[HN Gopher] Music is a negative superstimulus for speech (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Music is a negative superstimulus for speech (2020)
Author : _Microft
Score : 46 points
Date : 2021-11-29 19:41 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (whatismusic.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (whatismusic.info)
| _Microft wrote:
| What could an experiment look like that tested this hypothesis?
| admiral33 wrote:
| Have a group individually describe a series of simple images
| under a time constraint. Set a threshold for frequency changes
| in each description to determine 'more musical' or 'less
| musical' entries (voice to MIDI?). Shuffle the descriptions,
| have a second group individually listen to one description for
| each image and draw a picture under time constraint. Shuffle
| the drawings, display 2 at a time and the original image and
| have a third group individually vote for which comes closer to
| the source image. I've never designed an academic study just
| contributing - I'd assume drawing ability is a big weak point.
|
| Or maybe show the original image in addition to similar images
| (with one key element different in each one) and have the
| second group select the image that most closely resembles the
| description.
| [deleted]
| Grismar wrote:
| That's an interesting theory, but where is the data, what is the
| evidence, has anyone tried to falsify it?
| [deleted]
| danbmil99 wrote:
| > In particular, people never musicalize conversational speech.
|
| Except in musicals. Perhaps that's why there's a sort of uncanny
| valley feeling to watching people "spontaneously" burst into
| song.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| Related to the concept of supernormal musical stimuli, I've often
| wondered about the existence of currently hypothetical "strong
| music", a class of musical stimuli presumably discoverable by
| strong AI.
|
| Any property, in this case the rewarding effect of acoustic
| stimuli in humans, can be powerfully maximized. There must exist
| patterns in music-space that would have profoundly greater impact
| on human minds than those our low-wattage brains can find. So
| through a really powerful search process (read: artificial
| general intelligence) that can more efficiently explore remote,
| undiscovered regions of music-space, we could get music-patterns
| more alluring and emotionally stimulating than any currently
| imaginable.
|
| What these songs would sound like is the real mystery. Would they
| sound anything like the music we're familiar with? Would they
| lead to musical wireheading [0]?
|
| It also seems a bad idea to measure musical goodness by, say, how
| many times humans will replay a certain audio file. If you use
| this measure, I don't think you'll end with what you want at all.
|
| See also:
|
| "Siren Worlds And The Perils Of Over-Optimised Search." [1]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehead_(science_fiction)
|
| [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nFv2buafNc9jSaxAH/siren-
| worl...
| munificent wrote:
| _> in this case the rewarding effect of acoustic stimuli in
| humans, can be powerfully maximized. There must exist patterns
| in music-space that would have profoundly greater impact on
| human minds than those our low-wattage brains can find._
|
| There is a huge presumption here which is that all humans share
| the same reward maximization function. In other words, that
| culture, upbringing, personal history, and random variation
| don't strongly affect it. I don't see much evidence that this
| is true.
|
| It's more likely that, yes, there are sounds that have
| profoundly great effects on people, but each has their own. I
| would be very surprised if some AI trained on a global dataset
| could produce a set of sinusoids that tickled my neurons to
| anywhere near the same degree as the sound of my daughter's
| voice saying she loves me, or the song I heard when I was
| falling in love for the first time.
|
| Remember, each of us is our own unique highly mutable neural
| net too.
| nathias wrote:
| Presents Plato's thesis as his own, poor form, very poor.
| wyager wrote:
| Presumably the same mechanism would be at work for other forms of
| obviously fictionalized narrative communication, like plays or
| novels. I think another way of stating the OP could be "music
| induces suspension of disbelief".
|
| I'm not sure this model explains why people like or even prefer
| music with no/incomprehensible vocals.
| gotostatement wrote:
| - no engagement with existing literature or work on this topic
|
| - no experimental tests of theories
|
| - massive reductionism of the complex emotional & cognitive
| phenomenon of music into low-level game theoretical optimizations
|
| sorry, I don't see a reason to take this seriously. reminds me of
| jurgen schmidhubers "groundbreaking" theory of science, art,
| music, and humor [1]
|
| [1] https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/creativity.html
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| There's nothing wrong with someone posting their ideas on a
| website. This forum is an internet watercooler, not an academic
| journal. Someone not being a specialist is no reason to shut
| down conversation.
