tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/the-science-of-music-3252/articlesThe science of music – The Conversation2014-02-07T00:07:49Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/227582014-02-07T00:07:49Z2014-02-07T00:07:49ZBeatlemania hit 50 years ago but why did it drive girls so mad?
<p>This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s debut appearance on <em>The Ed Sullivan Show</em> in the US. But what was it about? Was it the moptop haircuts, Cuban heels, and “<em>yeah yeah yeahs</em>” that turned us, our parents, or our grandparents into primeval beings whose sole purpose was to drown out the blare of a Vox AC30 amplifier?</p>
<p>The term “Beatlemania” has come to be associated with many things over the past half-century. Coined in October 1963 during the Beatles’ tour of Scotland, the extent of Beatlemania in the US is obvious from record sales alone. </p>
<p>Between the 1964 release of I Want to Hold Your Hand on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Let it Be EP in 1970, the Lads from Liverpool had a Number One single for, on average, one out of every six weeks and a top-selling album <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Beatles_Forever.html?id=WYmgQgAACAAJ">every third week</a>.</p>
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<p>But to most, Beatlemania conjures up a vivid image of frenzied fans, predominantly teenage girls, with facial expressions that look more like they’d witnessed a gruesome murder, and “I love George!” badges hanging on for dear life as their owners attempted to push past overwhelmed human police barricades. Lots of tears and lots of screaming.</p>
<p>But what can neuroscience tell us about what might have been happening in their brains? </p>
<h2>Why do we like music?</h2>
<p>One could argue that fanatics were interested in more than just the Beatles’ musical talent, but <a href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/the-beatles-total-album-sales/">record sales</a> prove that people did enjoy a Beatles tune. And what about music can make us tap our toes, lulls babies to sleep, well up with emotion, dance around or stir up furious mosh pits?</p>
<p>In short, we know music makes us feel good; even those tunes that incite a feeling of sadness may bring us pleasure because we can relate to them. Take one <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/98/20/11818.full">2001 study</a> by researchers Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at McGill University. They recruited ten individuals who had at least some formal music training. Each participant selected a song that, they claimed, gave them (good) chills.</p>
<p>The researchers played a 90-second excerpt of their chosen song while the subject laid in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, a device that measures brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow. Compared to control (neutral) sounds, music that elicits physical and emotional changes activated limbic, paralimbic, and midbrain regions. And these areas are implicated in pleasure and reward, not unlike the neural pathways that recognise yummy food, addictive drugs, and sex.</p>
<p>In an extension to this study <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/340/6129/216.short">published last April</a>, Zatorre’s group used fMRI to scan the brains of 19 volunteers while they listened to the first 30 seconds of 60 songs they’d never heard before. Participants then rated how much they were willing to spend if they were to buy each song, from $0 to $2.</p>
<p>As it turns out, connections between a limbic system structure called the amygdala with the hippocampus (involved in learning and memory) as well as the prefrontal cortex (important for decision-making) could predict how much participants were willing to spend on each song.</p>
<p>The strength of these connections may partially explain why die-hard Metallica fans might completely shun hip-hop, while others may refuse to listen to anything but country. Music is a personal preference, and although we know that it brings us pleasure, that’s about the extent of our understanding.</p>
<h2>What’s with all the crying and fainting?</h2>
<p>Typically, we equate crying with sadness and fainting with illness.</p>
<p>The truth is, our brains are actually pretty dumb, and any sudden, strong emotion – from happiness to relief to stress – can elicit these vulnerable physical reactions.</p>
<p>Our autonomic nervous system (the “involuntary” nervous system) is divided into two branches: sympathetic (“fight-or-flight”) and parasympathetic (“rest-and-digest”). Acting via the hypothalamus, the sympathetic nervous system is designed to mobilise the body during times of stress. It’s why our heart rate quickens, why we sweat, why we feel ready to run. The parasympathetic nervous system, on the other hand, essentially calms us back down.</p>
<p>The parasympathetic nervous system does something funny, too. Connected to our lacrimal glands (better known as tear ducts), activation of parasympathetic receptors by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22222703">results in tear production</a>. So for those fans relieved to finally see their Fab Four, tears were commonplace.</p>
<p>For others, though, the sudden activation of their parasympathetic nervous system is <a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1986-29341-001">accompanied by </a> something much more dramatic. A quick drop in blood pressure results from vessels widening and heart rate slowing, hence the fainting.</p>
<p>Fainting, crying … exactly the things you’d want your hero to see you do when you finally meet them, right?</p>
