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Repeated Listening Increases the Liking for Music Regardless of Its Complexity


Chris A

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Music sales is well tracked and well studied.  Probably more so than any other art medium.

 

You can subscribe to RIAA and Billboard reports for free.  It will tell you what is trending and where things are heading.  

 

Here is the Billboard (Nielson) Report for 2017.

 

 

2017-year-end-music-report-us.pdf

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On 3/9/2018 at 5:47 AM, Chris A said:

One very important finding of all my demastering experience has been that, when the music tracks have been significantly altered in EQ during mastering

What about the EQ that was applied during recording or mixing?  Or do you consider that one and the same?

 

Not sure what the two authors of the article are trying to figure out here.  They cite previous old articles that correlate familiarity with preference.  They also discuss the studies about physical reactions to music:

 

"Unfamiliar music that elicited pleasant feelings was associated with activation in the anterior insula, cingulate gyrus, hippocampus, nucleus accumbens, and prefrontal anterior cingulate (Brown et al., 2004). Music experiences are also reflected in neuroendocrine changes. For example, listening to techno-music—but not classical music—increased the heart rate, systolic blood pressure, and concentrations of several neurotransmitters, peptides, and hormones related to. . . ."

 

Sounds like a good dose of techno is in order for all of us.  Does it mean I should junk me beloved classical?

 

Are the authors simply trying to add complexity to the equation?  If so, are they really testing complexity, or are is it just a reaction to obscure music?

 

From the article, the emphasis is mine:

 

"From each of the tracks selected in this fashion, one or in some cases two excerpts of 25–100 s in duration were copied. Each of those 197 MEs were meant to constitute an independent musical statement, comprising for example a complete passage or phrase. MEs were taken from an instrumental part of the track in case vocals were included in the track, often the introduction or the bridge. The instrumentation consisted mainly of electric or acoustic guitar, bass and percussion. Many examples also featured piano or different electric keyboard instruments as well as melodic instruments like saxophone, trombone, or violin."

 

No vocals.  Guitar, bass and drums?  

 

The examples selected don't sound terribly genre busting to me:

 

"Inclusion criteria were (1) music which was generally characteristic of popular music in terms of musical properties as well as instrumentation and (2) foreign elements for a Western audience were accepted only if combined with more familiar elements in the accompaniment. Exclusion criteria were (3) stylesdistinctly different from pop-, rock-, jazz-, and world music or from any mix of these styles, and (4) traditional folk music unless featuring said accompaniment. In addition, (5) music with vocals was excluded in order to avoid that vocal quality and lyrics would become confounding variables (Fung, 1996; Coggiola, 2004). Finally, (6) MEs assumed to have been frequently played in broadcast media or to otherwise be widely known were also excluded to preclude as far as possible that the experts had previously heard them. This also decreased the risk that social conventions would affect ratings (Fisher, 1951; Crozier, 1997).

 

Not sure what this means:

 

"Nevertheless, the hypothesis that liking of more complex music benefits from more listening remains valid, and should manifest itself in a greater increase for more complex than for less complex music. This also failed to materialize. If anything, effects were greater for the less complex music, in terms of decreases in both Odd and Dull, while the increase in liking was just as large for all levels of complexity."

 

What failed to materialize? The more you listen, the more you like, regardless of complexity?  

 

And it's all because we are getting dumber.

 

"An alternative explanation may be that general intelligence has decreased somewhat in Western populations during this period (e.g., Woodley and Figueredo, 2013; Woodley of Menie et al., 2015a,b; Woodley of Menie and Fernandes, 2015; Madison et al., 2016), and that the industry is catering for the average cognitive processing ability in the largest consumer groups."

 

That would certainly explain a lot.

 

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I listened to a few examples at the extreme ends of the list that you posted.   Generally, the low end (those arranged close to the beginning of the list) sounded fairly plain, while those at the other end of the list sounded rhythmically and tonally more complex (but nothing like the complexity of the black-midi examples that I listened to, from Dave's comments above). 

