Understanding Human Responses to Music and Its Uses

The Power of Music

There's a song that seems made expressly for us.

Human Responses to Music

People cannot stay indifferent while listening to music. Before the sound stimulus, we always react in one way or another.

Types of Responses:

• Emotional Response: An emotion is an intense mental state that arises spontaneously in the nervous system, causing a positive or negative reaction. It is involuntary.
• The Body's Response: Often, while listening to music, we make small movements without being conscious of them, and we follow the beats. But what makes us dance is the rhythm, which also marks the style of dancing.
• Intellectual Response: Many times when we hear a song, we look at any aspect that draws our attention: the timbre of a singer's voice, the rhythm, the touch of the drums, etc. When we do this, we respond in an intellectual manner.

The fact is that looking at the elements of musical language:

• Improves our perception and comprehension of music.
• Increases the pleasure we get.

Ambient Music

• It was music that had to be felt, not heard; music that did not produce tensions.
• The music was not confined to any particular genre.
• Music programming never presented breaks at regular intervals.
• The volume was always moderate.
• Very high and very low frequencies were avoided.

Musical Taste

Musical taste leads you to hear the music we like and do so with the feeling that everything we hear is what we have chosen, but this is not always the case, and many economic factors are involved.

So, if that is proper to each, it is pleasing to have an open and inquisitive mind because it promotes a good disposition to discover and appreciate different types of music.

Uses and Functions of Music

• Curatorial: To hear or interpret for pleasure, without any definite intention. In this case, the music has an artistic function and a strictly musical value.
• Functional: It is all of the music made on request, especially for a particular purpose to which it must be adapted.

Gregorian Chant

• Texture: Monody, with one collective voice
• Timbre: Vocal, a capella, without instruments
• Text: In Latin
• Composers: Anonymous, they did not sign out of humility
• Movement: Slow, unhurried, with no marked pulsation
• Rhythm: Free, depends on the text, without a time signature
• Melody: Long, on the words of the text or lengthening vowels
• Character: Relaxed

The repertory of Gregorian chant is trained to gather and unify religious songs. Gregorian chant is a monodic plainchant. It is also called this because of its horizontal movements; the rhythm is flexible.