Does It Matter What Your Music Sounds Like?

from Synthtopia

Does it matter what your music sounds like?

Maybe not.

According to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, the way you look when you perform may be more important than the way you sound.

Researcher Chia-Jung Tsay reports that “People consistently report that sound is the most important source of information in evaluating performance in music. However, the findings demonstrate that people actually depend primarily on visual information when making judgments about music performance.”

Tsay performed seven experiments, designed to test the the relative influence of site versus sound in judging musical performances. In the experiments, the researcher used recordings of actual music competitions and tested how well people could pick the winners, based on audio alone, video alone or video with audio.

Tsay found that people can reliably select the actual winners of live music competitions based on silent video recordings. But neither musical novices or professional musicians can reliably identify the winners of music competitions based on audio recordings of a performance.

“The results highlight our natural, automatic, and nonconscious dependence on visual cues,” concludes Tsay. “The dominance of visual information emerges to the degree that it is overweighted relative to auditory information, even when sound is consciously valued as the core domain content.”

Is this the most depressing scientific research ever?

link

My first reaction is to associate this with all these talentless show and plastic pop idols but then it got me thinking that decent artists (especially electronic) who put a face to their music or give some distinctive visual aesthetic tend to become more successful than those who don't but are just as good musically.

This also works with film or advert soundtracks too so maybe people familiarize themselves more with a visual element or image?

I remember reading this somewhere on here before. Can't be arsed to find it, anyways. Opinios, opinions.

BOLLOCKS! BIG FAT HAIRY BOLLOCKS!!!!

It doesn't matter, I'm having legit fun.

I said this in the other thread and I'll say it again in here:
I sure don't hope these so called "researchers" are being paid for this shit. Completely useless.

  On 9/28/2013 at 1:46 PM, Friendly Foil said:

I said this in the other thread and I'll say it again in here:

I sure don't hope these so called "researchers" are being paid for this shit. Completely useless.

I'm an academic and I agree with what you said. Also, I hate academics.

  On 9/28/2013 at 1:59 PM, Squee said:

 

  On 9/28/2013 at 1:46 PM, Friendly Foil said:

I said this in the other thread and I'll say it again in here:

I sure don't hope these so called "researchers" are being paid for this shit. Completely useless.

 

I'm an academic and I agree with what you said. Also, I hate academics.

  On 9/28/2013 at 1:46 PM, Friendly Foil said:

I said this in the other thread and I'll say it again in here:

I sure don't hope these so called "researchers" are being paid for this shit. Completely useless.

  On 9/28/2013 at 12:36 PM, MIXL2 said:

I remember reading this somewhere on here before. Can't be arsed to find it, anyways. Opinios, opinions.

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/80217-the-sound-of-music-is-irrelevant/

not true. i like CLark and he's in a wheelchair...

This explains how people tolerate the shit music in porn.

It's not bullshit, read the report. But the title of this thread is very misleading regarding the actual content of the research in question which is: Sight over sound in the judgment of

  On 9/28/2013 at 10:36 PM, OneToThirtySix said:

This explains how people tolerate the shit music in porn.

I would say that music in porn is usually awesome.

  On 9/28/2013 at 11:17 PM, impakt said:

It's not bullshit, read the report. But the title of this thread is very misleading regarding the actual content of the research in question which is: Sight over sound in the judgment of

music performance. A group of people were to guess the winner of a talent competition but they had to base their bets on either sound or video. Most people chose sound and failed. This research simply shows that statistically, human beings are better to judge the output of "talent competitions" based on visual input. Which shouldn't be a surprise since all reality "talent competitions" are really just meat markets.

I haven't read the paper or whatever but what about something like the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition. Bit surprising if that were just a meat market, no?

EDIT:

Well, had a quick look at the article and it seems they tested just that, classical music competitions. So this would be a situation where everyone is performing at a very high level and the difference in their look and body language is probably a lot more noticeable than the difference in sound is. I guess it isn't that surprising that people would latch on to any difference they can find if the contestants are musically as good as one another, although it defeats the point of the contest.

It would be interesting to see if the audio is weighted more when there are people who can't sing/play for shit in the contest, i.e. when the differences in that dimension are more obvious (as in the "reality" style talent competitions).

That's true, manmower. This article is pretty interesting for me, coming from a neuroscientific pov.

That's the power of marketing.

  On 9/28/2013 at 12:10 PM, soundwave said:

from Synthtopia

 

...

Is this the most depressing scientific research ever?

Maybe not compared to the Stanford prison experiment or the Milgram experiment - but maybe part of the same mechanism