Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Glad to see john eastman going through some things.

So many bastards, so little time.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

If you’re looking for someone who’s young and athletic, go watch a fucking movie.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

We still have time to mess this up!

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

You are here: Home / Music / Late Night Music Open Thread: How Musical Are You?

Late Night Music Open Thread: How Musical Are You?

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(Explanation here)

So TNR had a kind of stupid article about an intriguing study…

Everyone loves music… Its popularity has been so universal that scholars focused on the evolutionary reason for its development. Likewise, the absence of enjoyment of music has been treated, in scholarly literature, as a physical or mental defect.

That’s why the prosaic-sounding main takeaway from a newly published study—that some people just don’t like music—is in fact dramatic. Participants who reported to not enjoy music still tested healthy in mind and body—which challenges the notion that music is some universal characteristic. If happy healthy people can express no connection to music, then the explanation that music came about through evolution just became a lot more controversial…

The researchers describe this reaction to music as musical anhedonia and say their work acknowledges, for the first time, the existence of a group of healthy people who don’t feel rewarded when listening to music. “What our findings reveal is not a particular preference for one class of stimuli over another—one person may enjoy opera, while another may find it boring,” the authors write. “But an inability to derive pleasure from an entire domain, music, which the vast majority of human populations do find pleasurable.”…

The questionnaire used is here.

“Normal” scores are supposed to range from 40 to 60; I scored between 37 and 43, which seemed about right — I’d miss music, if it were to disappear forever, but the loss wouldn’t feel crippling. Suspect that a lot of you will score higher… and more than a few will be able to critique the science, too.

Reader Interactions

121Comments

  2. 2.

    Ruckus

    I like music but I normally don’t go out of my way to listen. I don’t have a radio in my 4 wheel vehicle nor on my 2 wheel one. I ride mostly and don’t miss music. I have a MP3 player that I’ve had for about 10 yrs, works fine haven’t put a song on it in about 8 yrs. Have about 200 vinyl albums, bought a turntable to record them into the computer. Last year, and yet haven’t gotten around to it. Have probably another 150 cds, need to do the same with them, haven’t gotten around to that either.
    Music is nice, I appreciate the talent and effort, it’s just not that important that I hear it every or even most waking moments.

  4. 4.

    Joseph Nobles

    39 my lowest score, for music seeking. My highest is 58, emotion evocation. What can I say? I worked in musical theater for a while. I’m listening right now to a Broadway/movie soundtrack Pandora station I’ve groomed for a couple of years.

  11. 11.

    Mnemosyne

    On the quiz I ranged between a low of 30 (on Mood Regulation) and a high of 54 (on Emotion Evocation). Interesting that they had questions about whether music relaxes or comforts you but not whether it energizes you (maybe that’s what the dancing question was about)?

    @Joseph Nobles:

    I never worked in musical theater, but I was raised on opera and A Chorus Line — does that count?

  14. 14.

    Anne Laurie

    @aangus: One of the best concerts I’ve ever been to was a Sweet Honey performance, back in the mid-1980s, at a small Midwestern university conference called “Black Women Writers in the African Diaspora”. Couple hundred audience members, approximately 95% of them Black women from all over the world. The electricity at that event could’ve powered a small city!

    (And their Sign interpreter was my first introduction to how much of an art that form could be, as well.)

  16. 16.

    kindness

    Musical enough to have just gotten home from seeing Jackie Green, Mother Hips and some other band at the Fox. Good fun.

  17. 17.

    NotMax

    Scores:

    MUSIC SEEKING: 20

    EMOTION EVOCATION: 12

    MOOD REGULATION: 11

    SENSORI-MOTOR: 14

    SOCIAL: 20

    MUSIC REWARD: -1

    All of which are higher than I’d have anticipated (including the minus 1). Must be mellowing as the years progress.

  18. 18.

    ? Martin

    52 low, 65 high. If I’m awake I’m usually listening to music. I have a quite nice portable AirPlay speaker (Libratone) that move around the house with me, outside, to the garage. I can push any of my music to it from my phone, my laptop, etc.