<h2>Everybody’s crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed man</h2>
<p>Let’s be honest, there’s a reason Beatlemania is typified by hordes of young women: <em>The Beatles looked good.</em></p>
<p>When Brian Epstein officially signed on as the Beatles’ manager in early 1962, the first thing he did was smarten up their stage appearance; he fitted them into Edwardian collarless suits, matching boots, and choreographed a synchronised bow at the end of each song.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/study-reveals-clothes-do-make-the-man-sexier-smarter-and-more-successful-112858669.html">2011 survey</a>, 91% of Americans believe that a well-dressed man appears smarter, sexier, and more successful than one who is not, regardless of their overall physical attractiveness or how much money they have.</p>
<p>And a <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01542229">1990 study</a> of 382 college students by the University of Toledo examined just how clothes can make the man. One “attractive” and one “unattractive” man (as previously determined by a panel of females) donned a variety of clothes – from designer watches and pressed shirts to baseball caps and Burger King polos. Consistently, women rated the well-dressed man as more attractive than the sloppier one, regardless of which model sported which ensemble.</p>
<p>The Beatles had some pretty great hair, too. Inspired by a man they saw during a gig in Hamburg, Germany, John and Paul reportedly hitchhiked to Paris and requested the distinctive haircut.</p>
<p>Across cultures, long, shiny female hair is rated attractive by both genders. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=esDW3xTKoLIC&pg=PA309#v=onepage&q&f=false">Evolutionary psychologists reason</a> that the ability to grow long hair can reveal several years of a person’s health status, age, nutrition, and reproductive fitness, as vitamin deficiencies result in hair loss.</p>
<p>Plus, moptops eliminate any sign of androgenic alopecia, or <a href="http://www.stevens-trichology.com/male-pattern-baldness-chart.jpg">male-pattern baldness</a>, which studies <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1365-4362.2002.01446.x/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false">have been associated</a> with perceived ageing and less attractiveness. But don’t worry, men – evolutionary biologists theorise that baldness is <a href="http://theweek.com/article/index/229694/why-bald-men-never-went-extinct-4-theories">actually a sign</a> of dominance, longevity, and social status due to its cause – a more potent <a href="http://bit.ly/LztAJ7">form of testosterone</a> called DHT.</p>
<p>Although the fans may have drowned out the music with their shrieks, at least they still had a sight to behold.</p>
<p>So 50 years ago this Sunday, <a href="http://www.edsullivan.com/the-beatles-on-the-ed-sullivan-show-on-february-9-1964/">73m Americans</a> crowded around 60% of the country’s televisions to watch the Beatles’ debut, and the birth of Beatlemania. But while there are some explanations for why frenzied fans might have reacted the way they did to the Fab Four, for some the teenage shrieks and hysteria remained utterly baffling.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/22758/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
This Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the US. But what was it about? Was it the moptop haircuts, Cuban heels, and “yeah yeah…Jordan Gaines Lewis, Neuroscience Doctoral Candidate, Penn StateLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199152013-11-06T11:51:27Z2013-11-06T11:51:27ZThe rhythm of life<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Music affects all of us -- even in utero.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Petar</span></span></figcaption></figure><figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34610/original/wj8fkhgn-1383784440.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Music affects all of us – even in utero.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Petar</span></span>
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<p>Music psychologist and jazz pianist <a href="http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/staff/David-Hargreaves/">David Hargreaves</a> of Roehampton University is probably the only professor to have opened the bill for Chuck Berry. But last week he beat even that.</p>
<p>At a time when the threatened US Government shutdown nearly crippled the global economy over the introduction of Obamacare, David’s team got worldwide publicity for their <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24660048">research</a> showing that hospitalised children experience less pain simply if they hear songs like See-Saw Marjorie Daw.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">David Hargreaves’ TEDx talk on music and the mind.</span></figcaption>
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<p>This is startling enough but, in a world in which finance limits healthcare as much as does medical knowledge, it hints that music could have a dramatic effect on the well-being of billions. </p>
<p>In fact, dozens of experiments have shown that listening to music has a variety of direct health benefits. It can reduce the amount of pain-killing medication that patients need post-operatively, reduce blood pressure, reduce the length of comas, regulate the breathing of premature babies, or even reduce the length of labour (except for my wife, who to this day is taken to a very dark place by The Cult’s Brother Wolf, Sister Moon: I’m taking this chance to apologise publicly). </p>