| joeberon wrote:
| Please refrain from unconstructive dismissals, the comment
| you replied to was excellent and added a lot of very
| important context when it comes to academic work. I don't
| want to use a site where such comments are not permitted.
| hackcasual wrote:
| I would disagree that pointing out a paper or idea has no
| cites to existing work is a shallow critique. It at the very
| least means the commenter glanced through the content. And
| while it's possible for someone who's an amateur to
| contribute to a topic, not engaging with the existing work is
| a sign that you're going to get less out of the content
| they've put together.
| dang wrote:
| I don't know what you mean by "pointing out a paper or
| idea". The comment seems to me a classic example of
| superficially skimming an article in order to find reasons
| to reject it. Ending with "reminds me of", followed by a
| link to someone else the commenter rejects, is also a
| shallow cheap shot. What do these things really have in
| common? Basically nothing.
|
| I don't mean to pick too much on one comment and certainly
| not personally on the GP! This is just a common problem on
| the internet. What we want on HN is the kind of comments
| that enrich curious conversation. If you really don't think
| there is anything curiosity-gratifying in an article,
| that's what flags are for.
| hackcasual wrote:
| Sorry, edited to actually complete my thought in the
| first sentence.
|
| While I do agree, in general a lot of novel ideas get
| dismissed out-of-hand, a conversation about to what
| extent an idea engages with the existing
| community/literature around that idea is valuable. For
| example, if I saw a paper posted here that claimed it
| solved P!=NP, my first question would be as to how much
| it addressed the existing work, as mathematical ideas
| tend to attract cranks.
| gotostatement wrote:
| if you don't want that type of comment on HN, feel free
| to remove it - it's not a big deal to me. But it's not a
| shallow critique - this article makes grand claims about
| how the brain works that are not backed up by any
| experiment or reference; it's reducing an extremely
| complex phenomenon - music and subjective experience of
| music - to a simple cognitive processing and meaning-
| making framework; and none of this makes any reference to
| work that other people have done on the matter. If you
| consider this a shallow critique, then I have to think
| that the only thing you wouldn't consider shallow is
| engaging deeply with the content, but that's not fair -
| for the reasons I gave, my contribution is claiming that
| this not worth engaging further with - it's crankery
| dang wrote:
| I don't want to remove it! But even if you had just said
| what you said here, the comment would already have been
| less shallow:
|
| _this article makes grand claims about how the brain
| works that are not backed up by any experiment or
| reference; it 's reducing an extremely complex phenomenon
| - music and subjective experience of music - to a simple
| cognitive processing and meaning-making framework_
|
| The difference is here you say something a bit more
| specific about the content and topic of the article,
| whereas the GP comment didn't. Also, the style of what
| you wrote here is more conversational. The GP comment
| felt more like a pedantic putdown to me, although
| admittedly that is more of an interpretation.
| gotostatement wrote:
| I see your point, especially about tone
| emsy wrote:
| This is hardly a _shallow_ dismissal and the comment didn't
| actually criticize the lack of credentials.
| dang wrote:
| The point is that the comment isn't reacting curiously to
| anything in the article, just finding reasons to
| categorically reject it. That's not the intended spirit of
| this forum
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). And
| yes, I would say that all of the listed reasons are
| shallow. Someone not experimentally testing their theories,
| for example, is not a good reason to shut down
| conversation.