    I have something of a photographic memory with music, particularly when concentrating on other things, like reading a book or working on a household project. So I associate music with the other things I do. When I last painted our bedroom 6 years ago I was listening to a bunch of new Foo Fighters bootlegs, so that’s what I hear when I walk in the bedroom. There are a few places in the room that when I look at them I hear the particular song that was playing – there’s a spot where the wall meets the ceiling that I had trouble painting where I can hear ‘Stacked Actors’. If I’m listening to an album when I’m reading a book, I can recall the portion of the book when I hear the song that was playing when I read that section, and if I reread the book, I’ll hear the songs in my head. I associate places on a road trip with songs as well. If I see something particularly memorable I’ll remember the song along with it.

    So music seeking is my highest. I know when I start a new project or book I need either something new to listen to or something not previously associated with something else. Sensory Motor is my lowest – I’m not much of a dancer. Thankfully Ms Martin sings and knows a lot of people in the business, so there’s always a lot of new stuff coming through. I don’t get out to many concerts any longer though. Most of them are just a hassle – too much time getting to/from them. I actually prefer going to see the high school and college students perform. They’re easy concerts and I like that they aren’t perfect. They typically also have a lot of new compositions in them as well, and that’s always enjoyable.

    The babymetal girls certainly have the cute formula dialed in.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    Can’t take the quiz because I’m reading from my phone. Here’s something I’ve always wondered about, though: the attention people pay to auditory input and ability to tune things out.

    My teenager must have music or the TV on to do homework, whereas I can’t work and listen to music at the same time, let alone the TV. She claims she can’t focus without it, and I wonder how she concentrates with it.

  20. 20.

    NotMax

    @Betty Cracker

    Strictly amateur armchair analysis.

    Teenagers tend to cluster with other teenagers.

    The “focus” argument is a bit of misdirection, as presumably she suffers no unusual problems focusing while at school and in class without additional sensory input.

    In school she is surrounded by other teenagers. At home, she has found it of comfort to create for herself an environment in which she feels connected (even if it is a tenuous or illusory connection) to her friends and other teenagers through the use of media her peer group favors.

  21. 21.

    MikeJ

    @Betty Cracker: I concentrate intently when I have music on. On the music. If I could I would do like Martin says above and have music playing 24/7. I just can’t. I will tune out everything else and start thinking about how the bass and drums are playing off each other or about that cool key change on the bridge. When I was a DJ I had to turn down the monitors in the studio to get all my commercials pulled and the paperwork done.

    The TV I can ignore and is perfectly safe for me to have on as background noise. I generally either don’t give a shit about what’s on or I’ve seen the movie on TCM ten times already anyway.

  22. 22.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: That makes perfect sense to me. I used to bug her about it (mildly), suggesting that she turn off the TV / music to concentrate on her homework, but she rightly pointed out that she does just fine with her preferred study approach. Can’t argue with good results.

  23. 23.

    Betty Cracker

    @MikeJ: That’s why I can’t have it on — I’ll focus on the music rather than the task at hand. When I need background noise to drown out household chaos, I listen to a rain soundtrack.

  24. 24.

    NotMax

    Paying rent and utilities 10 years in advance may not be the best of plans.

    The naturally mummified body of a woman was found at her Buenos Aires home by a neighbour who had not seen her for more than 10 years, police said Friday.
    [snip]
    The woman, who lived in the lower unit of a house split into apartments with separate entrances, was on medication and disabled, forensic data showed.

    “But we were all shocked because no family ever reported her death and no one ever spoke of an unusual smell. Nobody knows anything, it’s a mystery,” the building porter told TN television. Source

    Truly, something sounds off or missing from the tale. For starters, ten years of junk mail in the mailbox would be enough to choke a horse.

  25. 25.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: I suppose it’s possible her rent was paid by social services and the utilities were cut off for nonpayment (or else also paid by the state). But yeah, what about the mail? And no one ever noticed that the lights were always off? It sounds off to me too.

  27. 27.

    NotMax

    Hate that this story forces me to entertain a single positive thought regarding Glenn Beck.

    The US primary school that told a nine-year-old boy to leave his My Little Pony backpack at home because it encouraged bullying has backed off its command.
    [snip]
    Conservative commentator Glenn Beck was also moved to show his support for Grayson’s right to express himself freely.

    “I thought it was important to send a very clear message to Grayson and everybody else that it’s okay to be different,” Beck said with My Little Pony figurines on his desk. Source

    But leaving it open as to whether he is a dyed in the wool brony does serve to dull the sheen of the positivity.

