Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-17T22:19:21.517Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Rapid dissonant grunting, or, but why does music sound the way it does?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 September 2021

Beau R. Sievers
Affiliation:
Psychology Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA02138, USA. beau@beausievers.comwww.beausievers.com
Thalia Wheatley
Affiliation:
Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth and Santa Fe Institute, Hanover, NH03755, USA. thalia.p.wheatley@dartmouth.eduwww.wheatlab.com

Abstract

Each target article contributes important proto-musical building blocks that constrain music as-we-know-it. However, neither the credible signaling nor social bonding accounts elucidate the central mystery of why music sounds the way it does. Getting there requires working out how proto-musical building blocks combine and interact to create the complex, rich, and affecting music humans create and enjoy.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baars, B. J. (1993). A cognitive theory of consciousness. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bottini, R., & Doeller, C. F. (2020). Knowledge across reference frames: Cognitive maps and image spaces. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 8, 606619.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Charnavel, I. (2019). Steps towards a universal grammar of dance: Local grouping structure in basic human movement perception. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1364.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Filippi, P., Congdon, J. V., Hoang, J., Bowling, D. L., Reber, S. A., Pašukonis, A., … Newen, A. (2017). Humans recognize emotional arousal in vocalizations across all classes of terrestrial vertebrates: Evidence for acoustic universals. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 284, 1859.Google ScholarPubMed
Fodor, J. A. (1975). The language of thought. Thomas Y. Crowell.Google Scholar
Frijda, N. H., Kuipers, P., & Ter Schure, E. (1989). Relations among emotion, appraisal, and emotional action readiness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 212228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mehr, S. A., Singh, M., Knox, D., Ketter, D. M., Pickens-Jones, D., Atwood, S., … Glowacki, L. (2019). Universality and diversity in human song. Science, 366(6468), 957970.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Parkinson, C., Liu, S., & Wheatley, T. (2014). A common cortical metric for spatial, temporal, and social distance. Journal of Neuroscience, 34, 19791987.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Patel-Grosz, P., Grosz, P. G., Kelkar, T., & Jensenius, A. R. (2018). Coreference and disjoint reference in the semantics of narrative dance. Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung, 22, 199216.Google Scholar
Schlenker, P. (2019). Prolegomena to music semantics. Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 10, 35111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sievers, B., Lee, C., Haslett, W., & Wheatley, T. (2019). A multi-sensory code for emotional arousal. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 286, 1906.Google ScholarPubMed
Sievers, B., Parkinson, C., Kohler, P. J., Hughes, J., Fogelson, S. V., & Wheatley, T. (2018). Visual and auditory brain areas share a neural code for perceived emotion. BioRxiv, 254961.Google Scholar
Sievers, B., Polansky, L., Casey, M., & Wheatley, T. (2013). Music and movement share a dynamic structure that supports universal expressions of emotion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110, 7075.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Humboldt, W. (1836/1999). On language: On the diversity of human language construction and its influence on the mental development of the human Species. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar