Study Reveals Music's Universal Patterns Across Societies Worldwide (reuters.com) 45
From love songs to dance tunes to lullabies, music made in disparate cultures worldwide displays certain universal patterns, according to a study by researchers who suggest a commonality in the way human minds create music. From a report: The study focused on musical recordings and ethnographic records from 60 societies around the world including such diverse cultures as the Highland Scots in Scotland, Nyangatom nomads in Ethiopia, Mentawai rain forest dwellers in Indonesia, the Saramaka descendants of African slaves in Suriname and Aranda hunter-gatherers in Australia. Music was broadly found to be associated with behaviors including infant care, dance, love, healing, weddings, funerals, warfare, processions and religious rituals. The researchers detected strong similarities in musical features across the various cultures, according to Samuel Mehr, a Harvard University research associate in psychology and the lead author of the study published in the journal Science. "The study gives credence to the idea that there is some sort of set of governing rules for how human minds produce music worldwide. And that's something we could not really test until we had a lot of data about music from many different cultures," Mehr said.
Study (Score:1, Offtopic)
Article is bloody useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed. No "patterns" are described in use-able detail, and the few short examples given are right out of Captain Obvious's files.
Re:Article is bloody useless (Score:5, Informative)
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"right out of Captain Obvious's files" ignores that lots of the stuff in his files is wrong.
I didn't read the article, but I'd be surprised if there weren't common patterns. Which doesn't mean I feel I could predict which elements were parts of the common patterns.
Re:Article is bloody useless (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a link to the original study [sciencemag.org].
Incidentally, I absolutely disagree with their assertion that tonality is universal.....the existence of atonal music is an extremely obvious counterpoint. An older example is that some types of Buddhist chanting are atonal, in the same way that a Japanese bell [youtube.com] is designed to be atonal. Is this music? [youtube.com] It's atonal. Maori Haka is another example of atonal music.
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"They may be similar in some way, but it's not immediately obvious how. Maybe someone else can figure that out. "
They use about as much accords as an average rock guitarist, which is about 3.
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Re: Article is bloody useless (Score:1)
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" tonality is widespread, perhaps universal."
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Now there's an idea, an entire album of Ozzie singing lullabyes backed by his band or Black Sabbath with lyrics by Geezer Butler.
Lullabye, lullabye,
Sleep sweet my little darling,
Waiting to die,
Satan is smiling...little darling.
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Now there's an idea, an entire album of Ozzie singing lullabyes backed by his band or Black Sabbath with lyrics by Geezer Butler.
You can already get lullaby versions of Black Sabbath (and many other bands)
https://www.rockabyebabymusic.... [rockabyebabymusic.com]
although they are without the vocals...
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published in Science (Score:5, Informative)
Amazing (Score:2)
and of course it wouldn't be possible for musicians to travel to other parts of the world to get ideas for their compositions.
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“Instead of music being primarily shaped by the culture it is from, the social function of the piece of music influences its features much more strongly.”
Be its function, form, or where it's from, there's something to be said for music somehow sharing space in everyone's head... but me thinks some composers take the next step, go outside the accepted norms, defy convention and those 'Universal Patterns Across Societies Worldwide', like Philip Glass silently sitting in front of a piano keyboard, or Milton Babbitt's 'Ensembles for Synthesizer' (1964): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5n1pZn4izI [youtube.com]
or Olivier Messiaen's 'Quatre études de rythme' (1949-1950)
So many questions (Score:3)
The subject of the study is quite interesting. I have thought about it and heard people asking it: why is it that some tunes catch on and other do not? And why so very few people created the vast majority of music we like to listen to?
Consider the classical period of concert music. I guess the composers explored the "phase space" of musical phrases and compositions that was in front of them. In a relatively short time the majority of what we listen to from that period was created by very few individuals. Did they extract all the catchy tunes from the endless (but not all harmonic and musical) possible variations (BTW, is the number of harmonic phrases finite or infinite?) so that is why there are no Mozarts today? What is so special about those tunes that they became immortal?
Regarding musicality and sense of rhythm, what I have read is that it is an universal human trait. To the point that a person with no sense of music and rhythm, who does not like any music is considered deviant. And that humans enjoy music and dance greatly. Music has proven therapeutic effects; it has an enormous influence on our feelings and emotions. What you listen to at age 12-18 stays with you for life. Young people associate themselves with a particular style of music so strongly that a fanship and heated arguments to rival football fans are common. It seems there never was a society, or a tribe, that did not make music, dance and song. Personally, I love all art and above all cannot even imagine my life without music and literature. It seems the majority of humanity shares that with me regarding music.
What's this all about?
Somebody should write a thick book to summarize what we know so far. It seems to me that music is one of the most fascinating aspects of our lives.
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I would suggest auditing a Music History class at your local university or try this book. [amazon.com]
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Difficult to avoid contamination (Score:3)
The study looks well thought out, but what I read didn't make it clear to me how well they controlled for exposure to other cultures. Music seems to travel between cultures fairly easily - consider jazz, developed in the US, but clearly having roots in both European and African music, and now distributed very widely around the world.