 

I think what the authors of the paper were saying was that complexity of the music style had very little to do with an increase in preference for hearing a music composition, but more times listening to the music tended to correlate to liking the music more.  I could be wrong, but this very simple idea is something that I've found to be true in my experience.  More complex music (by their definition of music complexity) tends to sound more "lively" and "aggressive" than the other end of the scale, at least for the examples that I heard.  I'm not sure that they adjusted their scales for "aggressiveness", etc.  and tone of the compositions.

 

I'm not sure what you're saying in your comments, Travis, since it is a bit difficult to pick out what they said and what you're saying as the quoting goes on further (notwithstanding the embedded text background color highlighting, etc).  Could you summarize your objections? 

 

My comments, while predicated initially on stumbling across the rather obscure article that I linked (that you've apparently taken hold of firmly) and its basic idea, are really not terribly dependent on the article itself, but only "nudged" by the theme or idea that they present. 

 

Whether or not they make their case, in other words, has little to do with the main theme of this thread (that I launched):

 

...that we all could benefit by increasing our palette of music tastes (very similar to art or perhaps food) in helping to broaden not only our musical tastes, but to benefit those musicians that would benefit from more people listening to their music, and not the same old albums over and over...

 

Chris

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6 hours ago, babadono said:

Who's this we Kemosabe?

The collective of all consciousness. That which brings what we observe into existence as we observe. The universe working itself out...again. Look at the sine wave, and the symbol for infinity.  Both closed loops, infinite loops. What do you think?

 

Dave

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10 hours ago, Chris A said:

I listened to a few examples at the extreme ends of the list that you posted.   Generally, the low end (those arranged close to the beginning of the list) sounded fairly plain, while those at the other end of the list sounded rhythmically and tonally more complex (but nothing like the complexity of the black-midi examples that I listened to, from Dave's comments above). 

 

I think what the authors of the paper were saying was that complexity of the music style had very little to do with an increase in preference for hearing a music composition, but more times listening to the music tended to correlate to liking the music more.  I could be wrong, but this very simple idea is something that I've found to be true in my experience.  More complex music (by their definition of music complexity) tends to sound more "lively" and "aggressive" than the other end of the scale, at least for the examples that I heard.  I'm not sure that they adjusted their scales for "aggressiveness", etc.  and tone of the compositions.

 

I'm not sure what you're saying in your comments, Travis, since it is a bit difficult to pick out what they said and what you're saying as the quoting goes on further (notwithstanding the embedded text background color highlighting, etc).  Could you summarize your objections? 

 

My comments, while predicated initially on stumbling across the rather obscure article that I linked (that you've apparently taken hold of firmly) and its basic idea, are really not terribly dependent on the article itself, but only "nudged" by the theme or idea that they present. 

 

Whether or not they make their case, in other words, has little to do with the main theme of this thread (that I launched):

 

...that we all could benefit by increasing our palette of music tastes (very similar to art or perhaps food) in helping to broaden not only our musical tastes, but to benefit those musicians that would benefit from more people listening to their music, and not the same old albums over and over...

 

Chris

No real objections other than a couple of observations already seen or discussed.

 

The music they have selected is not that complex, and not that obscure.  I think most on here would agree with that. 

 

The other problem is that one of their conclusions suggested the reason that people listening to complex music don't derive a greater satisfaction from listening more to complex music is that humanity is getting dumber.

 

Quote from article:

 

"An alternative explanation may be that general intelligence has decreased somewhat in Western populations during this period (e.g., Woodley and Figueredo, 2013; Woodley of Menie et al., 2015a,b; Woodley of Menie and Fernandes, 2015; Madison et al., 2016), and that the industry is catering for the average cognitive processing ability in the largest consumer groups."

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1 hour ago, dwilawyer said:

The other problem is that one of their conclusions suggested the reason that people listening to complex music don't derive a greater satisfaction from listening more to complex music is that humanity is getting dumber.

 

Quote from article:

 

"An alternative explanation may be that general intelligence has decreased somewhat in Western populations during this period (e.g., Woodley and Figueredo, 2013; Woodley of Menie et al., 2015a,b; Woodley of Menie and Fernandes, 2015; Madison et al., 2016), and that the industry is catering for the average cognitive processing ability in the largest consumer groups."

