What makes us musical animals?

A pair of gibbons sing together (credit: Andrew Walmsley / NPL)

Exploring the biological and social processes that underly our musical abilities, Nancy Ferranti talks to music researcher Henkjan Honing about the origins of music and musical behaviours. The podcast was broadcasted this morning at CKUT, a campus-community radio station based at McGill University.

Interested in the relation between dance and music?

Larry Parsons

On Tuesday 16 April 2013  Larry Parsons (University of Sheffield and Centre de Neuroscience Cognitive, CNRS, Lyon, France) will give a CSCA Lecture with the title Neurobiological Basis of Musical Skills and Dancing. He will present functional neuroimaging data on the brain basis of call/response singing, harmonization, improvisational singing, sight-singing duets, music learning in non-musical adults, and the performance of memorized piano pieces. Also discussed will be the relation between neural systems for melodic and sentential generation, emotional musical experiences, and the brain basis of dancing.

For more information, see the website of the CSCA.

Sauna- en liftmuziek? [Dutch]

[Deze week een luchtige zomer-entry -- volgende week weer serieuze wetenschap]

Afgelopen dinsdag nodigde mijn broer, Yuri Honing, mij uit voor een aflevering van zijn radioprogramma op Radio 6: een zender die zich profileert op het gebied van Jazz & Soul. 

Hij belde me een week daarvoor op met het verzoek simpelweg een stapel CDs mee te nemen.  Onmogelijke opdracht natuurlijk. Zeker voor een familie waarin in muziek het hoogste van het hoogste is. Het resulteerde in dagen lang zoeken naar fragmenten die 'kunnen', 'zouden kunnen' of 'helemaal niet kunnen'. 

Uiteindelijk had ik achtien cd's (cq. iTunes aankopen) geselecteerd, allemaal live opnames.  Maar daarvan kwam natuurlijk maar een fractie in de uitzending terecht, vooral omdat zich tijdens de avond allerlei uitgesproken en onuitgesproken fascinaties en associaties opdrongen. Een avondje muziekluisteren dus, zoals we dat wel vaker doen, en met veel plezier. Hieronder een fragment:

What makes us musical animals?

This week a plug for my new book that just came out: Musical Cognition: A Science of Listening (Read fragments of it online at Google Books; currently available with more than 30% discount on the hardcover at Amazon and Barnes & Noble).

From the cover:

"Musical Cognition suggests that music is a game (or 'benificial play'). In music, our cognitive functions such as perception, memory, attention, and expectation are challenged; yet as listeners we often do not realize that the listener plays an active role in reaching the awareness that makes music so exhilarating, soothing, and inspiring. In reality, the author contends, listening does not happen in the outer world of audible sound but in the inner world of our minds and brains.

Recent research in the areas of psychology and neuro-cognition allows Honing to be explicit in a way that many of his predecessors could not. His lucid, evocative writing style guides the reader through what is known about listening to music while avoiding jargon and technical diagrams. With clear examples, the book concentrates on underappreciated musical skills — “sense of rhythm” and “relative pitch” — skills that make us musical creatures. Research on how living creatures respond to music supports the conviction that all humans have a unique, instinctive attraction to music.

Musical Cognition includes a selection of intriguing examples from recent literature exploring the role that an implicit or explicit knowledge of music plays when one listens to it. The scope of the topics discussed ranges from the ability of newborns to perceive the beat, to the unexpected musical expertise of ordinary listeners. The evidence shows that music is second nature to most human beings — biologically and socially."

Honing, H. (2011) Musical Cognition. A Science of Listening. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4128-4228-0.

Winkler, I., Haden, G., Ladinig, O., Sziller, I., & Honing, H. (2009). Newborn infants detect the beat in music Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (7), 2468-2471 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809035106

Can music be funny?

In the spirit of today a fragment from New Horizons in Music Appreciation, a program from Radio Station WOOF at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople: an early example of how to attract a wider audience to listen to classical music:



With regard to today's question: David Huron (2004) studied audience laughter in live recordings of Peter Schickele's music (One of the presenters in the broadcast above). In that paper he offers a physiological explanation for why listeners respond to specific musical fragments by producing the distinctive "ha-ha-ha" vocalization....