  30. 30.

    Botsplainer

    I found myself oddly upset to learn that the student senate at the University of Alabama killed a resolution mandating racial diversity in Greek organizations, then I looked it up.

    http://www.sga.ua.edu/senate.html

    That’s right, a marked absence of people of color. Hell, even the executive staff only has one woman of color and a man who could be of many races; the rest are white.

    Davis, Lee, Stephens and Benjamin should have swung from ropes, the homes, possessions and lands of every Southern politician confiscated and redistributed. The planters themselves should have lost their property and been jailed. It should have been an occupation that hurt; had it been so, we wouldn’t be putting up with this shit now.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    Which Teanut will be the first to snag Putin for a fund raiser?

    Taoiseach [head of government] attended fundraiser for Republican congressman Mick Mulvaney, a member of the far-right Tea Party faction
    [snip]
    The invitations, emailed by Republican fundraising firm Gula Graham Group, showed the Taoiseach as the headline special guest ahead of Republican majority whip Kevin McCarthy and “at least” 12 Republican congressman – many of whom are either Tea Party members or popular within the faction.

    Senior Republican John Boehner, the House speaker, also attended the reception.

    At the end of an emailed invitation, guests were asked to send contributions payable to “Mulvaney for Congress” to the Gula Graham Group, according to the email from the firm’s Jon Graham.

    It is highly unusual for a foreign leader to be linked with an effort to raise campaign funds for a US political party. Source

  33. 33.

    JPL

    @Botsplainer: IOKIYR

    The Guardian said that China has also spotted an object in the ocean, seventy-five miles south of the area where Australian spotted debris.

  34. 34.

    MikeJ

    @NotMax: I hope his opponent knows how to make hay with this:

    A Government spokesman said the fundraising question was not an issue for the Taoiseach. He said the reception was a “drop-by” event as part of Mr Kenny’s lobbying efforts to pass immigration laws to help illegal Irish seeking legal status in the US.

    A teabagger raising money from somebody trying to sneak in more “illegals”.

  36. 36.

    NotMax

    @MikeJ

    As well, there’s a gulf of distance between dropping by and being promoted as the special guest in advance invitations.

  37. 37.

    OzarkHillbilly

    When I was up in STL I listened to NPR in the morn, and KDHX 88.1 the rest of the time, an independent music station that I was a member of. All kinds of music, punk to country to rock to bluegrass to blues to jazz to east European folk to Afro pop to Caribbean to… you get the idea. Never boring, usually fun and always informative. When I moved out here, I couldn’t get it anymore so I started to listen to NPR all the time, mostly just noise in the background but if the subject interested me I would listen.

    My new (to me) truck does not have the antennae hooked up and I am unable to listen to NPR anymore (strangely enough I don’t seem to scream at it near as much. Wonder if there is a connection?) So it is music or nothing, and I am having a hard time listening to music. A couple songs by most artists and I want to change it (Allman Brothers, John Prine, Muddy Waters, are the big exceptions) (oh, Janis Joplin too)

    So now I spend a lot of time with nothing but my own thoughts. Not too bad but it has led me to ponder a question: Back in the 70s, did I do too many drugs? Or not enough?

  39. 39.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Betty Cracker: 21 (sensori-motor) – 55 (mood regulation) here. I enjoy music but usually only get to play it when I’m alone for extended periods. I listen to NPR or channel-surf in the car. (The DC area is a music radio wasteland. Oh to have a station like WYSO around here… (sigh))

    Regarding the “must have music on while studying” – I was like that at times. It’s hard to explain but for me it helped me to not think about time and other things while I was studying. But having general noise or multiple people talking simultaneously in the background (like in a bar) would be completely distracting to me. I think our minds like to be kept busy even when we’re trying to concentrate on one thing. If there isn’t enough going on to keep the rest of our head busy, we get fidgety and distracted. Oh, and silence can drive you crazy, also too.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: Heh, too true. I did when I was 12 or 14 (1970-72), so I’m not sure that counts. Truth is, I never did too many drugs. Pot never did much for me until somebody passed me a dipper that made me sick as a dog. The one time I did a tab of acid… Not a bad trip but the fun wasn’t there. So mostly I just stuck with beer and the occasional Mad Dag.

  41. 41.