|
| Keep in mind that threads are super sensitive to initial
| conditions. Shallow dismissals often appear early in the
| life cycle of a discussion, precisely because they're so
| quick to jump to - and then we get a thread, and ultimately
| a culture, which is characterized by a mean dismissive
| spirit. Internet defaults already tend to mean
| dismissiveness, so we need to work to avoid that where
| possible.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I'd love to see an elaboration on what implications music
| preferences would have
| _Microft wrote:
| If you found that interesting, make sure to have a look at the
| list of other articles on that blog. It's all written by the same
| author, a trained mathematician - now software dev, on the quest
| to figure out what music actually is. You can see it as a sort of
| log of his efforts, ideas, dead-ends...
|
| https://whatismusic.info/blog/index.html
| zuminator wrote:
| The blogger draws some questionable conclusions here. He says,
| "If music is a positive superstimulus for some aspect of speech
| perception, then this implies that music is perceived as being a
| 'better speech than speech.'"
|
| But that's not really the case. For example, junk food has been
| called a superstimulus compared with regular food. It stimulates
| us to eat it more strongly than the more nutritious fare our
| appetite evolved for, and thereby replaces regular food, to our
| detriment. It's not that it's _better_ , simply that it's more
| stimulating, to the point of usurping the correct stimulant.
|
| Music is a negative superstimulus in the sense that it causes the
| listener's brain to put less effort into processing the meaning
| of something.
|
| He continues: "If this is the case, then speakers would be
| expected to exploit this perception by making their speech more
| musical in any situation where they are speaking and they want
| their speech to have more effect on the listener. But this
| doesn't happen."
|
| To which I would say, in the first instance, that this is a very
| narrow view of how a superstimulus works. Porn has been called a
| superstimulus (being more pleasurable to some and usurping the
| role of physical sex.) But, according to this blogger, I can
| disprove that by asserting, "Porn can't be a superstimulant
| because if it were, people would routinely make themselves sexy
| to others by inviting them to watch porn videos."
|
| But secondly I disagree that people never make their speech
| musical for added effect. Think about when your parents would
| call you as a child. "MAR-LOW...come take out the GAR-BAGE" in a
| sing-song voice for added effect.
|
| Furthermore, music can entirely take the place of speech to
| provide a more stimulating environment. Many people would judge a
| party where music is playing to be more stimulating and
| pleasurable than a party where there is just conversation taking
| place.
|
| But that aside, what he says is true that people don't generally
| sing to each other in the place of normal speech. But that's true
| for the same reason that people don't normally recite limericks
| to each other in the place of normal speech. Songs (and
| limericks) are not meant to be forms of spontaneous
| communication.
|
| I also question the whole concept of a "negative superstimulus."
| He calls music a "worse speech than speech." But that's nothing
| special, it's how superstimuli typically work. In usurping the
| normal stimulant, they have a negative effect, or at least, lack
| the full range of beneficial effects that the normal stimulant
| would have.
|
| And finally, using spontaneity as a measure of the effectiveness
| of communication, let's concede that point, for the sake of
| argument. Isn't everything that music lacks also lacking in the
| written word? In spoken prose and poetry? Essentially, in any
| non-spontaneous form of communication? In that case, why single
| out music? I mean, what he's calling "music" is music+lyrics, in
| any case. Is he asserting that reciting the lyrics without the
| accompanying music would enable listeners to ascertain the truth
| value? Or that just the accompanying music, without the lyrics,
| is not a ("negative") superstimulant?
| munificent wrote:
| Maybe the author's writing style is too terse for you, but I
| really think you are missing the boat on what he's saying.
|
| _> It 's not that it's better, simply that it's more
| stimulating, to the point of usurping the correct stimulant._
|
| By "better" he means exactly more positively stimulating. He's
| not saying it's morally superior. Our brains do instinctively
| perceive junk food as "better" than other food. That's why it
| takes so much willpower to not eat it all the time. It's why we
| "crave" it.
|
| _> But, according to this blogger, I can disprove that by
| asserting, "Porn can't be a superstimulant because if it were,
| people would routinely make themselves sexy to others by
| inviting them to watch porn videos."_
|
| I don't think this analogy holds together. If they are watching
| porn, they aren't finding _you_ sexy any more than sitting a
| Big Mac on the plate next to the blanched kale makes the latter
| any more appealing. We do see that people increasingly take
| cues from porn and expect their real sexual partners to behave
| that way and have completely unrealistic, unhealthy
| expectations of what actual sex is like.
