I just came across this really interesting article on the biology of music. The basic idea is that we humans choose to like music similar to human speech - which eventually leads us to like seven note scales and rock music. I would argue that a lot of listening habits come from decades of conditioning, but that's for another blog entry.

Check out this bit by Dr. Dale Purves, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology at Duke University. The key, Purves said, lies in our evolutionary history:

"Any perceptual quality you have is there for some biological reason. They evolved because they provide useful information to us," he said. "So if you take a microphone out in nature and ask what the tonal sounds are in our environmental niche that we would have evolved to appreciate, the tonal sounds you record are nearly all animal vocalizations. And the ones that count the most are the vocalizations of other humans."

Boingboing.net Article

Full Length Essay by Dr. Purves and Dr. Gill

Labels: Biology, Ideas, Music