The Psychology Of Music : How Our Instincts Affect Our Musical Taste

So you’re another hard rock band? Get in line to be ignored, at least for a while. Maybe not by your close friends, or even a small dedicated group of listeners, but by the mainstream music buying audience and therefore the industry at large. I can back this up with science…bear with me.

 One reason may have to do with an interesting fact about music that most people may not know: our ability to appreciate music is directly related to our flight or fight response. You may be asking yourself what that has to do with anything. Let me explain.

The Psychology of Sound

We humans have evolved a highly developed sense of hearing that is primarily used for survival. Noises are either assessed for danger or deemed a non-threat. This means that when you hear a loud crashing noise or a quiet rustling, your instincts immediately evaluate the danger associated with it. Obviously a loud crashing noise to a caveman might mean a huge woolly mammoth is stampeding your way. A quite noise may mean that a stealthy predator is eyeballing the menu, namely you.

However, when a noise persists for a decent length of time, it loses its threat value and our ears put the noise in the background of our mind, training itself on something new. In other words, as soon as our ears determine the sound to be harmless, it forgets about it and moves on to another sound.

A threat is not signified by the type of sound necessarily, just the unexpected addition of it into our immediate experience, although it may seem as if a beating drum is more dangerous that the sound of the breeze, it depends also on the context. A drum may be a pleasant rhythm, or an invading army. The wind may be a harmless breeze or the coming of a dangerous storm. It it the job of our senses to examine whether or not that sound may eventually be coming from something that wants to eat us or at least give us a good thrashing!

What Once Was Dangerous Is Now Safe and Boring

How does this relate to your rock band? Well, how long have rock bands been on the airwaves?  Answer: A very long time now. Hard rock has long been assessed not to be a threat and that is why you don’t see many evangelicals yammering on about it anymore. That is why Republicans are no longer crusading against it as an evil of society. That is why there are now Christian metal bands whereas 30 years ago, it was strictly Satan’s handiwork. (Honestly, it was better when Satan was responsible for it, wasn’t it?).

Yes, Rock has lost the danger, the excitement, the rawness it once help simply because we are all so very used to it now. It’s completely safe, in and of itself, because our ears are no longer assessing its threat level. Our society had embraced it and it is just one more commodity. People want something new.

Assessing the Old as Something New Again

After a while, once we have forgotten a sound, it becomes fresh again and our senses must re assess the danger factor. This may be why we are seeing a prominence of Acoustic, folk rock and roots bands Like Mumford & Sons, Avett Brothers and Monsters of Folk or Avant Garde bands like Florence and the Machine. It is again fresh because we haven’t been bombarded with it since the 70’s, with the brief exception of MTV unplugged in the 90’s.

This is also why after a while, a musical era dies and makes way for a new one so eventually hard rock will once again reign supreme but in order for that to happen, society must put it on the back burner for a while.

Why Some Bands Have Staying Power and Others are Forgotten

Now, you may be wondering why certain bands never seem to go out of style and the reason is similar. The bands that have staying power simply change how they sound and how they play or their sound is fairly diverse to begin with. Changing the intensity, the tempo and the timbre of your music plays with this fight or flight response. For instance, the reason why a sudden stop catches your attention is the same reason why you get concerned when you can’t hear the kids making their normal ruckus. It’s a dangerous quiet…the quiet that tells you something important has just happened and you don’t yet know the extent of the damage but one thing is certain is that the sudden silence is suddenly different form the droning noise that was just happening and it grabs your attention.

It’s also why good rock bands don’t just hammer away at power chords all the time, they change tempo, play arpeggios, let certain notes ring out and play with harmony. They constantly demand your instinct to assess the situation and once there is no perceived threat, your ear automatically reduces the input and the sound guess to the background. As a band, you generally don’t want to remain in the background so you change your dynamic.

Drawbacks With The Standard Rock Band Format

This brings me back to the rock band format we all know and love: drums, an electric guitar or two, bass and vocals. This format was radical in the 50’s and changed music when Dylan adapted it. It’s quite common today so you don’t feel all that impressed by the suggestion of a lineup like this. The sound produced by this format is simply nothing new to anyone’s ears, no matter how many affects you run through it.

When you play with the standard rock format, people will listen for what is familiar to them and if you’re going to give them the same old power chords and progressions as everyone else, nobody will really care, except for said friends and family. Yes, the crowd may initially respond well, or at least not badly, but they may not immediately download all of your songs because you won’t be giving them anything they don’t have already.

I assume that you don’t usually listen to one song over and over again or one band all the time, and neither will your audience. As a performer, the trick is to find new ways to trigger that fight or flight response in the audience. This is why it is important that you include various scales, chord progressions and tempos.

This is why bands with unusual lineups catch attention. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, for instance, have about 20 people in their band, singer’s piano, acoustic instruments, electric ones, hand drums, a trumpet, an accordion and a bunch of starving musicians! (Seriously, how do you get paid in that band?) Doesn't that sound like something you would want to see?

If you want to make a strong impression, find chord combinations that favor one another yet move the music forward and alters the dynamics of the song. Add new instrumentation that is not so common. Perhaps your song can swell with intensity as the music builds, or it can break down in the middle and come back, but you absolutely positively need to change what you’re doing from time to time and keep things interesting or be forgotten and reduced to background noise

Refrences:

How Music Works by John Powell

Musical Cognition by Dowling and D.L. Harwood