Can You Trust Your Ears?

[koncide]

To clarify, every single individual hears completely different.

Truth.

This is why my mum describes Kahn as "boring and repetive" and why Outlook had to move locations because the locals described it as "devil worshipers music".

[Genevieve]

Hearing, perceiving and processing aren't the same thing.

Take two identical twins separated at birth who have experienced equal amounts of trauma to the ears and were subjected to the same amounts of loud noise at the same volume, etc. Basically physically the same.. But have them experience different things in their lives and associate different sounds/music to different emotional states. Both will probably 'hear' the same thing, but will respond differently to the same thing they've heard because they've grown to associate different emotional states to these sounds.

To clarify, every single individual hears completely different.

Truth.

This is why my mum describes Kahn as "boring and repetive" and why Outlook had to move locations because the locals described it as "devil worshipers music".

Kahn is repetetive. It's loop based dance music based on "post-African repetition". She is just bored of the repetition while you aren't. Drum & bass, techno, garage, etc. Rhythmic repretition is at the heart of this music.

'Devil worshiper music' is a judgement, not a sound. They hear the same music (maybe not the same way), but they probably associate the music with unchristian hedonism. Given what's going on at Outlook, I can understand why.

I do believe that people hear sound differently, but I think it has more to do with the way you pick-up the sound physically (the structure of our ears/earbones/density of our bone and other tissues.. everything that relates to the transfer of sound). We also experience sound differently, but that's not the same as hearing.

[koncide]

Hearing, perceiving and processing aren't the same thing.

I'd very much argue that they are.

They are all part of the same auditory neural circuit in the brain. We cannot really "choose" how sounds make us feel. If every time someone rang a bell, and then burnt you with a cigarette end, you would eventually be conditioned to associate the sound of the bell with impending pain. As demonstrated by that experiment with Pavlovs dogs, (A Level psychology coming in handy right about now) certain auditory stimuli predisposes you to act a certain way. So you are very much "hearing" danger, and the sound you hear is coloured by that emotional reaction.

I think this point is also demonstrated by the OP. I listened to that clip again today, and try as I might, I can't really "unhear" what my brain has already learnt to be true. Hearing, perceiving and processing being 3 parts of the same circuit. If I showed a new person that clip, they would just hear gibberish, just like I did to start with. At the same time, I would be hearing the vocoded English sentence. It's exactly the same sound, but we're hearing something completely different.

There's a book by Oliver Sacks called "Musicophillia" which I'd recommend anyone interested in this sort of stuff reads. He talks about a case study with someone who didn't "get" music at all, and felt no emotional stimulation by it whatsoever. This person describes hearing music as just "a bunch of annoying noises" or something along those lines. Bearing in mind that most of us don't choose to feel an emotional connection to music. We hear it, and it stimulates us. You can't really force yourself to "dislike" a tune. Which is why despite the fact we all have very outlandish musical tastes here (at least compared to the mainstream) I bet all of us have caught ourselves humming a tune which was played on commercial radio at some point.

What you "hear" is what your brain is telling you is there. Your ears are simply organs receptive to sound, what you're "hearing" is generated by your brain. In the process, other cognition comes into play, such as prior emotional experience or cultural judgements. Making it quite fair to say that no two people "hear" the same sound at all.

[anri1]

Cool.
When you said lets do it twice i blinked and missed it i had to watch it again to catch it.

One more cool stuff..
Listen to this video until the end, and when it stops, play it again to hear the difference, tune continue to
"creep - up"... It will blow your mind!

[hellagargoyle]

melody wise, i think no. mixing wise, yes. melodys u need to analyse the emotions of the track to make sure it makes sense and is enjoyable and i think that thats more of picking up on the feelings that u get from the music rather than actually hearing tones n stuff coming from it.