    C.S.Strowbridge

    Mostly in the 50s and even one at 67. However, I got 29 in sensory-motor one (I don’t dance, ever.) and 20 in the social one (I hate people.)

    One a side note, I bought Babymetal’s CD / DVD. Great band.

  42. 42.

    ThresherK

    My high and low scores are 43 and 65.

    Throwing those out, Olympics-style, gives me a cluster in the mid-high 50s.

    Wondering why there wasn’t a question about my brain becoming alerted by favorite (or new discovery) music in the background of a noisy place, which I do a lot of.

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    @JPL:
    I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Remember the bits they spotted earlier in the week? By the time they got the search planes out there to look, the debris had sunk back into the water or drifted away or got smashed up (that part of the Indian Ocean is The Roaring Forties, after all) and they wound up with nothing to report.

  45. 45.

    raven

    @Amir Khalid: I’d be surprised if something that big that was floating for over two weeks would get “smashed up”. The swells are big but they are not breaking.

  46. 46.

    donnah

    No surprise for me, 59 low, 65 high. I love music and am always listening. I have two sons who keep me current in the Indie tunes. My oldest son was a DJ when he was in college and he would make mixed CDs for me. I listen to music in the car and at home when I’m working.

    I started listening to AM Top 40 on a teeny transistor radio I got for Christmas when I was nine years old. I listened to radio/FM until I graduated from college and then WOXY, the Modern Rock station in Oxford, Ohio until it was sold and then disappeared. My first 45 purchase was Sugar Pie Honeybunch and my first album was Madman Across the Water. All of my babysitting money went to buy records.

    I’m still a big music fan. Only now my collections are on iPods, not in orange crates.

  47. 47.

    Mystical Chick

    58-62 here. Yes, I love music probably because I’m very clairaudient (I get info from sounds … don’t really ask, mmmkay?). And I am attached emotionally to certain pieces.

    I was 4 and fell in love with the Beatles (1964, mind you) so I was into it very early on.

    Interesting study.

  48. 48.

    RSA

    Likewise, the absence of enjoyment of music has been treated, in scholarly literature, as a physical or mental defect.

    Some day we may reach the point that natural human variations are not described as “defects”.

  50. 50.

    Amir Khalid

    I was hoping for a draw between Chelsea and the Arse, but the Gunners have gone and conceded two goals in the first ten minutes. Sheesh.

  51. 51.

    MomSense

    Scored a low of 51 on music seeking and the rest were in the 60s with a high of 65. At one time I probably would have scored higher on music seeking but now my kids bring music to me.

  56. 56.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:
    And what’s worse, Oxlade-Chamberlain admitted it was he who committed the handball, and still Kieran Gibbs got the red card.

  58. 58.

    Thursday

    @Mystical Chick: I kind of would like to ask, actually.

    What’s always been the case for me is that certain pieces of music trigger ideas and stories in my head. It doesn’t happen for all music, not even all music I like, but for certain songs I hear them for the first time and I instantly know that it’s one that it will. Something about certain songs just inspires me to try to interpret them in stories, usually not connected to the lyrics, but the tones and emotions of the song. I can listen to a song I haven’t heard in years and the stories I’ve created for that song will come back in moments.

    So your comment just seemed like you might have something similar, which would be supremely cool to have found someone else.

  59. 59.

    Woodrowfan

    from 31-56. I have music playing a lot, and just bought an iPod classic so I’d have something to hold all my music files. The scores seem awfully dependent on dancing, which I don’t enjoy.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    Is Krystal Ball’s nasal Noo Yawk twang ear-grating or what? (She’s guest hosting Up.)

  62. 62.

    Amir Khalid

    @NotMax:
    It’s not their fans who call them that. Arsenal FC was founded in 1886 by workers at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, a military weapons R&D/manufacturing facility. Hence the cannon on the club badge.

  63. 63.

    Amir Khalid

    @MikeJ:
    This wasn’t supposed to happen. The Arse were supposed to draw at Chelsea, while Liverpool won at Cardiff. That would have put us two points clear of the Gunners and two points closer to Chelski.

  64. 64.

    Ecks

    17-43. Low in seeking, high in felt emotion.

    That’s about right. I like music well enough, and listen to it sometimes, mostly in the background while doing other things. I can get a tad misty about the most obvious jackhammer to the head kinds (Les Miz (I know, I know), Mozart’s Requiem, the odd hook from a pop song), but at concerts I tend to get a bit bored.

