Psychology of Music

I have been putting forward the notion below, for probably well over a year. I have occasional replies from people who say there may be a good idea buried in here. I think that, if some neurological study starts to substantiate what I suggest, this would strengthen a perspective in the criticism of the "culture" of modern music.  Here goes:

      Psychology of Music

Social and Cognitive Functions of 3 and 4 time in Processing of Music

I am a retired psychologist - having been mostly a researcher –

      in Africa on "cross cultural" matters and then

      back in London, in a weird field called Broadcasting Audience Research.

I am interested, still, in many things including the Social Psychology of Music. 

Within this field a hypothesis has occurred to me, on which I have offered:

          reasons why it would be of interest and important, and

          ways in which the hypothesis could usefully be explored.

The hypothesis is rooted in the observations that: most music has a rhythm of either three time,   or 2 or 4 time.

2 and 4 time are essentially similar and even boil down in many presentations to "one in a bar" time.

The majority of the popular music of today is in 2 time. This has 'defeated' or at least virtually replaced the world of 3x.

Here then are the hypotheses; first the neurological part:

Music in 2 time is processed in the brain (experienced) in different parts and shall we say at a lower level than is music in 3 time - where also the lifelong internal rhythms of heartbeat and then walking and running are registered. This region of “perception” requires no “thought”. It is only if and when a heartbeat becomes distorted (or one has to try to learn to do a waltz) that thought has to break in to the otherwise thoughtless world of 2 time.

Music in 3 time finds no corresponding internal counterpart in day to day physiological processes. It is therefore experienced – and interpreted in a different part of the brain - where other realms of meaning are encountered. 3 time music is likely perceived in those realms of the brain where conscious thought occurs.

Now comes the social part ....

Music in 2 time is conceptually less challenging than 3 time (let alone complex times such as 3 + 2, whatever...).

Colloquially, it might be said these 2 and 4 time musics engage what a long ago sociolinguist called a restricted code

and what popular journalists might describe as 'dumbed down'. 

In the worst case marching music lends itself to evocations of a totalitarian spirit.

Of course of course the human spirit rises to its best in 4 time in cases where

exalted compositions have led us there - Beethoven's 9th choral theme for example.

BUT

the tramp of nuremberg rallying and such military displays more often banish the finer feelings, all in 2 time.

Music in 3 time offers a path to grace. Much of the richest Irish and Scottish "folkloric" music operates in 3 time.

Try the Eriskay Love Lilt ....this sensibility is virtually absent in today's POP music.

(   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BfpyPy2Cc8       3x  Paul Robeson

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=KhGsQk_3tZY              3x   Joan Baez

3 time operates in a world of curves. 2 time operates in a world of corners ;  

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQoy-W6i_F4       3x   Ray Bethell

but contrast:

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIooCk59mKU     4x  Army March

I have collected evidence at a cultural level on these lines

but

though I have looked as far as I can in the web literature I can find no studies that MAY "anchor" the locus of the world of music in 2x, in parts of the brain which MAY be different from those which receive and elaborate music in 3x.

If a scanning study could be done to examine where the brains of listeners to 2 and to 3 time "light up"

and if it does indicate, as I hypothesise, different locations, this would offer at the very least food for thought about the functions of these two rhythms. 

As I said above, I am retired and never had nor will have facilities to look at this question.

If the cutting edge of modern neurocognitive science can spare a moment to look at the matter - it may well be quite rewarding.

PS  I have had versions of well known tunes prepared in 3 time AND in 4 time which offer a degree of "control” over the matter of whether it is the line of melody, or rhythm, that might make the differences I envisage. Frankly, “Happy Birthday" in 4 time is not all that different from HB in 3x (its real time). But I have other presentational samples

which sound more different.....

I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles is murdered here in 4 time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn7NGJezKSQ

Doris Day manages IFBB much better in 3 time …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6SXi4I47Qw

and the West Ham crowd do occasionally manage it (mostly) in 3 time – and I suggest it is quite exceptional to find a football ‘mascot’ tune anywhere else, in 3 ….

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRNzn1lBZt0

what would be gained if and when one discovers that 3 time is processed differently from 2 time?

I suggest we would be on our way towards an “effects” analysis of the bulk of “popular” music and what it may do to the sensibility of the population at large.

It would suggest that elements of music education involving attention to more diverse rhythmic structures might be a “civilizing” influence.

Do we want a civilizing influence? – that’s another matter…..

Psyc

Limericks on Stephen Fry

When the abysmal phenomenon I call tatter came on the scene, I was told that one may enter observations each amounting to no more than 150 characters.
I thought this a fine enough challenge and it might stimulate the creation of lasting contributions (like haikus).
I set out to deliver something that might amuse (slightly) and would be a message of EXACTLY 150 characters. Each message (I did three) would be a limerick. This would include the line (and  between word) spaces as countable characters.
My limericks would be about Stephen Fry - then spoken of as one of the nation's most prolific tatterpeople, evidently writing something each or most days, and spurring a "following" of scores of thousands of people who would read his thoughts and respond.
The fact that he himself could NOT further respond to the contributions of each of thousands made it a bad scene in my eyes - one masquerading as "communication" but really being no such thing.

When I opened the entry I had contributed, I was aghast to see the lines of words I had sent in were rolled out as if they had no line spaces and were all in one line. This destroyed the form of the limerick; thus the system not only failed to give an opportunity to "communicate" (might Mr Fry even or ever see one of my limericks and, heavens above, even reply?) but it "trashed" the contribution one had offered.

Here now is the first limerick I offered -

(this is an experiment - will it appear in the message AS a limerick? - let's see....)

A tele celebrity Fry

Saw no reason that he shouldnt try

To fritter his wit

And then force it to fit

Into twitters that aesthetes decry

so then I made up another two ....

St Ephen in seven score places

Throws wit thrusting pith in our faces

His aphorisms fly

Leaving crispy and dry

Us twitterati stuck in our places

St Ephen would never proclaim

That democracy's now not the same

As we twitter each day

With but little to say

To politicos playing their game

Well - I am sure Mr Fry might be mildly amused and make up far better ones - he is a truly clever man and good luck to him; he has entertained me a good deal.

After a gap of a few years I have been able to return to this activity and to write in my first "post" within the format that google kindly allows.
What had happened was that my old gmail address was "phished" and in unscrambling that fiasco I lost my old gmail address (curiously almost morphed into a bogus 'self'). The system refused to recognise me as me,  nor my new gmail address as emerging from the previous and continuing me, so I withdrew from the fray.
I now have the calm advice of my battle hardened son and have "recreated" the thing I refuse to call a blog as I explained in my first "post" for the old vehicle "dengls for fun" where I reported that a dengl is a piece of baDENGLish in the same degree of elegance exhibited by the drearily titled "blog" which is a weBLOG ...
I am not sure but I think that what I am being is termed "rebarbative". I will have to check with a friend. I think I have an abdominal ache which comes more readily to mind evoked by the term "rebarbative" which sounds either like a medicine or the condition which prompts its use.
Now, the great goog in the sky refused me licence to use the phrase I had used for a few score dengls a few years ago (some of which can even be summoned up by the genie in the brass jar by entering their titles in a weBSEARCH),
e.g.:
http://denglsforfun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/dengl-46-woeisme-1-on-education.html
(it's still there)  
so I fall back on the similar term denglsagain.
After this initial piece of nonsense I hope to have something more substantive to say in due course.