Music is processed by the limbic system of the brain. But if there is something wrong (like distortion) the processing is unconsciously moved to the cerebral cortex. There is a tipping point for this. When this occurs the presentation loses some of its emotional impact, the toe tapping, that sort of thing. So to me, "musical" has always been about keeping that engaging quality.
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Very well said... This reveal why pure subjective characterisation of what is "musical" may become meaningless pleonasm if we do not identify also what are the acoustics and psycho-acoustics conditions that may impede or increase the emotional and gesturing body impact of the musician as well as of the listener ... The fingers of the violonist moves and our body parts moves with him ... In a word, we may become analytic , critical, and distant from the music , the moment the sound loose for us and for our specific ears/brain characteristics the refined balance, what you called the tipping point , between all acoustic factors implied , some distortion or some harmonics, or some level of noise, or some excess of reflection or excess of absorption in a room or a bad timing between direct and reflected waves etc ... For sure there is always a subjective relative acquired taste in the definition of "musical" ; for example for me nothing is less musical than a rock concert at high decibels levels...For others it will be an epiphany of musical collective trance ... But if music can participate to collective trance i dont think that music as contemplation and healing is associated with the collective hysteria of a crowd at high decibels levels ...Something work no more here for my limbic musical brain and my cortex want my legs to go near the silence ....For others it is the opposite, their limbic system is happy with a collective noisy crowd... Acoustics define music as meaningful sound first and last , and it goes far more deep than our taste for a specific set of frequencies and decibels ... For example all the details of information communicated through the meaningful sound of a sentence spoken and articulated and rythimically throw in a certain way ...this set of information could fill a book about a character deciphered by an attentive experienced listener or by our unconscious limbic system while our cortex sleep awake ...😊
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Dear @atmasphere : " But if there is something wrong (like distortion) ". Not necessary " wrong/ distortion " , our brain react mainly to our life experiences and our behavior to stimulus ( MUSIC reproduction ) result on several kind of those life experiences ( concious or inconcious ) emotions/memories. All of us have different kind of overall life experiences that constitute our specific knowledge levels on specific different kind of stimulus. Each one of us are accustom to different kind of beat in the MUSIC different COLOR this COLOR is the flavor of MUSIC we like it's each one of us TASTE. So when during a test audio item at my place through my specific/unique test proccess the iten under test goes out of that COLOR/TASTE the first attemp of my brain is to react in negative way and then I need to follow testing for more time to look if my brain behavior could change because even that does not match with my taste this makes me to check out if I can improve " something " in my room/sistem.
I already posted in this thread that all that " picture " of phsyco-acoustics and the like ( concious or inconcious ) it came/comes intrinsecally in our life experiences/memories. Our posts in this thread is a result to all those individual subjective experiences. The next article is a wide explanation about and if you or any other gentleman read it you can read that the word " experiences/subjective is repeated a lot of times as the Amygdala and Cortex too. Very interesting:
Each one of us TASTE came/comes from " there " from that brain truly complex whole proccess.
R.
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Human hearing perceptual rules are the same from one person to the next regardless of taste. It is this fact that deciBels can be used to show sound pressure (since the ear hears sound on a logarithmic scale). The Fletcher-Munson curve is another example of a human hearing perceptual rule and isn't governed by taste. The human hearing masking principle made mp3 files possible. The range of human hearing is 20Hz-20KHz and so on. These things are not governed by taste. Its easy to conflate taste with hearing perception. They are not the same; otherwise a person could decide that don't like deciBels and could chose to hear on a linear scale. If you look at my post about distortion and how the ear perceives it then you will see that my comment has nothing to do with taste. |
@atmasphere : All human beings bornwith similar but different organism " characteristics " that are in each one DNA and those " characteristics " include hearing perception. Through the years human being goes changing day by day mental and physical according to what he is " exposed "/surrounded just from the begin. All those " exposed " stimulus work in his organism as a sculptore-man that day by day is modulating all the organism in " thousands " of shapes. Through the years each one of us had/has a different learning paths at different levels that are critical in that whole modeling, including hearing perception characteristic and whole all organism intrisecal limitations . During that " modeling " proccess human being does not cares about SPL or frequency range: we all learn with out taking care of ears frequency range or each one ears sensitivity. All what we learned ( experiences, every kind/memories. ) and still learn during our life ( just from the begin ) and in the case of MUSIC reproduction are what determine what we like it the more, what we really don't like, what we like in lower way but that we like, etc, etc. That " we like " involved all those learned experiences in those different paths we already " runned " and that's why we have not only a kind of " flavor " we like but " several " ones with different gradation and from there came each one of us TASTES that are not altered because we know the ears frequency range. All what you know concious or inconcious/informed or uninformed help you to that " like " flavors gradation and it's that way because EVERYTHING already" lives " inside you thank's to what you " runned " in your specific life roads. Nothing it's at random and ceratinly taste neither. Our response to different stimulus has a way long " history "
R.
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