    I haven’t bought much music, but most of it sits in dusty CD’s, largely untouched.

    As to the science of the study, looks moderately solid. Keep in mind that no one social science study is ever really definitive. Some of them are pointedly suggestive, though, and it’s really by putting together many of them that the clearest pictures emerge. That’s just the nature of the beast. Humans are complicated messy and messed up creatures.

  65. 65.

    Scout211

    WaPo: first marriage license issued to gay couple in Michigan this morning at 8:00 local time.

    Several counties are open today to issue marriage licenses.

  67. 67.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MomSense: If that does not convince one that there is something fundamentally wrong with the death penalty, logic has died.

  70. 70.

    PsiFighter37

    Very interesting questionnaire. I grew up on music (played the violin, viola, trombone, baritone, piano and guitar), so I’m not surprised that my highest was 65 (music seeking). That said, I was a bit interested to find that it serves much more as a mood regulator for me (59), and that the rest of my scores are actually on the lower end (Music Reward 45, Social 42, and Sensori-Motor 40). The part that maybe makes me wonder if I’m a bit of a robot is Emotion Evocation, which I get a 30 on. That said, it’s not entirely surprising – I think about things in a much more technical manner, so if I use it as a mood regulator as opposed to deriving emotional benefit from music, that would fit the hypothesis.

    Cool stuff.

  71. 71.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Way back in 1960 I was attending McLaughlin Junior High School in Medford, Oregon. My coach was an ogre. As a part of PE we had a course of dancing with the girls’ PE class. We were taught square dancing, waltz and foxtrot. Arrrrrrrrgh! I’ve never done anything other than solo and solitary freak dancing since then.

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: Your comment brought back good memories from college. There were two public areas in my dorm, which for obvious reasons, were referred to as the “white lounge” and the “black lounge”. I was the one crossover person.

    I always studied in the black lounge; the music and loud talking helped me focus.

    The white lounge made me crazy, all the whispering and quiet noise were a total distraction. Totally annoying. I couldn’t study in my dorm room or the library either. I really like the fact that we are all built differently.

  73. 73.

    Amir Khalid

    @MikeJ:
    The Gunners have been shite in away games against the other top-four clubs: thrashed 6-3 at Man City, and 5-1 at Liverpool. I suspect (okay, hope) this season finishes Liverpool first, Man City second, Chelsea third, Arsenal fourth.

  74. 74.

    NotMax

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate

    Argh, indeed. Same thing (but in elementary school), except no square dancing. Waltz, foxtrot, and cha-cha. Bad, bad memories.

    Then The Twist hit #1 and all the dance sessions as a part of gym class suddenly vanished.

  75. 75.

    WaterGirl

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    But having general noise or multiple people talking simultaneously in the background (like in a bar)…

    That explains exactly what works for me. That, I can tune out.

    It makes me crazy when people have the radio on in the car just loud enough for me to know it’s there but not loud enough to be able to tell what it is. I have one client who always has the radio on, quietly, and when I am in her home working on IT stuff, I have to ask her to turn it off. I literally cannot think when it’s on.

    @? Martin: That was fascinating!

  76. 76.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    Now I’m feeling sorry for the announcers. They are really huffing and puffing to keep this interesting.

    Hmm, a full slate of games coming up in an hour. Which to watch?

  77. 77.

    Don K

    51 social, 68 music seeking, everything else 54-60. No surprises, music of one type or another has always been important to me.

  78. 78.

    different-church-lady

    @Mystical Chick:

    I’m very clairaudient (I get info from sounds … don’t really ask, mmmkay?)

    No need to explain. When the aliens start their invasion, you and I will be the first people to notice.

  83. 83.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @MikeJ: They’re the right kind of illegals, who are not trying to bring more melanin into the country.

  86. 86.

    MikeJ

    Liverpool will be playing Cardiff who are one point out of last place. If you had told me there was going to be a 6 – 0 game today I might have picked that one.

  87. 87.

    Steeplejack

    @Amir Khalid:

    Heh. Take that to the bank.

    So should I watch Cardiff City-Liverpool or Manchester City-Fulham?

    ETA: @MikeJ:

    Okay, I guess it’s Man City-Fulham.

