Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Tue, 14 Apr 1992 18:52:31 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      RE: fear of music (fwd)
              14 Apr 1992 15:15:22 PDT from <hedberg@INFERENCE.COM>

Russ Gelinas <R_GELINAS@UNHH.UNH.EDU> says RE: fear of music
> >I guess the real question should be why do things scare us?
>
> That's what I was asking.  More specifically, what was it in that music
> that scared a 3 year old.
>
> >Things that we are unfamiliar with generally seem to scare us.  Is this
>
> True, but in this case we were making a good amount of "unfamiliar" sounds,
> but they didn't scare her.  I wouldn't have characterized them as spooky
> either.  But eventually we hit on something that was spooky, and it scared
> her.  What was it that made the "spooky" sounds frightening, while the
> just "unfamiliar" sounds were not?  The spooky sounds hit the survival
> button, but why?

You said you were working with a processor. Were you doing something to add
artificial echo and maybe mess with her perception of space, creating some
sort of virtual abyss? (There are supposed to be only three innate fears:
loud noises, darkness, and falling. The only one that seems conceivable
here is falling, since the "spooky" noises weren't noticeably louder than
the non-spooky stuff-- unless the lights dimmed when you powered up the
spookiness machine :-)

But somebody on another list talked about sampling his infant and playing
back the sample for the kid, and observing the kid's escalating concern as
the kid realized that what he was hearing was himself-- some sort of ego
integrity issue, like a mirror or photograph, only in sound (and possibly
more insidious since it takes up time, while photos are fixed images).

On Tue, 14 Apr 1992 15:15:22 PDT James Hedberg said:
>I'm not sure i agree we have a "survival" button, but i think we are
>talking about "music".  Isn't the whole thing about music is that it
>evokes a response.  Why do vibrations and silences change the way we
>feel in general?  Why does a beat just faster than our heart beat tend
>to excite us?  Why do certain sounds "scare" us?  Why does some music
>nauseate us?  Why is some music sad, dark, bright, powerful or any
>other thing?

All good questions, and the answers don't tend to be very universal. The smell
of teen spirit nauseates me. (Sorry, cheap shot...)

The faster-than-heartbeat trick is physiological, of course: our central nervous
system responds to external stimuli, and when we have this repeating impulse in
our environment that's close to an internal cycle, we try to adjust ourselves...
philosophically, though, I wonder why we care? Why don't I have enough faith in
my own heartbeat to let it continue to do what it does naturally?

These little tricks are known to the music industry, BTW, and they try to use
this knowledge to come up with more predictable formulae for hit records. When
Todd Rundgren delivered _Hermit of Mink Hollow_, he had the songs sequenced the
way he wanted them. The label subjected the songs to some peculiar tests, like
galvanic skin response in listeners, and broke the songs down into the ones that
were "scientifically" proven to be pretty versus the ones that the testers had
adverse reactions to. So Todd resequenced the album (this was back in the days
of the old LP) into "The Easy Side" of catchy tunes, and "The Difficult Side"
of tunes that didn't pass these tests. There's not much difference-- although
I do think the songs on "The Easy Side" average a little too perky.

I once saw Pierre Boulez speak to a Harvard music class. He used to write very
difficult modern music-- he once wrote a paper entitled "Karlheinz Stockhausen:
Spineless Dog," because he thought Stockhausen's music wasn't rigorous enough!
Now he doesn't write so much, and what he does compose is far less likely to be
dissonant. He decided that weight of physics, the law that makes a 3:2 frequency
ratio (a perfect fifth) sound so wonderful, was just too universal to fight.

But not all dissonance is inherently painful or evil. I think Charles Ives' 4th
Symphony, last movement, is one of the most moving and ennobling experiences in
the musical history of this country. And I do think a lot of overly consonant
music, e.g. new age, is incredibly trivial and bland.

>I would tend to point to the way we're made by God.

In the words of the Psalmist, "Shiru l'Adonai shir chadash!" Sing unto the Lord
a new song! Not the same old shit from the garage, He's heard all that before!
I figure if God really made man, it must have been because He wanted to hear a
few new ideas!
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