This Is Your Brain On Music

This Is Your Brain On Music explains where music historically comes from, what it triggers in our brain, how we develop our tastes and why it’s a crucial part of our lives, along with what makes great musicians great.

There’s a small minority of scientists that argues that music only serves hedonic purposes – it’s simply a byproduct of language and is only a pastime for us to feel pleasure. But that would mean that if you eliminated all music from the world right now, life would just go on as if nothing happened.

Can you imagine that?

I know I can’t. And I think you probably couldn’t either.

If so, then you’ll likely find yourself on the majority side of scientists, who believe that music played a key role in our evolution and has paved the way for our human ancestors to develop speech.

Music and speaking are quite similar, so it’s possible that by practicing singing and making sounds, our ancestors could have developed the skills needed to later articulate words.

Additionally, Darwin believed that music was a way of finding a mate for two reasons:

Singing and dancing requires you to be physically and mentally (and therefore sexually) healthy. If you have time to sing and dance, your food and shelter are likely taken care of, which makes you a safe bet in terms of survival.

Looking at how musicians are idolized today and many are considered the sex symbols of their generation, I’d say Mr. Darwin’s argument is pretty sound, what do you think?

How much you like a song depends primarily on one thing: how well you can predict what comes next. Great musicians play with your brain and expectations in the way that they get you to expect something, and then surprise you, before taking you back to comfortable terrain. A great song surprises you, but not too much. It balances the familiar with the unknown, and therefore creates the perfect mix of comfort and excitement. For example, many people sitting through a wedding service at a church will tear up only when “Here Comes The Bride” starts playing, because then they know what’s to come. Another classic move is to suddenly drop the music, for example in Jazz, and having the singer “prompt” the band at certain points (like Justin Timberlake does here). There’s also something called the deceptive cadence, which is when a song repeats certain patterns over and over again, until you expect it to do nothing else and then, at the last chance it gets, an unexpected rhythm break or unfamiliar chord catches you off guard (kind of like the rhythm switch in this electronic song). However, it’s important as…