    (I need to keep better track of the non-top of the standings.)

  90. 90.

    craigie

    36 – 49. I suspect my scores would have been a lot higher if I had taken this 35 years ago. Lots of things get less intense with age…

  91. 91.

    Citizen_X

    @Mystical Chick:

    I get info from sounds

    I, and every creature who has had any kind of audio sensory apparatus since the Middle Fucking Cambrian Period, half a billion years ago, are in awe of your breakthrough.

  92. 92.

    Gindy51

    MUSIC SEEKING: 13
    EMOTION EVOCATION: 2
    MOOD REGULATION: -1
    SENSORI-MOTOR: 12
    SOCIAL: 24
    MUSIC REWARD: 9

    My hearing is so sensitive I can’t handle any music but the softest. Think fingernails on a chalk board.

  93. 93.

    Citizen_X

    47–mood regulation and sensori-motor–to 68–music seeking. Everything else is above 50.

  94. 94.

    MikeJ

    Please do not ask my opinion on which EPL games should be blowouts. I’m obviously a poor judge.

  95. 95.

    tokyo expat

    I can relate to Betty Cracker’s daughter. I always had the tv on studying. We had a dorm that was the quiet dorm and there were rules about noise. I couldn’t imagine getting anything done there. I would have slept the whole time.

    On the music, what does it all mean? I came out with a music reward of 29. I scored highest on Senori Motor with a 52. I’m a writer. I can sort of write with the tv on and can write with my kids chattering around me, but I absolutely cannot write with music on. It completely distracts me and I have to turn it off. I buy books over music, always have and always will.

  96. 96.

    Ruckus

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
    Oh, and silence can drive you crazy, also too.
    What’s that? For the last 11 yrs I’ve had tinnitus on the right side. One frequency, 24 hrs a day. Never stops, never gets louder, never gets quieter. What is silence?
    My first post sounded like I don’t listen to music, but I do. But I’m picky about what I play and just don’t do so nearly as much as I used to. I just don’t feel like I’m missing much.

  97. 97.

    Monty

    Scored between 11 and 43 across the various categories, with a global score of 22. Fuck music…or something.

  98. 98.

    Omnes Omnibus

    High-70; Low-52 (not really a dancer). The rest were in the mid-60s. I am one of the people who needs music.

  99. 99.

    RandomMonster

    If happy healthy people can express no connection to music, then the explanation that music came about through evolution just became a lot more controversial…

    No it didn’t. Just because evolution favors a characteristic, doesn’t mean that every member of the species shares that characteristic.

    Sloppy journalists.

  102. 102.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Ruckus: Tinnitus is rough. My dad has had it for ages (he’ll be 80 next year) and noise makes it worse. He wears earplugs almost all the time and went as far as look for the quietest fridge on the market when they remodeled their kitchen. (They got an LG.) It must be horrible to have it as bad as he does, but he’s found ways to cope.

    My wife J has had buzzing noises in her ear, off and on, after a recent minor car accident. We’ve done some reading on it. Apparently the tiniest muscle in the body is in the ear – the stapedius muscle. That muscle is blamed for some tinnitus-like noises. She finds that the noise is affected by neck and shoulder muscle tightness – especially the scalenes. Sometimes focused massages help.

    The body is complicated. While “nerves dying” is the common folklore that I always heard as the cause of tinnitus, it sometimes might be something else. Muscles aren’t well understood (they don’t show up in X-rays and MRIs) and have a big impact on our well-being. I hope you find a way to minimize the symptoms.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  103. 103.

    The Moar You Know

    Been playing music since I was eight. Love playing it. Rarely enjoy listening to it. Got rid of the entire vinyl/CD collection and my stereo back in college and didn’t listen to anything but myself for about a decade. I can live without it easily. I kind of enjoy silence more than anything else, you know?

    Anyway, the idea that there’s some kind of evolutionary hard-wiring to like music strikes me as beyond ludicrous.

  104. 104.

    Aaron Baker

    The great Roman historian Ronald Syme was notorious for his dislike of music. “Noise!” he said, “and they do it deliberately!” He was obviously not mentally defective in other respects.

  105. 105.