|
| _> Many people would judge a party where music is playing to
| be more stimulating and pleasurable than a party where there is
| just conversation taking place._
|
| Yes, but the whole point is _why?_ Why don 't we attend parties
| with no background sound? That makes it easier to hear the
| people you are conversing with, which is clearly superior. Or,
| if it's because our brain enjoys the stimulus of speech, why
| don't we put on podcasts and documentaries during our parties?
|
| _> But that 's true for the same reason that people don't
| normally recite limericks to each other in the place of normal
| speech. Songs (and limericks) are not meant to be forms of
| spontaneous communication._
|
| Right. And if they aren't that... why do they exist?
|
| _> I mean, what he 's calling "music" is music+lyrics, in any
| case. Is he asserting that reciting the lyrics without the
| accompanying music would enable listeners to ascertain the
| truth value? Or that just the accompanying music, without the
| lyrics, is not a ("negative") superstimulant?_
|
| He mentions lyrics, but his claim is not specific to lyrical
| music. He's asserting that music lyrics without music (i.e.
| spoken word) encourages the user to listen to it and think
| critically about its truth value instead of just implicitly
| taking it in. The more a piece of audio is musical and not
| lyrical, the less it triggers that response and the more
| comfortable we are simply perceiving it uncritically and
| emotionally.
| Flankk wrote:
| The fact that mothers use a singsong voice is actually very
| interesting. Mothers also sing to their babies. I didn't really
| understand the argument that speech isn't musical. It's very
| musical, hence why talking in a monotone voice is so jarring.
| You can in fact compose music from speech by transcribing the
| rhythm and shape of the tones. Some research has been done into
| the grammar of music but I don't think there is much progress
| there. I am fascinated by it but it honestly seems like reading
| tea leaves.
| [deleted]
| jack_pp wrote:
| I found it is hard to read even when listening to music without
| lyrics.. it's like my inner voice is coming from a well so this
| is not surprising
| abetusk wrote:
| The language is pretty terse, so it's hard to get a concise idea
| of what's being proposed. I think another one of their posts
| tries to put it more concisely (thanks to _Microft for the link)
| [0]:
|
| """
|
| 1. Truly spontaneous speech is un-musical.
|
| 2. The perception of non-spontaneity in speech suppresses the
| evaluation of truth.
|
| 3. When truth evaluation is suppressed, hypothetical emotions
| retain their full intensity.
|
| """
|
| Or, put another way, "Spontaneous speech is un-musical. Musical
| speech suppresses the critical thinking in favor of emotion.
| Since musical speech allows circumvents critical reasoning, this
| allows for more intense emotional impact of music/musical
| speech".
|
| If I've understood the hypothesis correctly, this gives the basis
| for understanding why music has (more) emotional impact than just
| speech.
|
| [0]
| https://whatismusic.info/blog/TheNegativeSuperstimulusTheory...
| mnhn1 wrote:
| > people never musicalize conversational speech
|
| I found this assertion confusing. Speech in say, English (just
| to narrow it down), is musical inherently. The pitch and rhythm
| of a speaking voice, especially how they change while an
| individual is speaking, is meaningful meta-information about
| what is being said, and how the speaker feels about it, or what
| they mean by what they say.
|
| We _absolutely_ use the music of everyday speech to create
| emphasis, for example, and in many other ways. Actors use pitch
| and rhythm when speaking to convey emotions. It is often the
| musical content of speech that makes or breaks the performance.
| Mismatching speech melodies with the dialog sounds all wrong.
|
| I dunno, 10 years or so ago I wrote a whole MA thesis on this
| exact subject. It's long enough ago (and I've not stayed in the
| field I was in) that I've long forgotten many of the sources,
| but there is plenty of stuff out there that deals with speech
| and music.