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<p>We know that the health benefits of music are greater for women than men, children rather than infants or adults, if the music is live rather than pre-recorded, or if the pain is temporary, from say a careless dentist, rather than from deep tissue damage.</p>
<p>Why? We just don’t know for sure. In the case of pain, one possibility is that the music is simply a distraction from the dentist’s drill; in the case of comas, music might be effective simply because it can arouse the brain; and in the case of babies’ respiration rate, the music provides an obvious rhythm that breathing can follow.</p>
<p>And these positive effects of music on children’s health can even be identified during pregnancy.</p>
<p>One experiment showed that when pregnant women watched Neighbours every day the theme music could soothe the babies soon after they were born: everybody needs good neighbours, but infants need cheesy TV theme tunes.</p>
<p>Another experiment asked pregnant women to wear a belt containing speakers playing music pointing inwards, with the effect that the children’s movements, memory, and social skills developed more quickly after they were born.</p>
<p>I wonder if they make one that plays Brother Wolf, Sister Moon.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Brother Wolf, Sister Moon.</span></figcaption>
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Music psychologist and jazz pianist David Hargreaves of Roehampton University is probably the only professor to have opened the bill for Chuck Berry. But last week he beat even that. At a time when the…Adrian North, Head of School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/132132013-04-06T22:31:32Z2013-04-06T22:31:32Z“!ti od em edam nataS” … does rock ‘n’ roll really make kids kill themselves?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/21986/original/6bbrh7qb-1364956176.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">If the new Marilyn Manson video showed a young woman disembowelling herself with a large sword because she had lost her lover it would be banned instantly. But this same scene is tolerated nightly in opera house performances of Puccini's Madame Butterfly.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/TOR ERIK SCHRODER</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As Jane Austen probably wanted to say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good Black Sabbath CD must be in want of a shotgun.</p>
<p>We are so encultured to believe that heavy metal music induces teenage suicides that my father once gave me $100 to buy clothes that weren’t black: I bought sunglasses and survived. Nonetheless, countless rock stars and record stores have been sued by parents and protesters who claim that METAL HURTS KIDS.</p>
<p>Psychology is caricatured as the science of the mad, the sad, and the bad, and research on self-harming among metal fans illustrates this perfectly.</p>
<p>Even 20 years ago we knew that male Australian rock fans were <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890856709652618">twice as likely</a> as other males to self-harm, and female rock fans were four times as likely as other females to do the same.</p>
<p>This level of “sadness” led conservatives to assume that the music must be “bad” and banned. Marilyn Manson’s Florida concerts in the late 1990s were picketed by Christian groups who distributed a protest prayer against those, “Foul and evil spirits who have brought/The music group Marilyn Manson into Orlando” calling on Jesus to help, “So that they cannot sow lies/And spread discontent among our youth”.</p>
<p>Fortunately, psychological research shows that they needn’t have bothered. Teenage metal fans are also <a href="http://jrc.sagepub.com/content/30/3/317.short">more likely than most</a> to suffer neglectful parents. That’s a much more credible explanation of why they’re drawn to both self-harming and a musical subculture that expresses their disaffection with mainstream society that has failed them.</p>
<h2>What’s this song about?</h2>
<p>And if metal really causes suicide then a pre-condition is that young metal fans can correctly understand suicide-inducing lyrics. It turns out that they are actually no better at this than they are at applying mascara neatly.</p>
<p>One researcher <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166411508623468">gave people a multiple choice test</a> in which they chose one out of the four possible answers as the “real” message contained in a song. One of these possible messages was the musician’s own explanation of what the song was about: it was “the correct answer”. People guessed the correct answer only 28% of the time: given that there were four options to choose from, my cat would get a score of 25%. If you still think we should censor rock then neither should you let your moggie listen to Ozzy.</p>
<p><a href="http://faculty.ist.psu.edu/lkvasny/IST402/RockMusic.pdf">Another experiment</a> asked people to interpret the lyrics to Olivia Newton-John’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWz9VN40nCA">Physical</a>. Subtle lyrics like, “Physical/Physical/I wanna get physical/Let’s get into physical/Let me hear your body talk” seem pretty unambiguous, but only 36% understood them, and another 36% of listeners thought the lyrics were instead just encouraging them to exercise more.</p>
<p>Aha though, cry protesters, the real problem is those messages sneakily recorded backwards into songs urging young people to, “Do it!”.</p>