    Lurking Canadian

    @Ecks: I was similar. Low of 10, highest 35 in emotional response. Where I get skeptical about the study is that if I took the test…say fifteen years ago, when I ALWAYS played music to study or write code I would have got a much different score than now, when I only play music if I’m driving with my son and he insists.

    I am skeptical of giving a genetic explanation to something that can change that much that quickly.

  106. 106.

    Ecks

    @Lurking Canadian:Yes, but all human traits are like that. Your level of extroversion also goes up and down over time. I partied more in college than I do now, etc.

    I suspect that you would also see a fair amount of stability in this scale too, though, over people’s lives. If you’d given it to me 15 years ago I might have shifted a little bit, but they’d all stay generally pretty low. And it’s very unlikely I’ll be scoring in the top half of it if you ask me again 15 years from now.

    None of that has any bearing on whether it is evolved, though. Unless it is something that fruit flies also do, then you can’t really test it experimentally.

    That said, it would be very surprising if there weren’t a genetic component. Music and dancing are cultural universals – it varies wildly from place to place, but everywhere has it. There are regions of the brain that seem dedicated to processing it. I’d be willing to bet money to find that it ran in families, even where people were dislocated from social influence (immigration, adoption, orphans, etc). Basically, any behaviour that complex, yet that reliably observed in people is almost bound to have a genetic component. It would be, frankly, amazing if there wasn’t one.

  107. 107.

    Amir Khalid

    Thirty goals from seven matches in the English Premier League today, and one match still to be played. This is a high-scoring weekend. But a team good enough up front to score six, like Liverpool, shouldn’t also be weak enough at the back to concede three.

  108. 108.

    Ruckus

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
    Mine came from standing too close to an explosion. Of course the explosion was unexpected so we didn’t know to stand farther away. Like at least 2 states. The frequency(and sound level) of the blast overloaded and damaged the nerves at that frequency range, triggering the tinnitus. So it is about 99% probable that I will experience this the rest of my life.
    And yes I’ve had some interesting experiences in my life. Some fun, some less than.

  109. 109.

    YellowJournalism

    Scored highest in the mood category. I use music to calm me down and get me focused. I also cannot do physical chores without music to keep me moving. If I’m cleaning, expect to hear me singing off-key to an eclectic mix of songs and dancing around like a jackass while wiping down the kitchen.

  110. 110.

    Ruckus

    @Ecks:
    I think it might be easier than genetics. Most of us like things that give us a sense of normalcy and music does that. Most of us also like some sense of order and regularity and listening to music can do that. It has a level of expectation, we like a particular type of music or a particular performer.

  111. 111.

    PJ

    This survey is centered on responses to performed music (and mostly recorded music) in “developed” 21st century cultures. Would someone living in a hunter-gatherer tribe in the Amazon understand what it means to “chill out”? (I’m about as far removed from that culture as one can get, and I would never use “chill out” to describe any part of my life.)

    It also only asks one question with regard to why people make music, which is where I would guess the evolutionary component is strongest – other apes, to my knowledge, do not make music, while many babies sing to themselves before they learn to speak. I think it’s also difficult to gauge how important music has been historically from contemporary responses to a questionnaire – so much of our reaction is conditioned by more than a century of listening to recorded music, which makes people more reluctant to make music for themselves, partly because they don’t have to, and partly because they are afraid of sounding “amateur” in comparison to recorded music – people used sing to themselves much more when working or going about daily tasks, and social dancing used to be a much larger component of people’s lives.

    Anecdotally, I’ve known people for whom music is, at best, wallpaper for social situations, and if they never heard music again, it doesn’t seem like they would feel their lives would be diminished. I don’t know that this says anything about human evolution; there are also people for whom listening to or reading stories is a complete waste of time, and yet telling stories and making music seem to be essential parts of all human cultures. If these traits were purely social accidents, when they have no necessary connection to survival, why would they be so widespread?

  113. 113.

    J R in WV

    I got up to a 63, don’t dance, love music of every kind.

    Went to Experience Hendrix tour show Wednesday night, Probably 15 or so great guitarists, all genres, all playing Jimmi’s best. A great show.

    Tinnitus, our doctor says playing music at bedtime is the best way to work around hearing noise. He said to use a head set, but we just set the radio to play NPR for 90 minutes when we turn the lights off. Mine comes and goes, usually just on for a few minutes, thank FSM.

  114. 114.

