Rhythm
It's funny about how our brains work. We all like patterns; we feel satisfaction when things are organized in a certain way. My work focuses primarily on that: finding visual patterns and turning them into a story, with the most essential description possible, of course.
I've never met anyone who says they hate music; maybe they like weird music, (there’s always someone, right?) but we all undoubtedly enjoy mosaic-like fragments and certain sounds, those fragments get stuck in your head, certain jingles can live in a corner of your brain for years, whether you like them or not.
I started this short article after I came across with this paper from the Center for Biomedical Research in Music at Colorado State University. That study suggests we use different areas of our brain to interpret sound patterns, meter and tempo.
In other words, our brain is wired to make us not just listen the sound but somehow “feel it” in different ways, understand timing, anticipate patterns and it flow intuitively. That might explain why you might remember a sticky rhythm pattern and hate it at the same time. The are of the brain in charge of patterns probably is having such a good time that its swimming in dopamine.
Here’s a little fun experiment, first turn on you audio, then enable instruments by tapping each box and create a sound pattern, then hit the play button underneath and adjust the sound until you find something pleasant.
The experiment above is inspired in the great 2009 beatboxing experience created by So Far So Good (SFSG) Incredibox and Google’s Chrome Music Lab, both classic experiences that I really enjoyed many years ago and still work as good as they used to be.
One of the most interesting things about Incredibox was the option to adjust the sounds; I think it stimulated just the right part of the brain to hook us into the stimuli.
Here’s another player, same logic as the one above, but now you can adjust the tempo anytime to add some different stimuli to the right side of your brain.
It’s really interesting how our brain works. Maybe it’s worth taking a little look into the nerdy world here.
Interpreting sounds
These are things that one doesn’t usually stop to think about, but how does our brain know that something is making a sound? Most of the people know that there are waves involved, maybe having two ears might help to find the origin of the sound, but the truth is that the process is simply wonderful. Think about it for a second. A vibration is created somewhwre, it travels by air or liquids as waves and it has to get converted into electric signals so brain can make sense out of it.
Let’s start where we get the first contact. The sound waves first touch our ears and get received through a narrow channel to the eardrum.
Middle ear
Outter ear
Temporal bone
Ear canal
Ear
Eardrum
The vibrations generated by the eardrum are collected and modified by the auditory ossicles in the inner ear which passes the sound as vibrations to the cochlea.
Middle ear
Inner ear
Ear canal
Eardrum
Ear
Cochlea
Auditory ossicles
Temporal bone
Up to this point, it’s mostly a mechanical process of movement, filtering, and calibration. But when you enter the cochlea, that snail-shaped organ, things get mysteriously interesting. Inside there, the fluid responds to these vibrations by creating waves.
Low pitch
High pitch
350Hz sound
4,000Hz sound
Different areas of the organ react to different sounds; high frequencies cause vibrations in the stiffer, narrower base of the basilar membrane, and lower frequencies cause vibrations in the more flexible, wider apex.
The cochlea
5,000Hz
4,000Hz
3,000Hz
2,000Hz
1,500Hz
Cochlear duct
Basilar membrane
1,000Hz
800Hz
600Hz
400Hz
200Hz
Apex
Zooming in aven further, inside the cochlea, the movement of little filaments causes a chemical reaction that generates electrical impulses.
Those impulses are sent instantly to the brain to be interpreted as different sounds.
Hair cells
Stimulus
Impulses
Neurotransmitters
It is important to note here that the brain calibrates all of this in harmony with other senses; these signals are contrasted with what the eyes see. If the signals are confusing and do not match what your eyes see, you get dizzy.
Our systems are truly amazing, don't you think?
Sources:
PUBMED Human brain basis of musical rhythm perception: common and distinct neural substrates for meter, tempo, and pattern.
freesound.org – sound samples by:
mutatorscotch
musiclab – sound samples by:
Google Creative Lab.