Music

Casting my eyes around the carriage on the train home last week, something I’d always been oblivious to struck me. Half the passengers had black or white cords coming out of their ears. This analytical venture spans unique yet interweaved facets: music’s modern role as a device of escapism, and as a modus operandi to character evaluation.

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Part 1: Music & Escapism

Over the last few decades, the way we live has been fundamentally altered by modern technology. At the practical end of the spectrum, two prominent devices – the computer and mobile phone, have revolutionised the way we do things and how we connect with each other. Outside ergonomics and communication, technology has also brought us purely utilitarian entertainment devices: the ancestral boom-box, Walkman and Discman for example.

Following the cords to the other end inevitably leads to the latest generation ‘MP3′ or ‘Ipod. One could argue these ubiquitous devices have impacted lifestyle as invasively as the computer, for no other reason than they’ve made music accessible to the masses: anytime and anywhere.

You don’t tend to give music much thought as you plug in your earphones to listen to Flo-Rida when Connex delays your train. Music is a mechanical response and popular solution to dead time. Accumulated waiting in post office queues and unavoidably occurring on commutes to and from occupations of person, dead time has passed whenever you find yourself thinking “damn, I’m never going to get those fifteen minutes of my life back.” Personally, I endure about forty minutes on a daily basis. This has been known to rise to a hundred if meeting with certain members of the stockbroking fraternity.

As we struggle with increasingly demanding lifestyles and a distinct lack of time to support them, dead time adds to the overburden. Nonetheless, there are ways of putting ‘dead time’ to some measure of purpose. Aboard my morning train for example, I have a few options:

• Read a book/newspaper/magazine
• Attempt to sleep
• Observe people
• Introspect/think
• Listen to Music

The list isn’t exhaustive but the important thing to note is that they all (aside from sleep and music) require a degree of cognitive effort. Introspection is particularly perilous because when the mind is left to its own devices, it defaults either to fantasies or to worries that are normally repressed when we’re focused or engaged, and drift to the surface when the mind is idle. Our need to displace this tendency has given rise to many a case of workaholism. Given dead time has strong potentiality to induce anxiety, we understandably need to fill the lull. In this regard, music has absolute advantage on three dimensions:

Cognitive Effort

Using a psi-cost framework, music is net positive because it actually preserves mental energy. If we think of a computer in stand-by mode, it still draws and uses power. The human mind operates on a similar premise: even when we’re idle, mental energy is being consumed. To the extent listening to music reduces cognitive intensity by distracting us from thinking; it effectively puts our computer into a state of ‘hibernation’ where power consumption is further reduced.

Aural Pacification

Specifically, music invokes dual effects of distraction and gratification, which cumulatively reduce the mind’s stress load. Building on the above, music is more than a loose term attached instrumental sounds mashed with vocals and samples.

We define music (from racket) by those tunes we perceive as being melodic or harmonious. This perceived acoustic harmony permeates sensory gratification. Whenever one of our senses encounters positive stimuli, it induces a broader calming effect – i.e. the gratification element. Further, we get the pacification effect of blocking out noise. Noise in this instance is the visual and aural garbage we are bombarded with – the occupational hazard of living in a modern wasteland. The difficulty filtering, processing and interpreting noise and associated complexity make it exasperating to deal with.

Music has the unique ability to drown out the aural component of noise. It is direct, simple, and stipulates no requirement for filtering/screening. Whereas noise is inconsistent and confusing, music has a designated emotive outcome (although volatile across genre), which holds internally consistent with respect to processing. Consider the example of classical music versus a conversation. A conversation must be processed and filtered, and further, subjective judgement applied in order to extract a ‘signal’ (i.e. the message) from the background noise. With music however, there is no such processing – notes and lyrics are generally undemanding.

Escapism Effect

Via distraction circuit or evocation, music provides an avenue of escape from life’s anxieties. Through the message or signal element of music, the nebulous logic coagulates. If a song conveys an ‘uplifting’ message it will most certainly have an uplifting emotive outcome. By the same token, if a song conveys an ‘aggressive’ or ‘depressive’ message, we’d expect equivalent emotive outcomes. 

Imagine for a moment an unconfident student about to sit an exam, and he’s sitting outside the assessment centre listening to ‘Eye of The Tiger.’ The designation for the song is to evoke confidence, and to that extent, it is an elicited effect. Ceteris paribus, he will likely walk in more confident having listened to that song than if he hadn’t.

