"Universal music cognition" requires a strong exclusionary premise about what counts as music and more importantly what doesn't count as music.
Sure maybe you don't consider 4'33" music. That does not mean other people do not experience it as music in the normal ways people can experience music such as buying tickets, putting on fancy clothes and sitting in a performance space at an appointed time and as an excuse to go out to dinner and/or on a date.
But if your musical interest extends much beyond a Methodist hymnal, there are probably people who will opine that the subject of those interests are not "real" music.
To be clear, I am not opining that *4'33" is or isn't "real" music. Only that in a scientific context, there is no objective way to distinguish between music and non-music. Some cultures have practices that we can label "music" but within the culture they do not play a language game that includes the label "music."
Which is to say that any ecumenical approach to music in a scientific context is so broad as to be meaningless.
433 was more of a statement/exercise in listening. It's interesting to explore the edges of what counts as music, but in practice, people can tell when something is music made for enjoyment by other people.
I think music is more universal than you suggest (or people may think you're suggesting).
Trying to classify things as music is a normative approach - saying what music should be. There's always exceptions to rules, as you point out, and people will always disagree and find exceptions.
The article is a descriptive approach - it studies what people think music is.
You can treat music as information. If it's not information, it's just noise.
Sometimes it has a low information density. People like to sing along to stuff they recognise. Sometimes it has higher density - a surprise bit of syncopation or an unusual note. Music is a variation in pitch and rhythm (etc) that is boring enough (in the context of the priors) to be familiar, but not too boring.
OTOH look at how tone poems flopped. There are patterns that are naturally easier to learn - rhythms (in the article) and maybe scales and harmonies (though this is clearly a bit more complex - not every culture has the old Mesopotamian diatonic scales that the Pythagorians formalised). But like Chomsky theorised with grammar, there might be defaults (or a range of defaults) that humans are naturally drawn to as the priors.
Very interesting problem to even consider. That said, I don’t think we even understand the what, how, and why of music. The rhythm precognition aspect mentioned in another comment makes me think it’s just a byproduct of time and counting with pattern recognition, not necessarily a music thing just a correlation by virtue of physics and the laws of the universe.
for a really illuminating look into some of the more "social" aspects of this field of study, i would highly recommend the book "Musicking" by Christopher Small [0].
it dives into many ways that humans interact with and experience music, using the foil of classical western concert music against many other forms of traditional and popular music (including the popular phase of what's now considered classical).
I don't think it's only humans. All kinds of animals would benefit from knowing that awhoo comes from a wolf and that, in this example, awhoo awhoo is the same sound coming from the same wolf or that an animal recognizes that the first awhoo comes from one wolf and the second awhoo from another wolf.
It also helps for an animal to know the volume of these awhoos as it is a good proxy for closeness, and therefore danger. It's even a good thing to know the rhythm of these awhoos as it helps again to assess if these wolves, or wolf, is on the move while awhooing or on the move between awhoos.
And this is just one example I'm currently making up bit at least makes sense that for many animals: tempo, volume, rhythm, patterns in sound, it's needed for survival. So evolution will select for it.
Music is a lot more than just those things I think, but it at least shows some evolutionary backbone as to why I believe that more animals have been evolved to like music. At least, some elephants sure seem to enjoy a good piano [1].
> Humans everywhere seem wired to favour simple integer-ratio rhythms
That's what people write in the sheet music, but reality is more complicated than that. Notably in swung rhythms ratios are blurry (and dependent on BPM) and specific performers in band will play different ratios at the same time (e.g. drummer will play straighter, soloist will swing more).
If I understand it right, Toussaint's 2005 paper showed that many common rhythms across world music can be generated by distributing beats as evenly as possible.
Some of the patterns in this newer research are Euclidean, but the broader finding is that people have a natural affinity for small-integer-ratio rhythms generally. So this is empirical evidence of why these mathematically simple patterns (including Euclidean rhythms) show up across world music.
