Unpacking the Elements of Music and Our Brain’s Response

Written By: Alan Light

The fundamental elements of music—rhythm, melody, and harmony—are a primal force woven into the fabric of human experience. In “Sound is Fundamental,”the first episode of the new documentary series The Art of Sound, David Byrne addresses the seemingly innate curiosity that our species has for seeking out a variety of sonic experiences. “Early humans gravitated to places where the sound was really different—caves, forests,” he says. “It was an extraordinary place, not an ordinary place.”

When most of us think about sound in our lives today, the first thing to mind probably isn’t ambient sonics or site-specific echoes but (to borrow the name of a groundbreaking hip-hop production team) organized noise—by another name, music. When we listen to music, however, numerous factors enter our minds: the lyrics, the context, and the backstory of the writer or performer. These are, of course, all valid lenses through which to examine a piece of music, but we tend to forget that they are a step removed from the actual sound itself.

Focusing on the Core Elements of Music: Listening to the Sound Itself

Here’s an exercise I use in every class that I teach: Choose a song and write a description, as detailed as you can, of what you hear. Not who wrote it or what it’s talking about or when it was recorded or anything about the piece other than the movement of the sound. Does it get louder or quieter? Does it speed up or slow down? Are different instruments added or subtracted as the song progresses? This assignment helps us focus on the tangible elements of music at play.

I love reading students’ responses because it’s a reminder that even the work of the greatest songwriters reaches us first as sound, and that if we don’t respond to the feeling of a song, not even the cleverest of lyrics is going to win us over. “Sound is so inherently primal,” says researcher Robyn Landau in Sound is Fundamental. “We feel sound with our whole, entire DNA.”

The Brain’s Response to Rhythm and Volume

In his 2006 book, “This Is Your Brain on Music,” Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist from McGill University, maps the specific locations in the brain responsible for actions such as sensing rhythm, emotional reactions to the various elements of music, and dancing. He determined that while our understanding of music is largely shaped by culture, experience, and history, there are certain elemental building blocks that are wired into us and precede neural processing—the rhythmic effect of a mother rocking her child to sleep with a lullaby, for instance, appears to be a universal phenomenon. We can all recognize the sense of responding to rhythm patterns in physical and unconscious (or pre-conscious) ways, whether it’s tapping your foot, nodding your head, getting lulled into zoning out, or storming the floor at the club. Consider the relatively straightforward aspect of dynamics—the volume, the loudness and softness in a piece of music, and how that makes us lean in or lean back as listeners. “Loud sound is a potential threat,” says researcher Dr. Erica Warp in the documentary. “When a loud sound occurs, there’s a cascade of events that happens inside our brain.” But as David Byrne points out, when it comes to live music, excessive volume can be an attraction. “In the concert world, we’re used to sound having more physical impact,” he says. “It can have a profound emotional effect in some ways.”

Further Elements of Music: Why We React to Dissonance

It’s more complicated to think about our responses to dissonance and consonance and how those reactions are formed. Even the terms themselves have multiple meanings: Sound can be harmonically consonant/dissonant (the blending of simultaneously sounded notes) or can have a consonant/dissonanttimbre (how those notes sound or their texture).

In his 2012 book How Music Works, discussing the music of ancient Mesopotamia, David Byrne notes that consonant harmonies “are felt to be ‘stable’ and settled, while dissonant harmonies are felt to be unstable, temporary, and ‘want’ to move on to something else.” Levitin writes that “the brain stem and the dorsal cochlear nucleus can distinguish between consonance and dissonance…before the higher level, human brain region” is involved, indicating that we have an instinctive ability to sense the difference in sound quality.

But of course, different listeners can tolerate, or even seek out and enjoy, music that’s considered dissonant. While we tend to consider major scales to feel “happy” and minor scales to be “sad,” these turn out not to be inherent associations but seem to be learned behavior, unique to each individual; our concept of dissonance and whether it attracts or repels our ears is affected by culture, geography, era, memory, and our own sense of challenge or adventure.

“Music is among the most distinctive features of the human race,” Levitin writes. “No known culture now, or anytime in the past, lacks music.” We are a long way from understanding why this use and shaping of sound is so fundamental to our lives—but projects like The Art of Sound help us get a little closer to appreciating this glorious mystery.

Music journalist and author Alan Light is the former Editor-in-Chief of Vibe and Spin magazines, and was a Senior Writer at Rolling Stone. He has written books about Prince, Nina Simone, the Beastie Boys, Johnny Cash, and the song “Hallelujah.” Alan is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Esquire, and co-hosts the music news podcast “Sound Up!”