Why music means so much to us.
Dis a question that thinkers over time of Socrates upto Schopenhauer has intrigued: why are abstract patterns of sound so bad for people? We're exposed to music more than ever, thanks to streaming, from Spotify and YouTube upto Mixcloud and download it, and we're also bombarded with music through ads. It is there to influence the way we think, feel and behave. As every filmmaker knows, music is unique in its ability to stir up the emotions. As the work of music therapists with dementia patients and autistic children has shown, music has the ability to touch us and tap into memories that only words cannot be achieved. But how?
Music meaning
Defining what isn't music can help us understand the powerful effect on us. There are people who believe that certain everyday sounds, especially the sounds of nature, should be classified as music. This can be considered music for a poet's ear, but it doesn't communicate with us in the way music does. Music transfers meaning, because all the constituent sounds and tones evoke minor emotional reactions, and these are merged into a coherent narrative through imitation. In this sense, running water or exploding rain fails the musical test. How does music compare to the other uniquely human form of communication in sound: language? Other than words, ranges of notes are free to convey pure emotion, untouched by the need for semantic understanding. Hence music requires less mental processing power than language, and music in its simplest form, the early vocal interactions between baby and caregiver, precede language in human development. The miracle is that the structure and meaning of both music and language are understood quite intuitively in the early years, only through lighting. This is because the young brain is ready to look for patterns in sound.
