Official: music is a brain stimulating drug We all know our favourite tunes are pleasurable, but scientists have dug deep and discovered music can actually be a drug that stimulates the release of pleasure chemicals in our brain. A study from scholars at McGill University in Canada suggests the anticipation of our favourite passage can be all the stimulation needed for …
I was thinking more along the lines of when you add all of the components together, they create a whole that has an overall sound type. How that sound type reacts with the Central Nervous systems own frequency and what harmonics it creates will differ from person to person. Just changing one small thing within the sonic mix would affect the music significantly when it's all added together.
For example, I love Iron Maiden. I get very, very happy when I listen to them, BUT Queensryche don't really do it for me. Both are very similar as bands with similar chord progressions, 2 guitars, one bass and an opratic singer, so theoretically, if I like one band in that genre, I should also like any other. However, there's something in the overall mix of Queensryches music that just doesn't do it for me.
It's the same with Joni Mitchell Vs. Joan Baez. Mitchells voice does it for me, but Baez doesn't. Same notes, but it's how their harmonics resonate that ake the difference.
So while the same frequency sequences can appear in all kinds of music, it's more the way these frequencies are mixed with others and the way they are presented from the instruments that are played so that while we might like one transition, it means more or less depending on the superimposed harmonics and whatnot from playing style, amps, instrument types etc.
that people who like one type of music should like another type of music that uses that music. Take Barber's Adagio for Strings (if it's the study I'm thinking of then this actually was the winner in terms of chill response), everyone who likes the original should also like the trance version, and probably moreso because of the higher BPM. I don't think that many classical afficionados would agree though. It may be a starting point, but there's a lot more to it than just the frequencies used and the overall mix, and if it was just a case of that then you would have favourite songs, not artists, as the frequencies and harmonics would be different across all of their songs. I'm pretty deterministic, but I really don't think it's as simple as that.
"Oh I work much better with my iPod on....there is also conclusive proof on the internet, GeorgeTuk is being unfair".
Yes I would work better if I didn't answer the phone or have to listen to anyone, but having people all plugged into iPods not knowing what is going on around them does not a good department make.
Pretty much any learned anticipatory behaviour in most animals releases dopamine just before the expected reward arrives. Does this mean that if I'm cheered up by looking forward to a plate of egg & chips when I get home then they have to be classed as a drug too? Controlled, maybe, but a drug?
sure, they now have pictures so they can say it's scientific and all, but humanity in general and one English playwright* in particular have known this for at least 314 years and one may safely assume quite a bit longer.
* "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast" - William Congreve 1697
how about a "pounding head on desk at the futility of it all" icon
As any musician will tell you, playing an instrument becomes a form of meditative catharsis beyond a certain point. Once you no longer fret (ha) about individual notes or the fingering of phrases, you can literally sit and happily noodle around for hours.
Perhaps it is addictive - but it's one addiction that can get you friends, pretty ladies and occasionally earn you money. It does however require a spare room, and a sympathetic wife/husband/live-in groupie.
...a study at a uni to come up with this? Back in my younger years at an infamous hardcore/techno club called "Club Kinetic" there was nothing quite like the rush that hearing the start of one of your favourite tracks gave you... waiting for that breakdown for a huge hands in the air moment and then building, building, building until 2000 people went absolutely crazy! Ahh, those were the days. :)
Best of all I was a "straight head" (and known for it, complete strangers would come up to me and say "You're the straight head! I don't know how you do it, you're always up here on the podium") so, for me at least, it WAS the music.
Which makes me think, I'm going to have to go to one last rave before I'm too old and the kids wonder who the hell brought their grandad with them! ;) Anyone know any good old school ('92) hardcore nights?
I always find that bit the worst time of a gig. Of course, with the way the mind works, after a big high, you will always drop below your median mood level for a short while before coming back to normal, so there's also the related depression of coming off stage that lots of people (myself included a few years back) would fight off with... nasal decongestants.
circa 1985ish - "Music is banned in Khomeini's Iran
On the grounds that it stimulates the brain
We've done him one better in the land of coke & honey
Using music to put people's brains to sleep"
Bit of a prediction of all these Talent(less) shows eh?
Also, a big punk style middle finger to the HR nazi above!
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