What is the purpose of music? Why do we enjoy listening to it

For the same reason you like fried chicken despite it being so unhealthy.
Evolution is imperfect.
Be glad we have evolved to enjoy the sound of vibrating strings, we could have evolved to enjoy the sound of farting.

I think it mimics human vocal tones and inflections to convey emotions. Why beyond that is anyone's guess

>>9046132
Why does your hair stand on end when you detect that there is some unknown entity moving about in the dark? Why does any sound make you feel anything? Why can you recognize rhythms and patterns, and predict outcomes or cross-associate?

That basic machinery is at work to produce high level results.

>>9046146
Why do I like songs without vocals more often than songs with vocals then?

>>9046150
Because most songs have garbage unrelateable, or outright obnoxious, lyrics that flow poorly with the underlying music, and a few don't. That basic model describes the probability distribution you're experiencing quite well.

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The hypothesis is that song was a way of sharing knowledge in our hunter-gatherer past; I think the idea is that song is more memorable
There is a book which argues this if you are interested, I could look up the title

it's a spandrel

This question can be answer if we can figure out who put the bomp in the bomp bah bomp bah bomp

>>9046176
>gettyimages
Theo Allofs

>>9046144
>people don't enjoy the sound of farting
Do you realize what website you're on?

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>>9046176
Thanks squire

FYI /sci, in a few hundred years the only professions that will have any respect will be artists and creatives, because machines would have taken all the logical work load.

>>9046230
>implying bots can't be "creative"
>implying they don't already do that

>>9046176
>There is a book which argues this if you are interested, I could look up the title
The book is called "the memory code" but I'm unsure whatever the book is really good science (most likely not)
Though the hypothesis should be able to be tested

I read somewhere something about music reminding us of the heart beatings we heard when we were still in our mothers' womb.
Like a huge nostalgia effect.
Probably not.

A malfunctioning machine produces a cacophony of noise. Once repaired it produces better sounds. The harmonies in music are abstract but they're symbolic. There's a dissonance introduced to create feelings of tension before being resolved. Rhythms are also used to convey certain feelings. A very slow tempo often represents a more relaxed feeling while a midtempo provides a beat suitable for dancing because it is closer to the general speed of typical human movements, while a faster or more driving tempo will create a sense of importance or focus. A rhythm composed of multiple rhythms is an expression of the many different challenges one faces in life that tend to disrupt our routine but there polyrhythms still cyclically return to being in time with each other. Timbre is also very important. The roar of a tuba elicits different feelings than a chirp of a piccolo.

And the way that the words of a song fit with the melody, harmony and rhythm is called prosody. That's generally what produces that hair standing up effect. It's just a result of being enthusiastically in agreeance with the sounds. Taste in music is usually determined by the personality of the perceiver and their life experience. Kids and women like simple music that sounds nice. Men like music that sounds complicated and sometimes quite harsh as it better represents their own view of the world and ironically the lack of strong harmonies creates a harmony within the individual.

There are certain things that are a bit up in the air. Major chords feeling happy while minor chords feel sad is to some extent just conditioning. However the major chord is slightly more euphonic. And conditioning can lead to a lot of music being produced simply out of routine. People see a music video and think that sound = that setting. I could go on but it's really pretty simple it's just association

>>9046150
I think he meant that the changes in pitch in music are interpreted in our brains in a similar way to how we interpret voice pitch in conversation, it doesn't matter if the music actually has vocals or not

I think that's at least partly true. I'm a big music person myself and I think of music as like a finer form of communication, the feeling it gives us is like how we would feel if we were able to communicate our emotions directly to each other without going through the clumsy medium of words

either way, I think we can never really understand art at a logical level, but that's partly what makes it beautiful

>>9046132
Read "This is Your Brain on Music" by Levitin for an actual (albeit simplified) answer.

Half your brain thinks and communicates with our language or words. You can stand/sit next to someone and have a conversation with them, and this other half of your is also having a conversation with the other person through facial expressions, body language, inflextions and intonations of speach.

This 2nd half of your brain is what listens, understands, and enjoys music

>>9046132
https://youtu.be/2fngvQS_PmQ

gets me every time... better without the visuals