It’s just rhythms and pitches really, in a sequence. But we don’t love patterns, a scale sounds boring. It’s the breaking of the patterns that sound good in music, but only in specific ways. Other ways sound discordant. What the duck is going on?

  • otacon239@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I think all experience of art, enjoyable for us or not, is something the brain adheres to because it is unlike nature. Nature tries to all blend together in a very loose way. We categorize many things like animals, land, the stars… but it all is really just one thing. Art is the ability to purposefully change that continuity with intent. To see something sitting there, doing nothing, and you feel the desire to arrange it in some way.

    Music is no different. We realized sound was one of our senses and most of nature’s songs are chaotic, outside the rare particularly talented bird.

    We’ve found ways to harness sound into whatever we found is most pleasing. And it seems what it pleasing is different from one person to the next, but also shares ground through the instruments we use.

    I imagine when we first started rhythmically hitting sticks on rocks, it wasn’t long before we had an arrangement of our favorite sticks and rocks to hit together. And we just kept getting more creative from there.

    • hisao@ani.social
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      5 months ago

      Okay, but why do we love art of nature then? If you go further, some people love hyper-realistic art of nature, while others prefer surrealistic or abstractionist/minimalist stylized art of nature. If we talk about scale between absolute chaos and absolute order, art covers it all.

      • otacon239@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I think when we capture nature in a hyper-realistic way, the takeaway is control. We get to choose exactly what is included and what is not. It’s also about admiring the process that goes into it. We’re able to comprehend the work that went into making that possible. It also means that you get to stop time in the piece. You’re seeing that very specific part of reality that artist wanted you to see.

        • hisao@ani.social
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          5 months ago

          I agree those are some of possible motivations, but I also think there are countless other motivations for it in the wild. The “We get to choose exactly what is included and what is not” thing I personally think is more a “minimalism” mindset than realism, but that’s just my perspective. A lot of people who do realism, just go there and draw exactly what they see, or they have people pose for them. They ofc choose the scene and pose, but they don’t deliberately strip detail for artistic value like minimalists do, which means minimalists push way heavier into this “control what’s included and what not” territory.

    • jago@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Please provide a synopsis of what the link presents. When you throw up a youtube link, we don’t know what we’re getting until we get it.

  • SanguinePar@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    But we don’t love patterns

    I would disagree with that somewhat - I think we do love patterns, but the more complex and intricate the better.

    Which is why music appeals so much - it’s chock full of patterns overlaying each other, echoing and counterpointing each other, contrasting each other in ways that are both conflicting and harmonious. Good music is like seeing the rhythms of the world all around you.

    • Obi@sopuli.xyz
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      5 months ago

      It’s mainly to get laid. Now that I think of it, that’s kind of the case with human music as well.

  • Shirasho@lemmings.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m not a scientist, but I think it is because humans like patterns, which is what music is. What makes random banging and loud noises annoying and how is that different from music? I think the answer is that music has patterns. What makes people like or hate different types of music is that they like one pattern over another.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I don’t. And I don’t understand why I’m the only one who just in general would rather hear silence then music.

    • jago@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I too like silence, then music, when the album I’m listening to intended to have a break between songs.

      However, if the songs’ tracks are meant to fade from one to the next without a break, it’s annoying and distracting if I can hear a silence between them, however small – even just a click – then music.

    • MarieMarion@literature.cafe
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      5 months ago

      I’m the same. I don’t listen to music, ever. It does nothing for me (except hurting my ears if it’s medium or high volume, annoying me, stressing me out if it’s fast, and preventing me from understanding spoken words.). There’s something weird in my brain, I think.

  • pwnicholson@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    “Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hail souls from mens’ bodies?” – Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

    (Guitar/lute strings used to be made from sheep gut, for anyone confused)

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The answer is we don’t know unfortunately. I dont think scientists have found a definitive answer on this one. The theory tho is that it had some evolutionary benefit in the past, but we dont know why that would be either.

  • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    To drown out the sound of your brain counting the moments until your next shift at work.

    13 hours 50 minutes…

  • hisao@ani.social
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    5 months ago

    It’s the breaking of the patterns that sound good in music, but only in specific ways. Other ways sound discordant.

    I like a lot of different music and I also like harsh noise, when it’s adventurous like Merzbow. It sounds discordant, but it sounds great and I enjoy listening to it. Maybe you should go more fundamental, “why do we humans like information entropy” or something like that.

  • yermaw@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    I don’t know anything about specifics, or actual explanations, but I once heard it said that Art decorates space and music decorates time.