Love Of Music & Harmony Can Be Learnt, Study

Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony is learnt and not based on natural ability, says a new study.

AsianScientist (Feb. 18, 2013) – Our love of music and appreciation of musical harmony is learnt and not based on natural ability, says a new study from the University of Melbourne.

The question of why some combinations of musical notes are heard as pleasant or unpleasant has long been debated.

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, debunks previous theories that say the way we appreciate music is based on the physical properties of sound, the ear itself, and an innate ability to hear harmony.


“Our study shows that musical harmony can be learnt and it is a matter of training the brain to hear the sounds,” said Associate Professor McLachlan from the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences.

“So if you thought that the music of some exotic culture (or jazz) sounded like the wailing of cats, it’s simply because you haven’t learnt to listen by their rules.”

The researchers used 66 volunteers with a range of musical training and tested their ability to hear combinations of notes to determine if they found the combinations familiar or pleasing.
 They found that people needed to be familiar with sounds created by combinations of notes before they could hear the individual notes; and if they couldn’t find the notes they found the sound dissonant or unpleasant.

“This finding overturns centuries of theories that physical properties of the ear determine what we find appealing,” said McLachlan.

To confirm this finding they trained 19 non-musicians to find the pitches of a random selection of western chords. Not only did the participants ability to hear notes improve rapidly over ten short sessions, afterward they reported that the chords they had learnt sounded more pleasant – regardless of how the chords were tuned.

“We have shown in this study that for music, beauty is in the brain of the beholder,” said Associate Professor Sarah Wilson, a co-author on the study.

The article can be found at: McLachlan N et al. (2013) Consonance and Pitch.

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Source: University of Melbourne.
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