For this week’s reading, we were asked to continue reading This is your brain on music, chapter 2. Some of the most fundamental concepts in music are tempo, meter, and rhythm. Tempo refers to the speed at which music is played and meter refers to the first beat of the pattern. Rhythm, which refers to the length of notes, is a fundamental aspect to all types of music. One interesting aspect about rhythm is that we can predict what happens next in the song. Similar to language, music also has structure and pattern. When a note doesn’t belong, we can instantly feel and recognize that something is off. Recurrent Neural Networks which were originally used for language processing are now being used to generate music.
Music is subjective, but listeners can tell when something sounds unpleasant or out of tune. Our brains can discern chords that are harmonious and disharmonious. Multiple notes that form integer frequencies will be in harmony, while other notes may clash and feel out of place. Music may not appear to be science, but the fundamental physics of sound involve math. According to the author, “The particular notes found in our major scale trace their roots back to the ancient Greeks and their notions of consonance.” The major scales generate frequencies that are in harmony, which is why orchestras will use the same key when playing a piece together. While we as the listeners don’t care about the music theory behind a song, we subconsciously judge it for its harmony and rhythm.
The tempo of a piece is the speed of the beat measured in beats per minutes. With the time signature, which specifies how many beats are contained in each measure as a fraction, we can express exactly how a piece should be played. Many songs in the western world are written in common time in which there are four beats in a measure. Loudness is another important element of music, which is scientifically measured in decibels. A song will typically have changes in loudness which are indicated by the composer. Dynamics, along with other elements in music such as rhythm, pitch, melody, and harmony make up the basic building blocks of music. While we don’t know exactly how the brain processes music, we can certainly appreciate songs for the joy they bring.