Awareness and processing

The brain does a lot of things that we’re not aware of, because being aware of them would just get in the way.

Though you think you may know nothing about music, there’s a part of your mind which you’re not consciously aware of, which does. Part of your perceptual systems are actively focused on comparing patterns of notes you’re listening to with patterns of notes you’ve heard previously.

In the video above, Tim talked about how this part of your mind has been processing what it has heard for decades, and about how this processing is not conscious. After all, most of the time, most musicians aren’t sitting there going “oh, very interesting, a turnaround from a Bbmaj7 to a G minor to a C7, that’s an unusual progression” every time they listen to music. Most of the time, they’re feeling it, and that feeling is partially based on our unconscious knowledge of how music usually goes.

Your task

After watching the video, can you think of an example where, while you don’t consciously know what’s happening in the music (because, for example, musical notation is a bit of a mystery to you), there’s clearly a part of your brain that does, because the music makes you feel something?

Use the comments link below to share an example with our community.

References

Huron, D. (2006). Sweet Anticipation: Music and the Psychology of Anticipation. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.