Mar 29, 2007
Imperial Lounge No.2
Effects of the listening context on responses to music largely have been neglected despite the prevalence of music listening in our everyday lives. This article reports 2 studies in which participants chose music of high or low arousal potential during (Experiment 1) or immediately after (Experiment 2) exercise or relaxation. In Experiment 1, participants preferred appropriate arousal-polarizing music over arousal-moderating music. In Experiment 2, participants preferred arousal-moderating music over arousal-polarizing music, such that their listening times contrasted clearly with those in the first study even though the same music and methods were used. Thus musical preferences interact with the listening situation, and participants’ music selections represent an attempt to optimize their responses to that situation. When motivated to maintain a state of polarized arousal, listeners use music to achieve this; when they have no such goal, they use music to moderate arousal. – Some internet mambo jumbo.
” Electronic sound for night working environment ”
4hero – loveless featuring ursula rucker
(Two Pages, 1998)
Mouse On Mars – Schnick-schnack
(Cache Coeur Naif, 1997)
Kraak & Smaak – Jolie Banane
(Boogie Angst, 2005)
D. Diggler – Somewhere Sunday
(Atomic Dancefloor, 2001)
Bjork – Scatterheart
(Selmasongs, 2000)
Lunchbox – Brown Bag
(Anyways, 2004)
Faux Pas – Barry
(The Faux Feels, 2006)
Note: Electronica Lounge list. It has very controled dynamic, so it’s perfect for late night work. It’s compiled for everybody who needs background music while pulling all nighter.
see also: No.1, Music for Airport in December
image: Trapingus Parish
This part of the paper is actually interesting:
As the result of a series of studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s, Berlyne (1960, 1971, 1974) established that preference for aesthetic stimuli such as music was determined by three classes of stimulus variables, which he described as collative, ecological, and psychophysical. The collative variables were described as such because Berlyne proposed that when exposed to a musical stimulus, the listener collates several of its informational aspects such as its complexity, familiarity, or redundancy. The ecological properties of a given stimulus are those that concern the extent to which it is meaningful to the listener, for example through learned associations with the stimulus such as the memory of a loved one. The psychophysical properties of a stimulus are its intrinsic physical characteristics, such as intensity or loudness. Berlyne claimed that these three classes of variable are summed together in producing the arousal potential of a given stimulus, or its capability of producing arousal in certain ar eas of the brain. He also claimed that this level of arousal potential is crucial in determining liking for the stimulus in question.
In explaining why this should be so, Berlyne drew on the well-known Wundt (1874) curve. Put simply, this states that pleasure is maximized at moderate levels of arousal and decreases progressively as arousal becomes more extreme. Berlyne claimed that this explains aesthetic preference because artistic stimuli evoke activity in the fibers of the reticular activating system (RAS); these fibers are associated with autonomic nervous system arousal and pass through both the pleasure and displeasure centers of the midbrain. The pleasure centers have a lower threshold, so low levels of stimulus-evoked arousal in the RAS lead to a low amount of pleasure but no displeasure. Stimuli of slightly higher degrees of arousal potential lead to slightly higher levels of activity in the pleasure centers and are consequently liked slightly more, whereas the displeasure centers remain inactivated. When stimuli evoke moderate degrees of arousal, the displeasure centers also become activated. The combined effect of activity in th e pleasure and displeasure centers means that the steadily increasing relationship between liking and stimulus arousal potential begins to level off. Also, the pleasure centers have a lower asymptotic level than do the displeasure centers, so stimuli of still higher degrees of arousal potential do not further increase activity in the pleasure centers, but do continue to produce greater levels of activity in the displeasure centers. This means that liking for stimuli of high arousal potential begins to tail off, and is lower than for stimuli of more moderate levels. Several studies have supported Berlyne’s claim that these effects should lead to an inverted-U relationship between liking and stimulus arousal potential (see reviews by Hargreaves, 1986; Finnas, 1989).
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-27642431_ITM
so basically we only choose music which sounds familiar or evokes a certain type of nostalgia in us?