I agree this is a problem.  Those studies referenced above are concluding people are getting dumber because vocabularies are declining in content and complexity over time.  The eggheads who did these studies are obviously using a "Jump to Conclusions Mat" invented by Tom in the movie Office Space.

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I think that people are doing different things with their time and their attention than they used to.  This is especially true now with the time people are spending on increasingly larger fractions of their waking time on smartphones, etc.  Vocabulary gets simpler, people in Asian countries start to lose their ability to draw and even recognize their own language's logograms (reverting instead to cell phone phonetic substitutes), opinions on almost every newsworthy subject tend to get homogenized, simplified, and polarized.   In general, all the 7 liberal arts ( Grammar, logic, and rhetoric  (the Trivium), arithmetic, geometry, the theory of music, and astronomy (the Quadrivium) are literally dying out before our eyes, to be replaced by "online knowledge".  Young people taking simple on-the-street questionnaires show that they don't know facts about civics that prior generations take for granted as school subjects, etc.  The same thing is happening to music, clearly.

 

You can call this "people getting dumber" but I think most of it is people not learning the same things as generations before them (still living) were generally compelled to learn to be citizens and employable.  This is one reason why I mention that broadening our listening habits might be a good thing. 

 

You could also take the opposite view that people really are getting dumber because mortality rates are generally so low for just about everyone.  I think that's overplayed quite a bit, but it clearly is a factor.  Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs and Steel, The Third Chimpanzee, etc.) mentioned that the people across the planet with the highest average intelligences generally live in places like Papua/New Guinea.  The mortality rates are much higher in those places.  Guess who don't survive...and the first two guesses don't count. 

 

Chris

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The article seems to confirm the operating principles of Payola.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payola

 

If payola increases airplay, airplay increases listening, listening increases liking, and liking increases record sales. 

 

I think there is a limit to the effect but it is enough to increase the sale of a mediocre tune.

 

WMcD

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On 3/14/2018 at 4:11 AM, dwilawyer said:

No real objections other than a couple of observations already seen or discussed.

 

The music they have selected is not that complex, and not that obscure.  I think most on here would agree with that. 

 

The other problem is that one of their conclusions suggested the reason that people listening to complex music don't derive a greater satisfaction from listening more to complex music is that humanity is getting dumber.

 

Quote from article:

 

"An alternative explanation may be that general intelligence has decreased somewhat in Western populations during this period (e.g., Woodley and Figueredo, 2013; Woodley of Menie et al., 2015a,b; Woodley of Menie and Fernandes, 2015; Madison et al., 2016), and that the industry is catering for the average cognitive processing ability in the largest consumer groups."

the prophet of profit ...

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“These people are too fancy, they’re too sophisticated,” William S. Burroughs said of Steely Dan in 1977. “They’re doing too many things at once in a song.” Burroughs, who had no personal connection to the band, had been asked to comment on Aja, Steely Dan’s new record, because co-founder Walter Becker and Donald Fagen had named themselves after “Steely Dan III from Yokohama,”

 

Burroughs apparently doesn't like complex.

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I have to admit that I've never read any William Burroughs writings.  I don't feel the motivation...especially reading his Wikipedia biography.  Perhaps it's the chronic drug addiction, perhaps the shooting of his wife during a drunken game of "William Tell"...it's difficult to say.

 

However I listen to Steely Dan's studio albums at least once/week-- and it never gets old.  They're favorites not only of mine but of virtually everyone that I know-even my kids and their friends/spouses.  I think Steely Dan's "Goldilocks porridge" is just about right.

 

...a testimonial? 

 

There are some studies on what people like in music, and the themes have been used by some to create a lot of musical hits.  However, I find that I don't really like those compositions--they're far too simple and repetitious (and really loud, too).  I'm currently looking into through-composed rock (as opposed to the much more typical strophic form) and other popular music compositions because of their low repetition.  It's an interesting subject.  "You Never Give Me Your Money" by Paul McCartney (then of the Beatles), is one of those examples.  I've always found through-composition more engaging and much less prone to listener fatigue, even if the musical harmonies and orchestrations are simple.

