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Are We Different?

All my life I have been more attuned to sensory experiences than my friends, family, or colleagues. I started to notice this in high school when I would go on and on about how great a particular passage sounded while playing in bands, I would rave about a meal that I ate, the smells of pleasant or unpleasant things, or a particularly good looking passage in a movie or piece of art.  

This question arose for me last week when talking to a friend and relating that I frequently get chills and goosebumps listening to music (live or in my living room). He looked at me as if he had no idea what I was talking about, and thought I was nuts. I thought that happened to everyone!! Since then I have been conducting an informal survey of folks I know about exactly that question. Again, most folks have no experience of this and think I'm bit off. So I wonder: Are we different? Is it something in our biology that lands us in the realm of audio-obsession, constantly looking for the perfect sound stage in our living rooms, and criticizing badly engineered recordings, or scoffing at the sound designers for poorly mixed live shows?

What is it that separates the music enthusiast/lover from the obsessed, ever-searching-never-satisfied, gear-heads which many of us are? 

Share your thoughts (and also do you get chills and goosebumps listening to Beethoven/Charlie Parker/The Stones?)
128x128birdfan
hifiman5's avatar
hifiman5
1,832 posts
 
I think as audiophiles and music lovers we are different.  The thing is identifying the origin of the difference varies widely from person to person.

The audiophile part of me was, in some ways baked in to my nature, as my sense of hearing has always been more acute than my other senses.
I am both a non smeller and non taster (lots of hot sauce).


The music lover part of me is curious as I think most of us would agree that the emotional connection we have to the music we enjoy is a right brain phenomenon.  I have completed several hemisphericity inventories and always score as a VERY left brain processor.  But maybe that's it.  Maybe music is the catalyst to activate my right brain.  One more thought, I do enjoy analyzing the "structure" of music as I listen to it.  Big for us left brainers!🧠
bdp24's avatar
bdp24
10,008 posts
 
I had a friend (R.I.P.) who possessed the highest intelligence of anyone I've ever known. And like myself and, I'm going to assume, everyone else here, music was of the utmost importance to him. It was in fact sacred to him (especially that of J.S. Bach), and he hated to see it trivialized. He couldn't bear to have music playing while people were speaking, even in a car. If music was playing, he felt one's full attention should be given to it---no "background" music for him. In fact, he couldn't NOT focus on music when it was playing, so had to insist that any car or room he was in not have music playing while people were conversing. Geez, Kent, lighten up!
noromance's avatar
noromance
10,020 posts
 
Higher degree of empathy too, I'll bet.
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
The purpose of the gear and the system is to get me as close to that emotive state as the music is able to conjure. I don’t want to listen to my system. I want it to immerse me in the temporal pool of a musical event, which is sometimes the perfect time machine to past memories, or ahead to future possibilities. J.S. Bach was everything and more, past, present and future. Beethoven too. But I was also just listening to some Pink Floyd, ELP, Joni, Coltrane and Miles Davis and they also convey the same chill up the spine at certain moments. I’m still fascinated how the chord progression of the minor 6, major 5, major 4 and back again has prevailed throughout musical history as being one of the most emotive. How is it that our brains register those structures as familiar and yet powerfully evocative? And yet we never seem to get tired of hearing them. Ravel’s Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty from Mother Goose Suite scared the heck out of me as a little kid of three and it still has the same eerie effect whenever I hear it. Joe Walsh must have felt that way too. He played a synthesizer version of it on his 1974 album, So What? 
chazzzy007
540 posts
 
Great thread! 🍻🍻🍻
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