Huron, D. (2004). Music-engendered laughter: an analysis of humor devices in P.D.Q. Bach Proceedings of the 8th International Conference of Music Perception and Cognition, 700-704.

Is music mere play?

Not too long ago I was called by the Dutch radio for a daily question on science, and was confronted with the question: Why do we like music?

Since why-questions are generally almost impossible to answer, I was happy —just in time— to think of the idea of ‘music as play’. But because all of this went almost too quickly, I thought I would eloborate on this in a slightly more slower pace in this blog...

The idea is that music, as a human phenomenon, can be seen as something that plays with our senses, our memory, our attention and our emotions, in the way young lions play, without any real threat. Music, generally, does not harm us, it also doesn’t make us less hungry, nevertheless it directly addresses our physiological and cognitive functions. For many music listeners this is a pleasant, rewarding, purposeful and sometimes even a consoling play.

I like this idea of ‘music as play’ (or 'music as a game') far better than the discussion on whether music is an adaptation or a mere evolutionary by-product of more important functions, such as those involved in language (Pinker, 1997). Also Geoffrey Miller’s alternative suggesting sexual selection to be the primary mechanism in the evolution of music is still lacking the proper arguments and evidence. ‘Music as play’ is far more attractive, because it might explain several of our strange behaviors, such as listening to ‘sad’ music when we are sad, to make us even more sad — we apparently know it will not really harm us!

The idea of ‘humans as players’ was brought forward by several authors, including the brilliant Johan Huizinga who wrote Homo Ludens (‘Man the Player’) in the 1930s. It also was the topic of the 2007 Huizinga lecture by Tijs Goldschmidt - a biologist and writer known from, e.g., Darwin's Dreampond. His lecture was called Doen alsof je doet alsof (‘Pretend to pretend’) and he even spent a few words about music (Goldschmidt, 2007:20-21). It was an important source of inspiration to write Iedereen is muzikaal :-)

WESSELING, H. (2002). From cultural historian to cultural critic: Johan Huizinga and the spirit of the 1930s European Review, 10 (04) DOI: 10.1017/S106279870200039X


N.B. This is a rewrite of a blog entry of 28.11.2007

Do we all have a talent for music?

A simple 'yes' is the short answer, I believe. I do an attempt to explain this in a book that is about to be published in Dutch (English, and other languages are planned for 2010/11). The evidence comes from researchers from all over the globe. Standing on the shoulders of giants... it turned out to be a great view...

See more on Facebook.

H. Honing (2009). Iedereen is muzikaal: Wat we weten over het luisteren naar muziek. Nieuw Amsterdam Uitgevers. ISBN: 978 90 468 0598 5 www.iedereenismuzikaal.nl

Wat is het belang van muziek? [Dutch]

De Stelling van...Henkjan Honing, vanmiddag te verdedigen op SPUI25, luidt: ‘We zijn allemaal muzikale dieren'.

Over muzikaliteit bestaan veel misverstanden. Mensen die zichzelf amuzikaal vinden, zeggen dat ze geen ritmegevoel hebben of niet zuiver kunnen zingen. Een zingende vogel of een op de maat dansende kaketoe vinden ze echter al snel ‘muzikaal'. Maar kunnen dieren wel muzikaal zijn en wat is muzikaliteit eigenlijk?

"Of een diersoort in staat is om muziek te maken en te ervaren, kun je pas beoordelen als je een definitie van muziek hebt. Maar er zijn nogal wat definities mogelijk: van muziek als geordend geluid tot alles wat je ‘als muziek in de oren klinkt'. Honing stelt dat muziek in feite alles is waarvan wij vinden dat het muziek is, of beter: alles waar wij muziek in horen (music is in the mind of the beholder). Terwijl vogelzang door ons al snel als muziek wordt gehoord, wil dat nog niet zeggen dat het voor vogels ook muziek is. Hetzelfde geldt voor walvissen, dolfijnen en andere dieren die geluid maken dat we graag als muziek betitelen. En daarmee is de grens van wat wel en geen muziek is, wel heel flexibel geworden, betoogt Honing. Het lijkt zinvoller om een onderscheid te maken tussen de begrippen muzikaliteit en muziek. Muzikaliteit als een natuurlijke, op onze biologie gebaseerde eigenschap, en muziek als een cultureel bepaald fenomeen op basis van die biologie. Zonder muzikaliteit geen muziek."