 

Chris

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I agree completely on Steely Dan being something you never get tired of.  That duo was influenced by the writing of Burroughs, but not the other way around.

 

I think on simpler pop a lot has to do with publicists and "star makers" doing what they do to shape or influence tastes.

 

In the end it is still all personal taste.

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43 minutes ago, dwilawyer said:

That duo was influenced by the writing of Burroughs, but not the other way around.

Yes, there's no accounting for taste, it seems.  Of course, Becker and Fagen were both liberal arts students at Bard College so perhaps the reference sourced from Burroughs' book wasn't necessarily positive.  However I think only of the music--not the source of the band's whimsical name

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I agree.  In fact, I believe that much of the "classical music" that young people hear nowadays is really from soundtrack scores.  No one that I've known really can say that they haven't been exposed to classical music, or that they categorically dislike it all.  Even the Jaws score got its inspiration directly from The Firebird, etc.  Some of this music is extremely complex in terms of its rhythms, harmonies, and structure.

 

If you go back to the beginning of the 20th century, listening to Stravinsky (e.g., Firebird--[also used the opening sequence of Star Trek VI], Petrushka ballets), Prokofiev (e.g., Peter & the Wolf, etc.), Holst (e.g., The Planets, etc.), and even Mahler (symphonies), you'll hear where much of the big soundtrack composers of the 20th and 21st century got (and continue to get) their inspiration, including:

  • John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, etc.),
  • John Barry (James Bond films, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves), and
  • Jerry Goldsmith (Alien, Patton, Star Trek movies, The Mummy, etc.)
  • Bernard Herrmann (Hitchcock films of 1950s-early 60s, Taxi Driver)

...as well as most current large production soundtrack composers (Howard Shore--Lord of the Rings, etc.), Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Day After Tomorrow, etc.), Alexandre Desplat, Ennio Morricone, etc.  All of their scores have stolen freely from classical composers of the early 20th century neoclassical, impressionist, and late romantic styles (i.e., Rachmaninov, Dukas, Sibelius, Satie, Holst, Respighi, Bizet, etc.).  For many uninitiated listeners and confirmed non-classical music lovers, these names might mean very little, but these composers' musical heritage lives on in movies today. 

 

Chris

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10 hours ago, Chris A said:

I agree.  In fact, I believe that much of the "classical music" that young people hear nowadays is really from soundtrack scores.  No one that I've known really can say that they haven't been exposed to classical music, or that they categorically dislike it all.  Even the Jaws score got its inspiration directly from The Firebird, etc.  Some of this music is extremely complex in terms of its rhythms, harmonies, and structure.

 

If you go back to the beginning of the 20th century, listening to Stravinsky (e.g., Firebird--[also used the opening sequence of Star Trek VI], Petrushka ballets), Prokofiev (e.g., Peter & the Wolf, etc.), Holst (e.g., The Planets, etc.), and even Mahler (symphonies), you'll hear where much of the big soundtrack composers of the 20th and 21st century got (and continue to get) their inspiration, including:

  • John Williams (Jaws, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Minority Report, etc.),
  • John Barry (James Bond films, Out of Africa, Dances with Wolves), and
  • Jerry Goldsmith (Alien, Patton, Star Trek movies, The Mummy, etc.)
  • Bernard Herrmann (Hitchcock films of 1950s-early 60s, Taxi Driver)

...as well as most current large production soundtrack composers (Howard Shore--Lord of the Rings, etc.), Hans Zimmer (Gladiator, The Dark Knight, Inception, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Day After Tomorrow, etc.), Alexandre Desplat, Ennio Morricone, etc.  All of their scores have stolen freely from classical composers of the early 20th century neoclassical, impressionist, and late romantic styles (i.e., Rachmaninov, Dukas, Sibelius, Satie, Holst, Respighi, Bizet, etc.).  For many uninitiated listeners and confirmed non-classical music lovers, these names might mean very little, but these composers' musical heritage lives on in movies today. 

 

Chris

How does Hans Zimmer keep doing it?  Or Enricco Morricon?

 

 

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