source file: m1573.txt
Date: Wed, 4 Nov 1998 00:31:07 EST

Subject: comparing neurological responses of naive subjects to otherwise excellent performances differing in degree of consonance

From: Ascend11@aol.com

Recent contributions here regarding psychological effects of musical
consonance have been most interesting and illuminating.  I believe there are 
both innate and learned factors which contribute to an individual's 
inner response to differences in degree of consonance in music.  An experiment
might be performed in which brain responses believed to be related to
emotional 
experience were continuously monitored in naive subjects listening to music 
of a kind which they generally liked, in which the degree of consonance of the
music (tuning system, harmonies used) was unobtrusively varied.     
They would not be provoked into analyzing what they were hearing beyond
perhaps 
thinking "that sounded really nice" etc. and not "those fifths set my teeth on
edge" 
(people on this list most likely would be unsuitable for such testing).  The 
performance quality and timbres employed would need to be natural sounding and
of high quality.  If the experiment were well designed and carried out and the
number of subjects was adequate, it probably could be determined whether 
and to what degree and in what ways the dimension of consonance affected 
neurological responses to music in which this parameter was varied. 
Such testing, if it were carefully and intelligently done, might yield at
least 
partial answers to questions which have been so heatedly debated for so long.

Dave Hill,    La Mesa, CA