that when you engage with music your brain releases the chemical responsible for motivation and addiction. So powerful is the effect of music that even the anticipation of listening releases dopamine.

Musicians might find happier ground in discussing the pleasure of creating their own narrative about a piece of music, be it on the level of hearing the sounds of nature in Beethoven’s Pastoral or following a process through in Sibelius’s 5^th symphony. Researchers note that the process of engagement through anticipation of events – and their resolution – acts as a major source of stimulation.

(The) perception of … a melody does not proceed in a simple sequential manner. It also involves an active component, such (as) expectancies generated based upon a listener’s implicit knowledge about musical rules that have been acquired by previous exposure to music of that culture. This phenomenon is significant because it points to our highly adaptive ability to predict future events based on past regularities.

The argument is expanded into other methods of structure:

In metrically organized music, a listener develops predictions about when to expect sounds to occur (a parallel to how tonality provides the listener with a structure to make predictions about what pitches to expect).

It should be evident to most musicians that listening over many years builds up a lexicon of expectations, these may be built on rules of harmony, outcomes from the use of tonality, or a knowledge of rhythmic devices (e.g. in dance) all of which leads to a refined level of expectation and can create a surprise element when the unexpected occurs.

Performers in particular will be aware of the physical effects of engaging with music, increased heart rate, respiration etc, all of which indicate levels of “self-reported pleasure” but this is equally experienced by listeners. What may be more surprising is that a physiological explanation can also be ascribed to our sensation of goose bumps which happens as a second event stimulating the brain in a separate area of cognizance.

In observing physiological effects on the enjoyment of music (and art forms like poetry readings) the work of the auditory system cannot be overlooked, but we may not always consider the way that both external sounds and their recollection as internal states permit us to recreate emotions, and not just pleasurable emotions.

Nurtan has often elaborated on the fleeting quality of music and our ability to hold such events is truly remarkable as well as pleasurable:

Humans have excellent ability to maintain auditory information as it comes in, which accounts for our ability to relate one sound to another that came many seconds or minutes earlier...

This ability may well have developed from our earliest survival skills; when we combine it with the desire to belong to a group where we may discuss and reinforce our perceptions and understanding of music, then we may see a progression from survival to enriched living.

Aesthetic rewards are often highly abstract in nature and generally involve important cognitive components. In particular, they are highly culture-dependent and therefore imply a critical role for learning and social influences. These features suggest that they may involve the “higher-order” and more complex regions of the brain that are more evolved in humans.

I cannot leave this blog without putting in this extended quotation from the paper. It concerns some of the differences between humans and our near neighbours:

When given a choice between listening to music versus silence, our close evolutionary relatives (tamarins and marmosets) generally prefer silence. Some animals may be capable of processing basic aspects of sound with relevance for music. For example, rhesus monkeys do demonstrate an ability to judge that two melodies are the same when they are transposed by one or two octaves. However, this ability is limited: the monkeys failed to perform this task if melodies were transposed by 0.5 or 1.5 octaves. There is also some evidence that monkeys can distinguish between consonance and dissonance. However, they do not seem to consider consonant sounds more pleasurable, based on the finding that cotton-top tamarins showed a clear preference for species-specific feeding chirps over distress calls, but no preference for consonant versus dissonant intervals.

The 1K word limitation for our main blogs prevents the examination of why we prefer certain types of music over others, e.g. there is much to be said about why we like sad music in relation to the question of pleasure.

Perhaps I should finish on a personal note and explain why I like listening to music. I enjoy the physical aspect of playing (how well is not relevant). I love exploring sounds and feel like a pioneer when using samplers to create never before heard or used sounds. I love the sense of playfulness that is open to me when composing, the fact that I can make several choices before I determine the outcomes that make a written piece of music. I could carry on for some time. I have no objection to my body producing a substance which increases my sense of pleasure, I should be thankful that it is there, along with the willingness to study and work hard with the elements of music.