The Chinese guqin [1] tends to defy this trend. The somewhat surprising thing is that it's extremely pleasant and relaxing to listen to even for somebody who did not grow up with it. You'd think the acharacteristic playing patterns for it would be jarring to a foreign ear.
brudgers|3 months ago
"Universal music cognition" requires a strong exclusionary premise about what counts as music and more importantly what doesn't count as music.
Sure maybe you don't consider 4'33" music. That does not mean other people do not experience it as music in the normal ways people can experience music such as buying tickets, putting on fancy clothes and sitting in a performance space at an appointed time and as an excuse to go out to dinner and/or on a date.
But if your musical interest extends much beyond a Methodist hymnal, there are probably people who will opine that the subject of those interests are not "real" music.
To be clear, I am not opining that *4'33" is or isn't "real" music. Only that in a scientific context, there is no objective way to distinguish between music and non-music. Some cultures have practices that we can label "music" but within the culture they do not play a language game that includes the label "music."
Which is to say that any ecumenical approach to music in a scientific context is so broad as to be meaningless.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3
Uhhrrr|2 months ago
wisty|2 months ago
Trying to classify things as music is a normative approach - saying what music should be. There's always exceptions to rules, as you point out, and people will always disagree and find exceptions.
The article is a descriptive approach - it studies what people think music is.
You can treat music as information. If it's not information, it's just noise.
Sometimes it has a low information density. People like to sing along to stuff they recognise. Sometimes it has higher density - a surprise bit of syncopation or an unusual note. Music is a variation in pitch and rhythm (etc) that is boring enough (in the context of the priors) to be familiar, but not too boring.
OTOH look at how tone poems flopped. There are patterns that are naturally easier to learn - rhythms (in the article) and maybe scales and harmonies (though this is clearly a bit more complex - not every culture has the old Mesopotamian diatonic scales that the Pythagorians formalised). But like Chomsky theorised with grammar, there might be defaults (or a range of defaults) that humans are naturally drawn to as the priors.
js8|2 months ago
spider-mario|2 months ago
https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Argumen...
Libidinalecon|2 months ago
Imagine a chef making a dish of just an empty plate. It is just stupid. Even the biggest food hipsters wouldn't fall for something that stupid.
At some point one should have listened to enough music in their life to call 4'33" out for the bullshit that it is.
hmokiguess|2 months ago
GuinansEyebrows|2 months ago
it dives into many ways that humans interact with and experience music, using the foil of classical western concert music against many other forms of traditional and popular music (including the popular phase of what's now considered classical).
really interesting stuff!
[0]: https://www.weslpress.org/9780819572240/musicking/
nelox|2 months ago
[deleted]
mettamage|2 months ago
It also helps for an animal to know the volume of these awhoos as it is a good proxy for closeness, and therefore danger. It's even a good thing to know the rhythm of these awhoos as it helps again to assess if these wolves, or wolf, is on the move while awhooing or on the move between awhoos.
And this is just one example I'm currently making up bit at least makes sense that for many animals: tempo, volume, rhythm, patterns in sound, it's needed for survival. So evolution will select for it.
Music is a lot more than just those things I think, but it at least shows some evolutionary backbone as to why I believe that more animals have been evolved to like music. At least, some elephants sure seem to enjoy a good piano [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFIT87yPNYk
IsTom|2 months ago
That's what people write in the sheet music, but reality is more complicated than that. Notably in swung rhythms ratios are blurry (and dependent on BPM) and specific performers in band will play different ratios at the same time (e.g. drummer will play straighter, soloist will swing more).
derpified|2 months ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euclidean_rhythm
If I understand it right, Toussaint's 2005 paper showed that many common rhythms across world music can be generated by distributing beats as evenly as possible. Some of the patterns in this newer research are Euclidean, but the broader finding is that people have a natural affinity for small-integer-ratio rhythms generally. So this is empirical evidence of why these mathematically simple patterns (including Euclidean rhythms) show up across world music.
somenameforme|2 months ago
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ninn-CfAMy8
dr_dshiv|2 months ago