I heard that music gives you satisfaction because your brain creates a feedback loop of predicting what music will come in a second, and then rewarding itself if it was right. But in that case, why does some music give us more satisfaction than other music?
In: Biology
Part of it has to do with tension and release in music. Similar to reading a story, if you were listening to a song and it never really “went” anywhere, you would get bored pretty fast. Satisfying music introduces you to something that feels like the “home” of the song, before taking you somewhere else. Tension builds when you are taken away from that home, which makes it much more satisfying to come back, rather than having stayed there the entire time. This time “home” might be the chorus, having some similar attributes to the introduction of the song, but also surprising you by adding or taking away certain elements.
This is another huge contributing factor; playing with expectations. While it might be true that your brain rewards itself when it’s correct about guessing what comes next (not sure how true that is but rollin with it), it’s much more rewarding when something doesn’t exactly meet your expectations. Again, compared to story telling, if you knew exactly what was going to happen, it wouldn’t be as satisfying as a new adventure. It might feel more like recalling a memory. Satisfying music conditions you to predict how the song is going to go, then does something different that isn’t as obvious but still fits with the song.
These are just two examples that stick out to me as highly contributing factors. I’d love to hear the others that people come up with.
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