What Attracts Us To The Music We Like?

We all know that in music there are connections between notes and that we have ways to explain these connections in musical terms, as well as personal observations & definitions. Also we know that different musical styles draw on differing rhythms and harmonies and these are widely varied across cultures and periods in time.

But how and why do we make the selections for music that we say we like? Call it Soul, Blues, Jazz, or attach overtones of spiritualism or ritual, all music we choose to like forces it’s way into our needs for some connection that brings a sense of completion to a personal need & search.

There are endless pithy comments that are used when we describe how we interact with music, whether we want to dance, to perform, to meditate, to love, to cry. But why do the elements that combine in music make us feel these ways?

I have to be honest and say two things on this subject. Firstly it fascinates me and secondly over my 50+ years of playing music and 40+ years as a professional player and tutor, it is one subject that I see very little information about. So perhaps there is no answer or perhaps I’m in a very small minority who have any interest in this. Perhaps it’s just me but I doubt that.

I have some thoughts. A craving for deep connections is a natural human condition. Think of some album or song titles: The Inner Mounting Flame, A Love Supreme, La Mer, The Rite Of Spring, The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, The Dark Side Of The Moon. These all clearly meant something more than just the words to the people who played and composed the music.

We all know some pieces of music or songs that inspire and were inspired by deep connections. And to some degree we seem to want to share those with others through a melding of media. In the case of this study that media is music.

But why? Need for security & safety in shared knowledge perhaps as one example. And how do we make the choices that combine to allow the choices to take place?

If we understand musical harmony, the way that the music we hear is constructed, we are faced with the same or similar patterns again and again. The same patterns occur in different styles of music. Whether it is snippets of the same tune in a song we find attractive, that also were in a song we heard when very young. Or the underlying chords that are almost the same as a beloved piece off music we know from way back when.

In all these cases we subconsciously know that we are feeling drawn to the music we are now hearing and liking. We feel secure or perhaps we feel adventurous, or any other possible emotions or attachments. As musicians we can be completely conscious of the processes of attraction to music; which harmonies we like most, what intervals most “turn us on”, the rhythms that ignite our needs & desires.

I have always seen music theory, studying how music is constructed, as a route to simply knowing more about what I like and why. Also it affords the chance to see what may come next in my development, as music that is new to me uses structures that are a step or two on, or just different, from what I am used to.

In this time we are almost all able to be exposed to pretty much any music from around the world at the touch of a few buttons. That is a wonderful development however it doesn’t give us the authentic live music experience, especially at source, where the original of each style developed.

For me there are two essential elements that I love more and more as I get older musically. The live experience encompasses both. They are playing live and going to hear music live. Real people playing real music, as a shared experience.

As we now pretty much lease our music to listen to and do it mostly with little headphones, in cars or in company while not really paying attention, I feel that these are artificial ways of experiencing real music. So while it is a wonder of the modern age to be able to find any music any time and from any place we may be, this lacks interaction with others often.

So for the whole experience I need music live. Perhaps that is the key to why we love music in any form really. Or perhaps we will evolve to have music more often purely on our own, as a not shared personal experience. I hope not for, just as we desire relationships with other people that range from very close to just distant, the real forces that combine to make music essential are to me pure only when in the shared experience. And that means live music, as a player or audience member.