Where a song’s designation is targeted toward a particular mood or emotion, then we have reasonable ground to construe that same emotion will be evoked to some degree in a critical mass of people, either on a primary or secondary level. Techno/dance/trance group genres have no obvious primary emotional designation, but they do have secondary effect on certain demographics. Evidently, the average young man would be predisposed to hooliganism and driving faster with high-bpm techno blaring against the control state of silence.

Part 2: Music & Character Evaluation

Building on the notion that songs are charged with emotive designation, it follows (insofar as emotion is a defining trait) a person’s taste in music is instrumental to revealing who they are.

A forewarning that developing the underlying theoretical matrix was an exercise in inductive reasoning and required very broad generalisations. Consequently, the resulting insights and extrapolations, whilst functional, are less than perfect.

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Imagine having to choose between four prospects for a blind date, which we’ll ascribe androgynous names: Alex, Sam, Shannon and Val. As a proviso, the only type of information you’re given about them concerns their taste in music:

1. Alex: My Chemical Romance
2. Sam: Rick Astley
3. Shannon: Ice Cube
4. Val: Frank Sinatra

Given that small piece of information, we will draw on our mental lexicon, make speculative inferences, and finally ascribe traits to the person which reflect the linkages we perceive between the brand of music and personality characteristics that relate to it.

• My Chemical Romance – alternative, rebellious, emotive
• Rick Astley – expressive,
• Frank Sinatra – old fashioned, mellow, conservative
• Ice Cube – brazen, aggressive, blunt

For example, were I told I’d been set up on a date with a young lady whose favourite artist and song was Britney Spears and The Pussycat Doll’s ‘Don’t Ya’ respectively, I would likely run for the hills or ensure I went on said date equipped with enough chloroform to knock out a bear and make a clean getaway. By contrast, were the mystery woman to reveal she was partial to the voice of Julie London, I’d have to seriously consider substituting inordinately expensive red wine in place of the chloroform.

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For a bit of fun (I use the term loosely) last week, I was contemplating the tentative correlations between a person’s taste in music and their underlying emotional profile.

Being in possession of very little time, I continually strive to improve the efficiency element to things I do. Presently, a number of my endeavours involve making assessments of character: the process of which invariably takes a great deal of time and effort. Shortcuts in this regard have never served me particularly well, because for every cutback in time and effort expended, there’s always a disproportionate loss of precision.

The end we are trying to achieve is to break through the myriad of layers a person surrounds/barricades themselves in to shield the core aspects of their personality and those they feel most vulnerable about. Through customary means, this is exceptionally arduous as one must take care to balance inquisitiveness with diplomacy. Probing overzealously isn’t intrinsically wrong, but it alienates and can bring about hostility.  

Therefore, when meeting anyone new, it is always worthwhile casually engaging inexplicit topics, such as musical preference. Usually the resistance to yielding this information is negligible, though there is a propensity to avert telling the truth where the person believes their taste in music won’t be looked favourably upon. (E.g. trying to impress a young peroxide bombshell with Oompa Loompa orange complexion by telling her you enjoy the symphonies of Beethoven.)

Musical taste is by far the number one directly observable and easily discovered attribute amenable as a proxy for personality. Of course we are making an explicit assumption that the person’s favourite songs are also those that are the most meaningful to them on a personal level, which isn’t always the case – but more often than not, incredible insight is afforded.

People often define themselves or their situation with ‘theme’ songs which are used to reflect emotion to the outside world. The practice is widespread on sites such as MySpace, where the chosen song will play as background to the individual’s profile page. Such theme songs present an especially interesting proposition to the analyst. I can posit with high conviction that if someone defines themselves using ‘Unwell’ by Matchbox Twenty, it indicates an inclination to self-pity. Gary Jules’ ‘Mad World’ is another song which commonly advocates this inclination.

Part of our judgements of character are based on musical preference, though it seldom goes deeper than the denoting similar taste in music as a positive/good thing.

When we take the analysis up an octave, and acknowledge it is plausible to match various songs, artists and genres with corresponding attributes of emotional profile and personality, there is often a realisation of uncanny accuracy. Looking at people I’ve grown to know over months and years, and the early conversations, it is amazing how much about them was said silently by their musical taste. A dirty shortcut it may be, and however limited, the efficacy of musical taste as a proxy for personality is undeniable. It’s saved me more than once.

~ by X on June 22, 2008.