|
| To veer off into pure opinion: I definitely think music gains
| some of its emotional impact by virtue of its relationship to
| speech, given that we can interpret so much from the music of
| speech itself, and if that kind of metadata is presented
| _independently_ of natural speech, there's often something
| pleasing or interesting about about that. We also are super
| good at listening for other meaningful sounds though, like
| things that might kill us.
|
| My two cents is that music, like other art and things like
| sports or games, leverages senses, instincts, and skills that
| evolved initially for other purposes, and uses them
| recreationally, playfully. To varying degrees, humans seem to
| like stimulating and playing with their senses in different
| ways.
|
| I'm not convinced that the attempt to explain it the way the
| author does is worthwhile. Parts of it ring true and parts of
| it (like the role of discerning truth and the claim that people
| don't musicalize their speech) I think are off track, and maybe
| also constrained by a far too limited perspective of what music
| is in the first place.
| artfulhippo wrote:
| You're right, but you may want to consider that highly
| monotone communicators may not actually notice most of the
| non-literal signals that get passed in typical social
| situations.
|
| Models are most be built from something. That thing is
| usually the modeler's interpretation of their own interface
| into reality.
|
| That said, it's nice that such a model was made; it's a nice
| reference / jumping off point. Someone more sensitive to
| their percepts and the nuances of life would be hard pressed
| to formalize any model at all; they'd be hard pressed to
| unfocus from the complexities and responsibilities of social
| life to do the abstract work of modeling.
| steverb wrote:
| And why so many Christian preachers use a very sing song tone
| (and even sing in some traditions).
| abetusk wrote:
| Andre Antunes does satirical takes on the effect [0] [1] [2].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JPRvxTjfOk
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZFt9KUvYs8
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OxYUhAZOy0
| recuter wrote:
| Thank you from the bottom of my cold dark dead heart for
| posting these links. :)
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| I took this course on Music as Biology: What We Like to Hear and
| Why [1] a while back and the presenter had lots of data showing
| similarities between speech and music, in fact saying we humans
| like music because it is very speech like to our perceptions.
|
| [1]. https://www.coursera.org/learn/music-as-biology
| slmjkdbtl wrote:
| > In particular, people never musicalize conversational speech.
|
| > (You can try, but I guarantee you will ruin the vibe of the
| conversation.)
|
| I have invented 2 games: - sing everything you
| have to say - rap everything you have to say
|
| These have occasionally gave me great joy in recreational
| everyday speaking (only for close friends with humor of course)
| munificent wrote:
| This is a pretty interesting theory.
|
| _1. The listener determines the meaning of what the speaker
| said._
|
| _2. The listener determines the emotional significance of the
| meaning of what the speaker said._
|
| _3. The listener determines whether of not the speaker 's speech
| is spontaneous._
|
| _4. The listener determines their belief about the truth of what
| the speaker said, but, the amount of effort put into this
| determination is proportional to the perceived level of
| spontaneity in the speaker 's speech._
|
| _5. The listener responds to the speaker, where their response
| includes an indication of their belief about the truth of what
| the speaker said._
|
| I think the truth-value part of this might be off track. Here's a
| slightly different hypothesis:
|
| Speech carries two separate signals: information and emotion. The
| former is world-state data, and the latter is signal about the
| emotional state of the speaker. In a social species like humans,
| both are critical.
|
| We might process those two channels of data with different parts
| of our brain even though the source signal has them merged
| together into one single sound. Imagine an audio processing
| pipeline that strips the literal informational content out and
| shunts it one way and takes the emotional affect another way.
|
| The informational content needs to be processed actively with
| full attention from our frontal cortex. We have to pay attention
| to it. We don't seem to absorb detailed information "in the
| background" well. I don't know anyone who can, say, read a book
| and listen to a non-fiction podcast at the same time.
|
| Emotional content doesn't need our active attention. It's
| something we can absorb passively. We use words like "feel",
| "vibe", "mood", and "ambience" to describe it.
|
| OK, so you've got a speech-like sound that contains information
| and emotion. How do you decide how much attention to pay to it?