    Ecks

    @Ruckus: Yes, but why does it give us a sense of normalcy? Because our brains are built in such a way as to code these emotional reactions in response to music.

    Obviously different cultures code “music” in pretty different ways, as they code languages differently, but there seems to be common elements – predictable timings (i.e. rhythms) and movement of tones (i.e., melody), interesting tone colours, etc.

  115. 115.

    Ruckus

    @Ecks:
    We do have heartbeats. If there is a lot of noise around or vibrations they sort of retreat into the background. Go someplace quite. You can hear and feel them. Rhythm is intrinsic to every mammal.

  116. 116.

    Robert

    59-61, but I also teach music and musical theater. I would have scored higher if I felt the need to pay for music beyond what I really enjoy when almost everything is available on YouTube, especially the stuff I have to use for work. Just the other day, someone uploaded a video of highlights from the original production of Funny Girl. I shared it with my students who are going to be performing Funny Girl in two weeks. I already owned the cast recording and the library had the DVD of the film and the amazing Julie Andrews-narrated Broadway musical documentary featuring footage of the real Fanny Brice on it. Period appropriate references from Ziegfeld Follies and other contemporary shows and songwriters were readily available on YouTube.

  117. 117.

    Fair Economist

    I have tinnitus in both ears, at the frequency of CRT TV whine. I’ve had it since I was a young child. It’s very annoying, and I pretty much always have to have some kind of white noise to distract me. Without external noise, it seems deafening. Dunno why I have it while most folks over 30, who probably watched as much CRT TV as me, don’t. When I was a little kid, I couldn’t bear to be in an area of a store selling TVs. The whine was like a dentist drill.

  118. 118.

    Chris

    Scored 57-69, which I expected. I probably listen to music 5-6 hours a day. I collect and play instruments and have recorded and released albums with various bands, and performed in 3 different symphony orchestras. I’ve spent almost $10k on my home stereo and even though I own over 4000 albums, I feel that my library is woefully inadequate and am constantly searching for undiscovered music or music to fill gaps in my collection. I have over 2 terabytes of digital music and I have to keep an offsite backup because the thought of losing my library is only slightly less terrifying than the thought of losing one of my children. Sometimes it all seems like some hopeless addiction, but I’ve only ever felt enriched by Music and aside from some slight hearing loss over the years, I can’t think of any downside.

  119. 119.

    Caravelle

    Ecks : None of that has any bearing on whether it is evolved, though. Unless it is something that fruit flies also do, then you can’t really test it experimentally.

    If they ever find genes related to how we deal with music they could also figure out whether they underwent positive selection or not. I don’t think it’s a sure thing (because I think there’s a certain resolution to those things ? If all the music genes were piggybacking other adaptive genes I guess it would be hard to tell) but it’s a possibility.

    That said, it would be very surprising if there weren’t a genetic component. Music and dancing are cultural universals – it varies wildly from place to place, but everywhere has it. There are regions of the brain that seem dedicated to processing it. I’d be willing to bet money to find that it ran in families, even where people were dislocated from social influence (immigration, adoption, orphans, etc). Basically, any behaviour that complex, yet that reliably observed in people is almost bound to have a genetic component. It would be, frankly, amazing if there wasn’t one.

    All the more when you consider the relationship between music and other brain features, like how uncannily it can relieve symptoms of Parkinson’s and other brain disorders. And I agree rhythm must be a big part of it.

    @Ruckus: We do have heartbeats. If there is a lot of noise around or vibrations they sort of retreat into the background. Go someplace quite. You can hear and feel them. Rhythm is intrinsic to every mammal.
    I have no clue why you specified “mammal” there, hearts go back much further. And it is in fact not true that musical rhythm is intrinsic to any organism that has a heartbeat or any other periodic body process. Witness Snowball the dancing parrot and the fact that most animals can’t do what it does. This article suggests elephants could also dance to music, but relates the ability in general to vocal mimicry (…which apparently elephants can do ?). Which is an extremely fundamental ability of humans but that most animals don’t do.

  120. 120.

    Ken T

    Low 57 (for sensory-motor, can’t dance to save my life) to high 69. Overall 67. Yeah, I guess you could say music is important to me.

  121. 121.

    Xecky Gilchrist

    I didn’t see anything in there about how Boomer music is objectively the best, so it’s meaningless.

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