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Topic: High compressibility elicits enjoyment - music explained. |
Andy Volk
From:
Boston, MA
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Joachim Kettner
From:
Germany
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Posted 13 Nov 2011 9:35 am |
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Oh those scientists... Music that sounds complex to the ears, but easy for the brain. Aren't these organs part of the same human body? I have no idea about how the compressing to an mp3 technically goes, but I would imagine that a concerto with it's well balanced instruments is easier to convert than a modern pop tune with all the uneccesary effects. It has nothing to do with the complexity of the melodies.
_________________
Fender Kingman, Sierra Crown D-10, Evans Amplifier, Soup Cube. |
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Tim Victor
From:
North Carolina, USA
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Posted 13 Nov 2011 11:52 am
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Yeah, those scientists. What good are they? 
I've studied up a little bit on the mp3 format and I agree with you, Joachim. It's based on "perceptual coding" meaning that it will introduce errors as long as they will be masked by other sounds being heard. So a different signal reaches the eardrum but the same signal goes up the auditory nerve (or at least beyond some point in the chain of processing, it gives the effect.) It's all done on snips of sound milliseconds in length--it's mainly vertical, not horizontal--so there's no notion of melody or theme and variation to it, and only accidentally does harmony have any part.
The article doesn't say that the experimenter actually used mp3 compression, and I've had to chase down enough papers lately not to feel like chasing down this one, but most people find that mp3 works worst on an unaccompanied acoustic instrument and much better on a full band or orchestra. A solo cello is more demanding than a full orchestra, even if they're both playing Mozart, basically because there are more places to hide the errors due to a low bit rate in the latter. This surprised me when I first learned about it.
I can't remember where but I've heard it said that music is sort of a guessing game, where listeners try to figure out what will come next based on what they've heard so far. And it can't be too random or too predictable. Listeners seem to be satisfied when they're right somewhere around half the time. But someone who listens to, let's say, Selena Gomez or Justin Bieber might only recognize fairly simple patterns compared to someone who'd enjoy e.g. The Goat Rodeo Sessions.
It could be that .zip compressing MIDI files of different styles would give different results however. That style of compression is all about separating redundancy from new information. But Brian Eno's "complexity is in the listener" rant is still a key idea IMHO. |
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Andy Volk
From:
Boston, MA
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Posted 13 Nov 2011 1:06 pm
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| I think there's a research bias toward classical music that goes very deep and skews the research in many areas in that direction. However, I haven't done any research to support this argument! |
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Tim Victor
From:
North Carolina, USA
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Posted 13 Nov 2011 9:17 pm
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| Agreed about the bias. Plus Kylie Minogue is way hotter than Beethoven. |
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Joachim Kettner
From:
Germany
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Posted 14 Nov 2011 5:45 am
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Thanks Tim, very interesting!
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| And it can't be too random or too predictable. Listeners seem to be satisfied when they're right somewhere around half the time. |
I found my own evaluation of what I like or don't like in this remark. Off course it depends on your musical taste, where voices, lyrics, instruments and the styles that are played on them play a part.
_________________
Fender Kingman, Sierra Crown D-10, Evans Amplifier, Soup Cube. |
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David Mason
From:
Cambridge, MD, USA
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Posted 14 Nov 2011 8:31 pm
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For many of us, there are maybe just a couple of aspects to music which don't really come into play sitting in a white room wearing headphones while a clipboard geek stares at us. And when I got to this part:
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| "It is an inescapable law of nature that the amount of satisfaction one gains from achieving something is related to how hard it is – and easy things can only elicit a fleeting superficial sort of pleasure. The simplest tunes would be, say, ascending scales, which would quickly get irritating rather than be stimulating," Hudson said. "This applies to a lot of things, such as puzzles we enjoy doing, sports we enjoy playing, careers that stimulate us." |
I found myself wondering who it was that authorized him to declare some things "inescapable laws", and, not. Maybe he's surrounded himself socially with a bunch of fellow quizzical scientists - fine - but there's a huge number of people (majority?) who think EASY=BEST. I've hired a few... point being, there's a fundamental flaw built into his research design, because it's designed to elicit the answer he wants. Pop-science. |
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Andy Volk
From:
Boston, MA
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Posted 15 Nov 2011 8:50 am
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Pop science, biased science, and maybe, flawed science?
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| Hudson used music compression programs to mimic how the brain condenses audio information |
How does he know the brain doesn't use a much more efficient and less lossy compression algorithm?
According to Wikipedia (and how can the net be wrong?) The song Tom's Diner by Suzanne Vega was the first song used by Karlheinz Brandenburg to develop the MP3. Brandenburg adopted the song for testing purposes, listening to it again and again each time refining the scheme, making sure it did not adversely affect the subtlety of Vega's voice. |
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