It would have been interesting to see some metric for communication between cultures - maybe some non-musical cultural markers, and musical similarities.
For me personally, only the music I grew up with seems to have a strong impact on me, music from other cultures seems random to me. (to be clear, I'm not implying it IS random, but rather that my brain does not lock onto its patterns in the way it does for music that is familiar to me)
Re: Difficult to avoid contamination (Score:1)
It's a new version of Noam Chomsky's "Ur language" (Score:2)
Noam Chomsky, decades ago, used to publish useful theories about "biolinguistics", about human speech involving "the idea that the mind contains inherent structures to understand language, perception, and though". His theories have been proven quite wrong by learning more about how neurology works and studying languages without the common "languages of conquerors" that most human languages evolved from. But the idea that there is a shared underlying biological structure to language, or to music, remains a c
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His theories have been proven quite wrong
Woah, that is definitely not true.
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Many of his theories have been proven wrong. Many others can't be tested. And it has been reasonably well shown that if there is an "ur language" it's pre-linguistic.
I happen to believe that there is such a thing, but it's not closely tied to any observable feature. I.e., it reinforces some patterns and ant-reinforces others, but it doesn't initiate them. It's more of the form of "it feels right to make this utterance" or not than "you do it this way". I know of no way to test this, and I note that it
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And it has been reasonably well shown that if there is an "ur language" it's pre-linguistic.
This is not Noam Chomsky's idea at all. I think you need to find a different source of information, because whatever one you are reading is misleading you.
Many of his theories have been proven wrong
Which theory are you talking about here? Or is it just some vague thing you heard somewhere?
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Then, please, explain yourself what Noam Chomsky's "idea" was. I personally brought up the specific idea of biolinguistics.
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I don't know where you picked that idea up, but it had me rolling on the floor laughing. You might as well just say that you don't understand Chomsky and be done with it.
There's no shame to that: computational linguistics is not an easy field to get into and the concepts aren't particularly intuitive.
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Oh, dear. Applying the "proof by authority" fallacy for an authority you've not even named, for a belief you've not even named? If you have some understanding of the field of computational linguistics, which is a commonly claimed _descendant_ of his holosphies but is not in fact rooted in his philosphies, is not an effective refutation of the claim that his ideas have been proven wrong.
Chomsky linked the "ur-language" to an underlying genetically based common language. The problem is that language in every
Re: It's a new version of Noam Chomsky's "Ur langu (Score:2)
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I heard Chomsky speak on his "universal language" concepts in the 1980's. Hhe was linking the concept of a universal language with that of an "ur-language" at that time. The concepts are intertwined.
Interestingly, Chomsky has since discarded most of the universal grammer idea! There is a summary of his scholarly retraction at https://dlc.hypotheses.org/126... [hypotheses.org] not realized he'd done this, and am impressed with his ability to step back from such an error when presented with robust evidence.
Re: It's a new version of Noam Chomsky's "Ur lang (Score:2)
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I'm afraid it's what I accidentally cut the space after the link, which tied it to the reset of my sentence. The correct link is:
https://dlc.hypotheses.org/126... [hypotheses.org]
Re: It's a new version of Noam Chomsky's "Ur lang (Score:2)
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The "biolinguistics" idea broke down badly as we learned more about computer language, about assembly languages versus higher level languages. The straight deduction from Chomsky's earlier, non-political linguistic work is that there is a common human language, neurologically constructed, and that like the "Platonic ideal" of a chair itself, that all language and language structures were based on this common language. The idea broke down when we examined languages of extremely isolated groups, such as the t
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The straight deduction from Chomsky's earlier, non-political linguistic work is that there is a common human language, neurologically constructed, and that like the "Platonic ideal" of a chair itself, that all language and language structures were based on this common language.
No this is wrong. To quickly understand his ideas, the fastest way is to refer to the Chomsky Hierarchy (like this [wikipedia.org]).
Chomsky's core idea (or one of them, I suppose) is that humans have mental structures that allow them to understand Type-0 languages, and animals do not (and also as an aside that behavioralism is not enough by itself to enable a human to learn such languages).
If you're having trouble with the Chomsky hierarchy, then you're going to have trouble understanding his theories so you should s
Physics is physics. (Score:2)
A plucked string* has inherent properties regardless of whether it's on a koto, balalaika, sitar, or Fender Strat. The overtone series (harmonics) influences what is perceived as consonant or dissonant. Everything on top of that is acculturation, but the physical properties of sound are the same.
-k.
* - or a column of air, a metal or wooden bar struck with a mallet, a membrane hit with a stick
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"Most music is consumed via the ears" (Score:2)
"About 3% are consumed via other orifices."
Which patterns (Score:2)
Not clear if they've discovered some specific correlation that was previously unknown or if they just 'discovered' what musicians have known for centuries.
Culture and Biology (Score:1)