The idea is that the brain finds it pleasing to learn things. It effectively seeks novelty. Repetitive, predictable music does not sound pleasing. Pure randomness also does not sound pleasing. Somewhere in between is novelty. Patterns that are definitely real, but new. That somehow violate your brains expectations.
The ability to enjoy music is related to how good the high-dimensional reconstruction is. A listener who has no experience with a genre might not perceive subtle symmetries and higher order patterns, thus, it's just some kind of noise. The more she listens, the more her musical "vocabulary" and ability to perceive these symmetries increase. Developing taste for it is developing ability to represent it fully as it is, a form of integrated information.
Thank you.
Blues has a fairly strict formula in which most songs follow. Most songs are in 4/4, and most modern music sounds fairly similar yet people are really into it.
(BTW, I believe we're overly simplifying by speaking of music as a single entity. All of the elements you mentioned are a foundation in more popular music, but good luck finding them in more modern or experimental genres.)
The cognitive effort to digest Schoenberg is different from that for a pop song. Still, you can progressively familiarize yourself with a genre, and relax on pieces that seemed hard and inaccessible earlier.
Yes, as a passionate music collector and someone that can get lost in weird, obscure and very leftfield music, this is something I notice all the time. You start with something accessible only to find yourself enjoying obscure 70s synth funk recorded on tape in someone's bedroom months/years later. Or similar.
It's why we recommend "Kind of blue" whenever someone wants to get into Jazz, which is difficult if you just randomly start...anywhere.
The mere score of a blue piece is just as good as useless for conveying the power of a particular blues performance for example.
Most 12-bar blues use a similar chord progression but have different melodies. Even the same song performed by two different musicians will sound different enough to be perceived as "novel".
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole has similar vocal attributes, also very enjoyable.
Pop music is repetitive and predictable, yet, ... well, enough said there.
Just because we can transcribe an audio recording into 12 tones, and 16 divisions of a bar, doesn't mean that's all the information it contains. There's a whole lot more.
There's little variations in pitch, tone, dynamics, etc. All the stuff that separates a great recording from a lifeless snooze.
My theory is that pleasing music falls half way been the predictable, and the unpredictable. So if the beat is too predictable, the artist can always compensate by using an unusual melody... etc. But many of the ways an artist can add unpredictability can't be expressed with traditional notation.
I'm a "lover of serious music" and I do have some favorite albums that I come back to every now and then. But I don't listen to the same song in a constant loop on repeat. That would be dreadfully boring.
Similarly, most people would not enjoy a song consisting solely of a single measure repeated verbatim over and over again. Even the most repetitive music has some variation.
On a more serious note -- yes, but even this would become boring quickly despite the variations. This problem has been solved by:
- using different themes for different sections, or
- intertwining two or more such themes for contrast within the same section.
Prime examples of this approach are Beethoven piano sonatas.
I seem to recall I read somewhere that (part of?) the album was painstakingly made using Supercollider [1], but can't find a proper reference.
Indeed, even subtle variation can be enough to turn something "musical".
I play music, which requires listening to yourself practice the same things over and over again. Sometimes just a couple of bars. I like it.
Even if you get bored, that is not the same thing as the music suddenly sounding "bad". It sounds exactly the same.
But when you are practicing, you rarely play it exactly the same each time. Otherwise, what's the point of practicing? Hopefully, it sounds a bit better every time you go through it.
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/07/the-jaws-theme-might-...
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu... ("Indifference to dissonance in native Amazonians reveals cultural variation in music perception")