Low Notes Really Do Get People Dancing, Research Finds 30
When it comes to getting into the groove on the dancefloor, it really is all about the bass, researchers have found. From a report: Scientists say when very low frequency (VLF) sound was introduced during a live electronic music event, gig-goers moved more even though they could not hear the frequencies. "This is real world -- real electronic music dance concert -- validation that the bass really does make people dance more, and this isn't just something that comes from our conscious awareness," said Dr Daniel Cameron, a neuroscientist and first author of the work from McMaster University in Canada. Cameron and colleagues note that previous studies suggested music that induces dance has more low frequency sound, and that low pitches help people to move in time to music.
However, it was not clear this impact of low frequencies would be seen in the real world, or when such sounds are not consciously detectable. Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team report how they set up an electronic music concert by the Canadian duo Orphx at McMaster and asked attenders to wear motion-capture headbands before turning on and off specialised VLF speakers every 2.5 minutes during the 55-minute performance. Results from 43 attenders who agreed to wear a headband revealed they moved 11.8% more, on average, when the VLF speakers were turned on. Cameron noted this meant people danced more vigorously, or with more exaggerated movements. At the end of the concert, 51 attenders completed a questionnaire that asked whether they could feel the music in their body, and whether the bodily sensations affected their compulsion to move.
However, it was not clear this impact of low frequencies would be seen in the real world, or when such sounds are not consciously detectable. Writing in the journal Current Biology, the team report how they set up an electronic music concert by the Canadian duo Orphx at McMaster and asked attenders to wear motion-capture headbands before turning on and off specialised VLF speakers every 2.5 minutes during the 55-minute performance. Results from 43 attenders who agreed to wear a headband revealed they moved 11.8% more, on average, when the VLF speakers were turned on. Cameron noted this meant people danced more vigorously, or with more exaggerated movements. At the end of the concert, 51 attenders completed a questionnaire that asked whether they could feel the music in their body, and whether the bodily sensations affected their compulsion to move.
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Notes aren't illusions. They are names we give to specific frequencies. They are no more an illusion that a number used to describe a quantity. And stupidity has nothing to do with any of it. The impact of rhythmic sensations in sound, sight, and touch, is observed across the animal kingdom. I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
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You don't think it's stupid that the brain releases dopamine or whatever just because there is sound with a pattern? You are made to feel a certain way, good, whatever, just because there are some sounds? That's dumb.
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Admittedly this is pure speculation, but prehistoric humans could build community bonds through singing and dancing. Those early humans who felt no emotional response to music were less fit to participate in a community and less likely to have offspring.
It's a bit like saying that there is no point to a male peacock's feathers. It's one of many ways a species selects for mate fitness. I wouldn't limit communal music to only mate selection, it may also indicate a fitness for an individual's ability to intera
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Not on the spectrum and not depressed. Just objective. I didnt mean it super seriously anyway, though it is truth, I figured it had some comedic-philosophic value to point it out.
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That is fundamentally correct and I subscribe to what you are saying.
It perhaps should be added, though, that most of this applies mainly our current Western music culture. In Eastern Europe and the Middle East, for example, there are music traditions that do not divide an octave into 12 semitones as we do but use microintervals that would sound rather alien and exotic to people accustomed to Western music.
The concept of octave, however, is universal to pretty much every music culture, and this is most like
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I agree, as I also play a few Persian instruments and the scales (dastgahs) are peppers with quarter tones. Playing a song that uses quarter tones on a piano just sounds very unnatural to me, but I also was raised playing classical piano, so I have adapted to both.
Jazz and Blues in Western music are the exception, though. They (especially blues) long to find that perfect note between the minor 3rd and the major 3rd, which is why piano players usually play both keys simultaneously, or play the two in very
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Confirming what every DJ knows... (Score:3)
Next, science will confirm the more advanced corollary to that: If your track has bad groove, you see stomping and not asses shaking. When you see asses shake, groove good.
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I was gonna say, anybody that's ever run a PA or played in a band could tell you this without wasting time or money on it. Hell, 75% of the audience at any venue could tell you that. The other 25% will tell you that once they've sobered up in the morning.
Seems like a waste to even study this. I've been in a venue during sound testing and there are plenty of times test-tones are *FELT* without being heard, other than the shaking of the rafters or walls. Is there anything novel in here? Or is this a study by
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DJ Obvious in da house! (Changed careers during Covid cruise-ship shutdowns.)
Re: Confirming what every DJ knows... (Score:1)
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As the song says, "It's all about the Bass".
Interesting... (Score:2)
Hopefully there's something more useful than just the surface conclusions. Otherwise this is something every culture that ever built a drum could have told you.
Dancing ? Or hand-waving to house music ? (Score:3)
House music killed dance music.
Noisy neighbours analogy (Score:3)
Absolutely true. When my female downstairs neighbour with a manly, low-timbre voice starts talking, I can't help but start jumping on my floor.
Bassnectar Concerts... (Score:3)
I was 48 years old, overweight, with a bad knee, very little stamina, tertiary edema that made my legs hurt after strenuous exercise, and I was throwing down so hard at his 2016 Greensboro NC show that the kids were in awe.
The sweat was pouring off me like a river, my shirt was plastered to my moobs, and the belly blubber was flying faster than a greased porpoise in a sea of snot.
And I kept it up, too! I had one woman come up to me, give me a kiss, and put a glitter star on my hat.
All for the bass.
Since Lorin turned out to be a $#!+heel, the realm of bass just hasn't been the same.
Sub-woofers (Score:2)
specialised VLF speakers
They're called sub-woofers, and you do hear them... with your gut. They're more important to me than a big screen in a home-theater setup.
Re: Sub-woofers (Score:2)
The brown note (Score:1)
From the 60’s performing musicians (Score:2)
Rock$Roll taught fast how bass-driven was a band’s currency that could fill a dance hall, auditorium, or venue. But thanks Science nice to have found the groove!
First Principles: get a damn good drummer second only to the bass kit. Phil Lesh anchored Grateful Dead from start-to-end. His dexterity, lyricism and the beat in his bassline is unparalleled by contemporary musicianship. He had no where to go after Jerry Garcia. The magic in a band doesn’t happen in isolation with creatives who have mas
The Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks (Score:2)
I'm dating myself, but: half a century ago, when newspapers were on paper, there was a comic strip (adventure, not meant to be funny) called The Phantom: The Ghost Who Walks. In one series, a Pied-Piper like character uses music to get people to dance, and leads them off to--well, I don't remember where, but it wasn't good. One would have thought that deaf people would be immune to this, but no: supposedly the bad guy used low frequency sounds that the deaf could sense through their bodies to entice them
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