| Information is more likely to be useful if it's fresh, so
| sounding spontaneous is a positive signal for information
| content.
|
| As the author supposes, music is a negative superstimulus for
| that. It's audio that contains no informational content and only
| emotion, which it telegraphs by sounding extremely rehearsed
| (repetitive rhythm, wide melodic swings). That lets our brain
| know that we don't have to pay active, logical attention to it.
| That's pleasant because it frees us to think about what we like
| while absorbing the music emotionally in the background.
|
| This helps explain why some like me do like listening to music
| while programming, but not music with lyrics. Non-lyrical music
| helps me focus my attention on code because it sends a signal
| that I _don 't_ have to pay attention to it.
|
| This may also explain why religions, cults, and demogogues use
| such sing-song like speaking styles: it encourages the audience
| to mentally switch off and not think as critically about what
| they are hearing as they might otherwise.
| o_____________o wrote:
| See also
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhyme-as-reason_effect
| jasonhansel wrote:
| According to this theory, we ignore the question of whether the
| words of a song are true. But this seems to ignore the long
| tradition of didactic poetry, which was typically sung rather
| than simply read aloud.
|
| How would this theory account for Lucretius' _De Rerum Natura_ ,
| for instance, or Hesiod's _Works and Days_? These are musical
| works, intended for singing, but they are also supposed to convey
| fairly detailed factual information to the listener.
|
| We still use song for similar purposes today (e.g. in religious
| hymns) so this shouldn't be _too_ surprising.
| artfulhippo wrote:
| This thread, and the author's blog which I've but skimmed, are to
| me a microcosm of the clash between 2 archetypes that roughly
| correspond to Science and the Liberal Arts; let's call them Type
| 1 and Type 2.
|
| Type 1 aims to formally represent the world in patterns of
| symbols, with maximal simplicity. Type 2 aims to explore the
| complexity of the world, with maximal nuance. Type 1 finds value
| in constructing reductive models that are wrong but maybe useful
| to influence life in the world. Type 2 seeks freedom from models
| that reduce life into forms that can be easily influenced. To
| Type 1, the discovery of a computational model or equation or
| diagram that explains art or mysticism is a Holy Grail to pursue
| at all cost. To Type 2, art and mysticism are effectively defined
| as that which is inherently beyond the grasp of a formal model.
|
| With such a gap in outlook and purpose, it's hard to communicate,
| to convey information that can be integrated across perspectives.
| Indeed, the gap is so large that the meanings and connotations of
| words like "reductive" and "wrong" are only worth quoting from a
| particular frame of reference.
| bbreier wrote:
| I really enjoy the chicken-and-egg-esque meta implications of
| this comment, that you are of the Type 1 persuasion and
| therefore find value in this reductive model of human thought.
| I instinctually grasp for nuance away from these two modes,
| which ironically seems to put me squarely in Type 2 (even
| though I often find value in reductive models). Trying to dig
| deeper into this just feels like zooming in on a fractal.
| xattt wrote:
| There is still some mysticism that exists embedded in a type
| 1 world. Nursing literature sometimes refers to nurses'
| intuition, which is an indescribable feeling that something
| is wrong with a patient but you can't quite describe what it
| is.
|
| Otherwise, nursing is very much a type 1 world of models that
| describe how nurses interact with the world around them.
| eecc wrote:
| Yup, the moment you squint hard enough it's turtles all the
| way down. And it's beautiful like that.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| The two outlooks can hardly be said to be mutually exclusive.
| You can absolutely cultivate both sides of yourself, learn to
| appreciate both logic and poetry. Doing so leaves you a much
| more well rounded person than either Spock or Bones.
| plasticchris wrote:
| Alan Watts called them "Prickles and Goo" if I recall, but went
| on to say the world is actually prickly goo and gooey prickles
| :)
| sebow wrote:
| I would say this "divide" in thought started a couple of
| centuries ago(at it was very noticeable in recorded
| history).Even among "type 1", let's take an example: math: you
| had the so-called fundamentalists that believed in power of
| measurements and the other who believed in the power of
| abstract,imaginary,etc.
