on dissonance
Oct. 24th, 2007 09:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
burntcopperHuh. Really, really huh. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ciderpress, this week's Radio 4 science program (just finished, should be able to hunt down on listen again) was on dissonance - the way you react to it, the automatic response to it, social conditioning and whether it was learned and also how it contributed to social cohesiveness, with studies and speakers from the Max Planck Institute.
They went through history, the times when musicians have used it to create effects, and then showed you it - took a bit of Debussy, then played you it again a tone up, then a tri-note down, then played it all together and geeeyahhhhh. They'd also done some studies with a tribe who'd never been exposed to western music to see if it was a learned response, and they have the same reaction. Then came when they played the Bach. They twisted the chord structure a bit so it wasn't in the same grouping, then played you the 'normal' structure, the 'expected' structure, and the expected one was visibly more relaxing. And then revealed they'd done experiments with the two versions to see what our emotional response is - the more dissonant one actually ignites the part of your brain that handles fear/flight. Sweatier palms, hairs up, faster heart rate... They reckon it's an ingrained social cohesiveness thing, related to 'dissonant noises bad, please to flee or be on your guard, nice noises good and a sign that everything is going well'.
Which got me thinking about nasal voices and how you can see everyone else visibly cringe and tell themselves not to have a negative response or judge someone who's got a nasal voice.
ciderpress, this week's Radio 4 science program (just finished, should be able to hunt down on listen again) was on dissonance - the way you react to it, the automatic response to it, social conditioning and whether it was learned and also how it contributed to social cohesiveness, with studies and speakers from the Max Planck Institute.They went through history, the times when musicians have used it to create effects, and then showed you it - took a bit of Debussy, then played you it again a tone up, then a tri-note down, then played it all together and geeeyahhhhh. They'd also done some studies with a tribe who'd never been exposed to western music to see if it was a learned response, and they have the same reaction. Then came when they played the Bach. They twisted the chord structure a bit so it wasn't in the same grouping, then played you the 'normal' structure, the 'expected' structure, and the expected one was visibly more relaxing. And then revealed they'd done experiments with the two versions to see what our emotional response is - the more dissonant one actually ignites the part of your brain that handles fear/flight. Sweatier palms, hairs up, faster heart rate... They reckon it's an ingrained social cohesiveness thing, related to 'dissonant noises bad, please to flee or be on your guard, nice noises good and a sign that everything is going well'.
Which got me thinking about nasal voices and how you can see everyone else visibly cringe and tell themselves not to have a negative response or judge someone who's got a nasal voice.