<p>Even back in the 1970s we convinced ourselves that Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven contained no fewer than six backward Satanic messages in less than 60 seconds. But claims like this actually do the Devil’s own work for him.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00223980.1984.9923643">One experiment</a> played people a song, but first gave them one of three types of information. Group 1 were just asked to listen and record their reactions, Group 2 were told that the song contained backwards masked messages and asked them to write down those they heard, and Group 3 were told that those messages were specifically about Satan. No prizes for guessing what people heard.</p>
<p>Protesters should stop telling people that they can hear masked messages about Satan and suicide in metal. Replace “Parental Advisory” stickers and “Explicit” labels in iTunes with a smiley face and the same music might instead cheer people up.</p>
<h2>The dangers of…opera?</h2>
<p>Anti-metal protesters should also think twice about their own iTunes libraries.</p>
<p><a href="http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/71/1/211.short">One piece of research</a> found that the frequency with which country was played on the radio in 49 American cities was related to the suicide rate among middle-aged white males. The “I lawst my dawg, I lawst my jawb” aesthetic of country is just as ‘dangerous’ as anything in rock.</p>
<p>Even more bizarrely, fans of opera are <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07481180290086763">twice as accepting of suicide</a> as a way of regaining lost honour than the rest of us; and elderly, well-educated female opera fans are most at risk. Want to ban rock? You must also shield Miss Marple from Mozart.</p>
<p>We treat metal unfairly. If the new Marilyn Manson video showed a young woman disemboweling herself with a large sword because she had lost her lover it would be banned instantly. But this same scene is tolerated nightly in opera house performances of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.</p>
<p>Justin Bieber’s music makes me want to kill myself: can’t we ban that instead?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/13213/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adrian North does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As Jane Austen probably wanted to say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good Black Sabbath CD must be in want of a shotgun. We are so encultured to believe that…Adrian North, Head of School of Psychology and Speech Pathology, Curtin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/77462012-06-21T20:08:03Z2012-06-21T20:08:03ZDarwinTunes: when you get that feeling it’s, uh, sexual hearing?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11945/original/dfy2c76w-1340169795.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C47%2C1022%2C581&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Feel free to bust out some tunes, but you won't fool the children of the evolution.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Verano y mil tormentas</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What transforms noise from album filler to dancefloor killer? Why do some tracks turn us on while others make us tune out?</p>
<p><a href="http://darwintunes.org/">DarwinTunes</a>, a computer program that employs the principles of <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-theory-of-evolution-2276">natural selection</a> and sexual reproduction (see below), aims to show how music evolves from noise to aesthetically pleasing music. </p>
<p>The authors of the related paper, <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/12/1203182109">Evolution of Music by Public Choice</a>, are to be congratulated on developing a model that convincingly “shed(s) light on the evolution of real musical cultures”. </p>
<p>Such an approach adds to the growing stock of material that addresses <a href="https://theconversation.com/evolution-please-dont-stop-the-music-317">music as an evolved phenomenon</a>: both in terms of its origination as a human characteristic; and as a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme">memetic</a> system – that is, a cultural practice of social behaviour passed on through generations, such as fashion. </p>
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<p>But there are problems. The design of DarwinTunes mimics <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolutionary-genetics/">genetic evolution</a>. But music is quintessentially memetic, and apt to fluctuate, where biological evolution cannot as easily put itself, as it were, into reverse; and do so at accelerated rates.</p>
<h2>Know your meme</h2>
<p>Within the meme “hairstyle”, a population can switch from mullet to Mohican and back at runaway/runway speed. Hairstyling suggests a key property of the interface of biological and cultural evolution that has not been captured by DarwinTunes.</p>
<p>The model the authors have devised adopts a largely <a href="https://theconversation.com/artificial-selection-on-music-and-on-rappers-7781">sexual selection premise</a>, based on the <a href="http://www.cs.cmu.edu/%7Edst/Tutorials/Info-Theory/">information theory</a> approach of broadcast-receive, modelled as produce-consume. </p>
<p>A significant role in the evolution of human music, at least where its origins as instinctive vocalisation with ritual connotations are concerned, is argued by authors such as <a href="http://cmv.customer.netspace.net.au/MusicResearch.html">Bjorn Merker, Bruce Richman, Robin Dunbar and Iain Morley</a>. This relates to the capacity for simultaneous chorusing, whereby arousal and emotional empathy are recruited through performance in which pitch and rhythm are identically entrained. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/11932/original/6dmpx7fq-1340159026.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Dipanker Dutta</span></span>
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<p>This is seen as universal in human societies, and forms a significant means for the learning, teaching and sharing of song, affecting both the <a href="https://theconversation.com/imitation-and-imagination-childs-play-is-central-to-human-success-7555">preservation of the known</a> and the capacity for innovation. Such vocalisation was – and remains so in hunter-gatherer societies – rarely separated from dance.</p>
<h2>Darwin dancing</h2>
<p>To illustrate this point, let’s imagine a computer model that generates, in a manner similar to DarwinTunes, the transmission of choreography: let’s call it DarwinSteps. We would anticipate that some step patterns would be learnt through observation (produce-consume). A significant mover both in the means by which steps were perfected according to a model and as importantly, motivation applied to expend energy on the activity, would be simultaneous group performance.</p>
<p>As with our hairstyle example, the object is looking identical to other members of the community: what Merker has termed “<a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1196/annals.1360.003/full">conformal motive</a>”.</p>
<p>So, sounding identical, in unison performance, also has an observable function in the evolution of music in social settings.</p>
<p>Could this be captured in a model such as DarwinTunes? How would this be done? And what might it tell us in comparison with the current version?</p>
<h2>Play it again, Sam</h2>
<p>A checking procedure that mimicked the condition “repeat that identically” would double as a kind of approval, both in music and in dance. Of course, it could also propel what is planned as an evolutionary procedure into a closed loop in which the same pattern is reiterated ad infinitum – a bit like some modern dance music!</p>
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<p>Perhaps this is what produces “classics”? But even classics give rise to arrangements and cover versions.</p>
<p>It would nevertheless tell us more about the naturalistic transmission of musical material were a social selection element to be factored in: an algorithm for “performativity” and repetition by acclaim.</p>
<p>Two other factors come to mind: the receiver/consumer within the current model biases selection towards <a href="http://arxiv.org/pdf/1205.5651v1.pdf">Western Popular Music</a>; this is evident both in the rating by a web community and in the adoption of the feature detection programme <a href="http://isophonics.net/nnls-chroma">Chordino</a>, assumed to represent the biases of such listeners. </p>
<p>What would happen if the population responding to the material drew predominantly on other cultures? It would be a valuable test of DarwinTunes to expose it to this condition.</p>
<h2>Musical mutations</h2>
<p>A further thought comes to mind. Namely, the “progressivist” tendency whereby what counts as music is what is available in our current generation: equally tempered, with all instruments and voices able to carry material at all available pitch levels to which mutation might transpose them. But this is a decidedly post-modern condition for music to find itself in. </p>
<p>Brass instruments in the Classical period were <a href="http://www.d.umn.edu/%7Erperraul/MU5204-EnsembleLit/KJimenez.pdf.pdf">limited</a> principally to the notes of the [Harmonic Series](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music) so random mutation of music they “played” would have to take this into account lest listeners recognise “impossible” examples. </p>
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<p>In turn, the quality of the sounds humans encounter relates strongly to the environment and technology available to them.</p>
<p>Some cultures have resonant metal instruments, others do not. Some have access to gourds and bamboo from which rudimentary wind instruments of great expressivity can be made, as explored by <a href="http://users.iafrica.com/m/mu/musicman/">Pedro Espi-Sanchis</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit">Inuit</a> are limited to duet singing (see video above), which they achieve with great ingenuity but in a manner that DarwinTunes as currently configured would be unable to compute. </p>
<p>All these ideas arise in response to this fascinating project. What they illustrate is that speculation on the origins of the human capacity for music – perhaps the holy grail of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_musicology">evolutionary musicology</a> – needs to take into account social and environmental factors responsible for what can be performed. Perhaps this is beyond the grasp of a model that begins with the synthesis of heard results.
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<strong>Further reading:</strong> <br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/artificial-selection-on-music-and-on-rappers-7781">Artificial selection on music and on rappers</a> – Rob Brooks</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/7746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicholas Bannan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What transforms noise from album filler to dancefloor killer? Why do some tracks turn us on while others make us tune out? DarwinTunes, a computer program that employs the principles of natural selection…Nicholas Bannan, Professor in Music Education, The University of Western AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.