|
| This also applies to computing later (and still to this day)
| and pretty much everything else under the sun, including
| arts/liberal arts, for example: people who believed in the
| fundamental of beauty, complexity, hand-made craft, and some
| who would believe in the abstract notions, conveyed
| messages,etc.(you definitely see this throughout "modern art")
|
| To me,making this distinction seems like the wrong
| approach.It's good and healthy for this divide to exist
| (because it's the premise of making something better, advancing
| a thought, otherwise you stagnate in one worldview) but it's
| wrong to assume one is better than the other, therefore
| everyone should adhere to this framework and abandon
| criticism).Moreover than that, people seem to be afraid to say:
| "I don't believe that, i think i can do better" when it comes
| to certain frameworks of thought.You definitely see stagnation
| on this kind in physics for example.
| recuter wrote:
| ta-ta-ta-Taaa!
| 123pie123 wrote:
| Am I type 1 and 2 if I like to see the artistic merit and
| design in science/ computers and math(s) and how it affects
| people?
| notriddle wrote:
| There's a stereotype that art is the domain of the anti-
| reductionist, but I don't think that's a historical constant.
| Would anyone say that mathematically-accurate linear
| perspective had no artistic merit when it was invented? How
| about techniques like the rule of thirds? What would you call
| abstract art, if not an attempt to reduce art to its true
| fundamentals?
| skulk wrote:
| This is a pleasant hypothesis, but what does it imply? Is there a
| bijection between music and speech, or some sort of structure
| there to investigate?
| javajosh wrote:
| Well for one thing it explains why I can't speak when playing
| piano!
| skulk wrote:
| I just tried to have a "verbal" thought while imagining music
| playing and it's surprisingly impossible! The only way to
| have any "verbal" thoughts while playing music in my head is
| to imagine myself singing it to the melody, or by moving a
| body part, say a finger, to the imaginary music. The latter
| feels like delegating the music to the finger, freeing up my
| brain to think other thoughts. This is far stranger than I
| ever imagined, and it also might explain why I'm able to fall
| asleep much faster if I just try to imagine music playing and
| suppress the urge to tap along with my feet.
| motohagiography wrote:
| There with you. I can't formulate words and speak them while
| listening to music, but I can write them. Interesting that it
| blocks words to speech, but not words to fingers.
|
| > _In particular, people never musicalize conversational
| speech._ > _(You can try, but I guarantee you will ruin the
| vibe of the conversation.)_
|
| On this statement of his, however, I'd disagree. If you have
| ever watched the show Letterkenny, the banter is clearly
| musical. I have friends that went to school with the
| creators, and that style of south/central Ontario banter is
| very much a thing, we can do it on cue. Theatre people can
| have a certain way as well, where stories told by stage
| actors are often sonorous and rhythmic. Some British trained
| actors begin to speak from their lower registers (think Ian
| McKellen or Patrick Stewart)
|
| Then again, maybe part of being a great presence as an actor
| is stupefying an audience with a musical voice. I've met
| hypnotist/NLP practitioners who work on rhythm and tone in
| their speech, and this could be construed as a technique for
| disarming and neutralizing critical faculties. Personally,
| the idea that there is an out of band way to mesmerize people
| by turning off their critical and conversational faculties
| using rhythmic musical intonation is too much existential
| horror for me to accept.
|
| I'll stick to writing, thank you.
| memco wrote:
| > In particular, people never musicalize conversational
| speech. > (You can try, but I guarantee you will ruin the
| vibe of the conversation.)
|
| I sometimes try to sing my requests to my daughter when my
| willpower to repeat the request has run out. It never helps
| improve her response, but it helps me stay motivated.
| airstrike wrote:
| Sounds like someone needs to organize a new extreme debate
| competition in which contestants have to play completely
| unrelated music while presenting their arguments
| [deleted]
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