I was theorizing about the music stimuli with a friend around 2 years ago and we basically ended up giving up a similar yet more thrite conclusion: the songs that hit us immediatly are those who sound familiar to us (in case of music junkies like ourselves the overall scope of familiarity is bigger since we’re for the most sonically homeless and the more we listen the more we digest) the informational stimuli according to Berlyne – sentimental value also and as mentioned those that reminds us of a person or a specific time in our lives (ecological) and we also thought that our listening habits are all conditioned by our age (maybe too general but we were tending to think the older you get the softer you listen and the less surprisable you get)
Anyhoo… it’s a bit early in the morning and I’m a bit tipsy so I shouldn’t be writing much… I need to listen to this playlist tomorrow. Already downloading. G’night squashed.
I don’t understand WHAT that paper is talking about…
take for eg. “complexity, familiarity, or redundancy.”
Any of us can compile industrial art rock list. It’s complex, familiar and has a lot of redudancy… but also happen to make everybody’s ears bleed. Nevermind relaxing or evoke whatever arousal except…”shut that darned thing off”
on the other hand, we can sit and relax listening to wind chime klanging away softly with random unfamiliar pattern.
so, … that paper is really meaningless as generalized guide. It doesn’t say anything that we can refute in one simple music list. … but.. It’s an interesting blurb anyway.
Oh no squashed I think you’re missing the point there. I think when he means complexity, familiarity or redundancy it’s as in the rate and selectivity of each person; as the rate of complexity or redundancy each listener will usually like on his music (for example I love Arvo Part yet any of my roomates would start cracking at the repetition of the notes at the first minute) and by familiarity I think of it as how close is the song to the sort of music the listener prefers beforehand… selective familiarity so to speak – I’d per example … dunno appreciate a band like Caribou or Four Tet because I was previously exposed and grew fond to a band like Can who has points in common with these two bands and maybe someone else would not find the music interesting because they simply don’t like listening to instrumental songs.
Then comes the enlightnement part… let’s suppose this person who doesn’t like instrumental music suddenly sees a movie he likes very much and he buys the soundtrack. The instrumental tracks remind him of certain scenes and in reviving them (the ecological stimuli) he discover he likes this specific instrumental music now. So now his listening habits got a bit broader and there’s more music he feels familiar with…
I don’t know if I clarified anything or just added more fog to the matter.
ah btw listened to the playlist and it’s very good – very different from the first imperial lounge playlist.
They are lounge list. my idea is to have strickly practical background music. Instead of “recent release”, impressionistic or exploration type of list.
——
collative, ecological, and psychophysical. Collative being “informational aspects such as its complexity, familiarity, or redundancy. ”
But what is complexity, redundancy and familiarity but a pattern recognition (ie. their definition of ecological)
something that is redundant to me may be very diverse and non repeating to you. (eg. why some people like minimalist acoustic work, because they can recognize the minute differences)
so that’s cross variable there.
or maybe, some perfectly repeating pattern can evoke different sets of experiance external to the music itself. (eg. suppose I just finish hard aerobic exercise and then made to listen perfectly even 120 bpm electro noise. Similar experiment. with you listening to exactly the same sound but on relax state.) The effect will be different. Or do it to exact same person even.
that variable isn’t accounted in their model.
So their “psychological model” may sound sensible at the outset, but it’s also meaningless when looked carefully.
—
your idea of bringing up “new experiance/learning process” and cross over from different stimuli also are not accounted for in the paper above…etc.
heh..
basically, there is general rule of thumb “how music can arrouse” certain sensation, but it’s not going to be a set in stone rules. Perception shifts, sensation from a piece of music work will also shift.
[...] see also : Imperial Lounge 3b, 2, 1, Nathaniel Hawthorne image : speakingoffaith [...]
[...] see also : Imperial Lounge 3a, 2, 1, Nathaniel Hawthorne image : Seite-3 [...]
[...] see also: 1,2,3a image : from Lipstick panic. (click on that blog, It’s been linking to MdM like crazy. btw, I never know shopping can be so exquisitely complicated), 2, 3 [...]
[...] see also: 1, 2, 3a, 4. image: iggykaser [...]
[...] see also: 1, 2, 3a, 4, 5. image: Stewf [...]