Zit muziek tussen je oren? [Dutch]

This week a short note for Dutch readers:

"Elke derde dinsdag van de maand vindt in Het Paard van Troje het NWO-Spinozadebat plaats. Op deze avonden komt de absolute wetenschappelijke top van Nederland naar het Haagse poppodium om de fascinerende kanten van hun vakgebied uit te leggen. En dan niet met behulp van ellenlange formules, grafieken en tabellen maar in begrijpelijke taal. Of de avond interessant wordt hangt van het publiek af. Het is namelijk aan de bezoekers om te komen met prangende vragen die de aanzet zijn voor verdere discussie. Geen voorgekookt programma dus maar interactie met het publiek. Dat wetenschap en muziek prima samengaan zal huis-DJ Henk Koolen bewijzen. Met ondersteuning van VJ Michiel Bos mixt hij de favoriete nummers van de sprekers tot een muzikaal hoogtepunt. Teleac registreert het debat en zendt het via internet en televisie uit." (citaat van NWO website).

Dinsdag 16 december gaat het debat over muziekcognitie. Of, in wat meer wervende termen: over de onvermoede vaardigheden van de gewone luisteraar.

Sommige mensen vinden van zichzelf dat ze geen ritmegevoel hebben of geen toon kunnen houden, en concluderen dat ze dus niet muzikaal zijn. Een begrijpelijk maar hardnekkig misverstand. We zijn allemaal geboren met een talent voor muziek. Dat talent laat zich niet alleen zien in de acrobatiek van het muziek maken, maar ook in het beluisteren en waarderen van muziek. De gewone luisteraar —die we allemaal zijn— heeft een veel grotere rol in wat muziek tot muziek maakt dan vaak gedacht wordt.

Wat is gewoon en wat is bijzonder aan muzikaliteit? Is het herkennen van ingewikkelde melodieën bijzonder, en het meeklappen op de maat van de muziek gewoon? Het zou wel eens precies andersom kunnen zijn.

In deze presentatie verkent Henkjan Honing, universitair hoofddocent muziekcognitie, een aantal visies op het ontstaan van muziek en de actieve rol van luisteraar daarin. Van het ritmegevoel van pasgeboren baby’s tot een op muziek dansende kaketoe en van het maatgevoel van kleuters tot de onvermoede muzikale expertise van gewone luisteraars.

Datum: 16 december 2008
Locatie: Paard van Troje, Prinsegracht 12, Den Haag
Tijd: 20.00 - 21.30 uur; zaal open: 19.00 uur
Prijs: 7 euro (ex. servicekosten)
Kaarten: reserveren via www.paard.nl

De do do do, de da da da?

For a long time I thought of it as quite a peculiar phenomenon: grown-ups who, the moment they spot a baby, start talking in a curious dialect. A dialect that has unclear semantics, little or no grammar, and is full of exaggerated rhythmic and melodic diversions. Nevertheless, babies love it. They react, cooing with pleasure, to melodies that are not unlike pop songs as ‘De do do do, de da da da’ of The Police or ‘La la la’ by Kylie Minoque. This babbling, or, more formally, infant-direct speech (IDS), differs from normal adult speech by its high pitch, exaggerated melodic contours, a slower tempo, and more rhythmic variation. A kind of ‘musilanguage’ indeed.

IDS is a widespread phenomenon that is —as far as we know— present in all cultures and has more similarities than differences, even when some characteristics of IDS conflict with the rules of the adult language, like Chinese. Hence, it is unlikely that IDS is ‘just’ a preparation for language -- until recently the most common interpretation.

Laurel Trainor, and her team at McMaster University (Ontario, Canada) suggests that IDS is essentially a tool to communicate emotion. The decoding of the speech patterns into their emotional meaning is something infants can do easily, and long before they learn about language. In that sense, it seems more likely that language makes use of faculties special to music then that it emerged as a side effect of language (as as suggested once by a well-known cognitive psychologist).

