It is this way with all art. If you ask someone to describe a work which is “good art” or “well designed”, it usually takes longer to describe than things which are considered too simple (easily compressed) and also longer to describe than things which are considered too random (easily compressed). But not all things which take this Goldilocks amount of words to describe are considered well designed, just some of them. So art is also more than that.

That doesn't really explain the popularity at times of clicks-and-beeps music and some other modern music.

I don't know. I'm inclined to think that it's more visceral. At least a good part of its appeal, and the oldest. There's the famous example of slaughterhouses using calm, predictable music and consonant harmonies to calm their animals.

I once read a book that tried to express this as a fractal dimension. I really don't remember the name of the book though.

I've read a paper which had a similar theory - music is a reward hack for the brain - the brain is a prediction machine, and it gets rewarded when it correctly predicts stuff. Music is highly predictable due to it's rhythmic mathematical structure, thus very easy to predict, with a lot of content to predict (hundreds of events per minute) thus you get a lot of reward from it.

As an example, EDM music is highly predictable, and highly popular.

African tribal drum music is also highly predictable, while also being complex in poly-rhythmic ways.

You mean you have a hypothesis. :) A theory is an entire body of facts and experiments.

"Tetrachord" typically refers to a series of four notes separated by a perfect fourth, not simultaneous notes, coming out of the music theory of the ancient Greeks. Although that may not be the intended meaning here.

The quote is not calling a major chords a tetrachord; it's comparing major chords to the set of tetrachords (whatever the quoted person has in mind; the linked paper isn't immediately accessible to me), despite not being a member.

Why is a murmuration of starlings so pleasing to watch?

This first song is pretty western for Chinese music even if it is made by someone from China, which I am assuming it is I have no idea. Also this playslist has a lot of non-Chinese music in it, there's a Final Fantasy song for example, and likely quite a bit of AI generated music. I am not an expert in Chinese music but this doesn't seem very representative. I have a feeling this playlist makes you feel those ways because that was the feeling the person who put this together was going for, it just happens to have some songs from Chinese artists and was probably put together by someone who is Chinese.

It does not seem to be traditional Chinese music, at least. Or at least my understanding was that the major-minor tonality you can hear in the linked piece did not play a (any?) role in traditional Chinese music.

That was really good! Thanks for sharing. <3

Bohlen and Pierce are on line two for you, shall I ask them to hold?

Hondo.

That's part of the premise of the movie "The History of Future Folk".

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2245195/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2oKGSmr9oo

There are such civilizations here on earth: ants. Termites. Honey bees.

I think not being able to experience music as much as I do would be akin to losing an entire sense.

Can you drive and listen to music - are you actually doing both at the same time?

Maybe the engine and the wind is an important part of the sonic experience.

I was intrigued by your (philosophical) comment and I'm interested in what kind of music you usually listen to.

My thoughts:

> Music has objective properties communicated via audible medium, and what's more, of a quantitative nature.

I would argue that this is probably a western-classical view of music. Music can be quantified/measured, but those numbers are just a tiny part of the listening experience.

> It expresses order.

Sure, but that doesn't necessarily mean that "maximum order" is the most pleasing one. Expectation/resolution etc. may be important, but what if for example a tune does not resolve to expectations? Is it automatically "bad music"?

> The more beautiful music is, the more integrity, proportion, and clarity it has.

Beauty is in the eye (or maybe better in this case - the ear) of the beholder. And for me personally beauty isn't necessarily clarity. I like dissonance in music, maybe some atonality, quarter tones/microtonality, irregular rhythms and polyrhythms etc. These things somewhat violate the aesthetic value (beauty) and that is what makes it more interesting, at least to me.

Just my 2p, I'd be happy to hear your point of view :)

I don't know that it risks killing it, but I generally agree with your sentiment. Why can't we just be satisfied with the fact that we enjoy it? Why do we need an explanation for everything? We've removed so much mystery and awe from the every day already...

Well don't read anything related to music analysis, or something I discovered this week https://cklixx.people.wm.edu/teaching/math400/Chris.pdf or for some books : "Exploring Musical Spaces. A Synthesis of Mathematical Approaches" or "Generalized Musical Intervals and Transformation"

Knowing why I want to headbang isn't going to stop me from headbanging in the moment

Some people find beauty in the explanations and understanding too, Feynman being a very famous example of this.

Explain how anything could in any way "kill music."