Laurel J. Trainor, Caren M. Austin, Renee N. Desjardins (2000). Is Infant-Directed Speech Prosody a Result of the Vocal Expression of Emotion? Psychological Science, 11 (3), 188-195 DOI: 10.1111/1467-9280.00240

Music ≠ sound?

This week another fragment of the tv-series The Fascination on research by scholars and scientists of the University of Amsterdam. The fragment below is about music cognition and is questioning the common definition of music as being (structured) sound.

Muziek speelt met de luisteraar [Dutch]

This week a video that was directed by Bob van Gijzel (AVC/UvA) as part of a series of short films with the title De Fascinatie: Scholars and scientists from the Universiteit van Amsterdam talk about their fascination in research. This one is on music cognition. Below a short fragment (in Dutch):


Click here for the full episode.

Is music mere play?

Early this morning I was called by the Dutch radio for a daily question on science, and was confronted with the question: Why do we like music? (fragment). Since why-questions are generally almost impossible to answer, I was happy —just in time— to think of the idea of ‘music as play’. But because all of this went almost too quickly, I thought I would slightly eloborate on it in this blog...

The idea is that music, as a human phenomenon, can be seen as something that plays with our senses, our memory, our attention and our emotions, in the way young lions play, without any real threat. Music, generally, does not harm us, it also doesn’t make us less hungry, but it directly addresses our physiological and cognitive functions. For many music listeners this is a pleasant, rewarding, purposeful and sometimes even a consoling play.*

I like this idea of ‘music as play’ far better than the discussion of whether music is an adaptation or a mere evolutionary by-product of more important functions, such as those involved in language (Pinker, 1997). Also Geoffrey Miller’s alternative suggesting sexual selection to be the primary mechanism in the evolution of music is still lacking the proper arguments and evidence. ‘Music as play’ is far more attractive, because it might explain several of our strange behaviors, such as listening to ‘sad’ music when we are sad, to make us even more sad — we apparently know it will not really harm us!

The idea of ‘man as a player’ was brought forward by several authors, including Johan Huizinga who wrote Homo Ludens (‘Man the Player’) in the 1930s. It is the topic of the 2007 Huizinga lectureby Tijs Goldschmidt (a biologist and writer known from, e.g., Darwin's Dreampond). His lecture will be called Doen alsof je doet alsof (‘Pretend to pretend’). I'm sure he will say something about music too. [cf. pp. 20-21]

* See Dutch article on the idea of 'music as play'.

Is music a luxury?

Could scientific books on music until recently not afford not to include a chapter on the anatomy of the ear, currently most books on music have to include a chapter on the anatomy of the brain. The brain is 'cool, hip and happening'.

Luckily Oliver Sacks' new book Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain does not include this obligatory chapter. Instead, he uses his familiar observational style in revealing his personal and medical interest in people with a particular brain disorder. In this book he focuses on music-related mental phenomena ranging from amusia and absolute pitch to dysharmonia and synesthesia, while also discussing the role of music in Parkinson’s disease, Tourette’s and Williams syndrome. It is a book that fits in a trend of books by scholars that analyze and promote the importance of music in a wider perspective than is normally done by musical experts. Like Steven Mithen’s The Singing Neatherthals and Dan Levitin’s This is your brain on music, this book discusses what is so special about music, while it seriously wonders why some consider it a mere luxury (if not simply cheesecake).

In his book Sacks describes a series of medical cases where a neural deficit reveals something about the workings (or breaking down) of an intrinsic human quality we name ‘music’:

“We humans are a musical species no less than a linguistic one. This takes many different forms. All of us (with very few exceptions) can perceive music, perceive tones, timbre, pitch intervals, melodic contours, harmony, and (perhaps most elementally) rhythm. We integrate all of these and “construct” music in our minds using many different parts of the brain. And to this largely unconscious structural appreciation of music is added an often intense and profound emotional reaction to music. “The inexpressible depth of music,” Schopenhauer wrote, “so easy to understand and yet so inexplicable, is due to the fact that it reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain.... Music expresses only the quintessence of life and of its events, never these themselves.”

The book is a hopeful account of the role music can play in our lives and how our brain is involved in this. It will be released this November in many languages at the same time (I just read a preprint). So this will likely not be the last bit you read about it.