I recall that when I was learning my first instrument, and started learning a lot of songs, a lot of the other instruments didn't really make sense. For instance, if I was learning a guitar part from a rock song, the bass/drums/keys sort of sounded like a background mix that I couldn't identify into their individual instruments/parts.
I've thought about taking up the guitar or piano since then, but haven't ever gotten around to it.
Funny you should say that - I've been slowly trying to learn guitar for a couple of months now. I picked up a ukulele last week on a whim and can't seem to put it down! It's simpler than a guitar, but there's still so much to learn: the chords themselves, of course, but also how chords are created and how that relates to the way the instrument is strung; strums/rhythm; fingerpicking; the way different types of strings change the character of the sound... it just goes on and on.
I'm not expert, but contact me if you want to chat sometime. My username is my real name, which is also my homepage's domain ( plus '.com') and my username on every social media service I use.
I still have a long ways to go, I can barely play basic chords properly
If you were enjoying it then how would it differ from any of the other variety of things you already enjoy that you spend money on?
How is that different than letting reflections of light off of objects control your emotional state? Do you also have no emotional reaction to art, or even as simple as preferring a certain color?
Would painting a room bright pink be no different to you than painting it black? Does looking at roadkill or a corpse feel absolutely no different to you than viewing something most would consider calming like a sunset, flowers or someone who you consider to be beautiful? If you do feel different, then yes, light reflecting off of objects does create an emotional reaction to you.
And by the way, since HN talked about Anki a few days ago [0], this is a nice little fact which I just entered into my database. Copy&pasted the first line of the Wikipedia article and used the cloze mechanism the ask for the term and its definition. Now I will never forget about musical anhedonia anymore.
In the second one, I felt pleasure looking at the pretty girls, but their singing did nothing for me.
I find myself distracted by the body language of the guy on the left (and later the one to the right). It is more interesting to me to watch how people behave than to listen to the music.
The second one does nothing for me - it's just dull.
Can you explain how you feel when you listen to those songs?
The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her. The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.
Thanks for this, it's very interesting. I've realised that I don't really rank music in that way - I don't have favourite songs, in the same way as I have favourite books, movies etc.
> The second one has a bit of a story behind it; the girls on stage are singing their hit song they wrote about Emmylou Harris, who is a famous singer herself and is in the audience. They talk about how she inspired them to sing so it's cool they have the opportunity to play for her.
The story is cool, you're right. I understand how it would be emotional to those involved, but I found the description of the story conveyed the emotions involved more than the singing did.
> The song is very sorrowful sounding but pleasant and beautifully sung so it brings tears to my eyes.
It's well sung, but I don't find it technically impressive like the guitar playing. Perhaps because, day-to-day, we are exposed to many good vocalists but very few guitar solos?
Really it was just that, noise.
Do you find it harder to enjoy movies?
Typically the score does so much _work_ in the name of emotional manipulation, that I wonder if it would make movies less enjoyable.
More specifically I wonder if you would like certain movies (Spielberg) less and other movies (Er, Um. Who doesn't use scores that much?) more?
I don't like "music movies" such as High Fidelity, 8 Mile, School of Rock, Blues Brothers. They are just average comedy/drama flicks for me. Maybe normal people like them more?
For a while if someone asked me what music I like, I replied film music. I do enjoy film music but maybe just because the music makes me remember the movie?
I'm definitely affected by the music. Maybe music can still emphasize emotions for a musical anhedonic and it just that music in itself does not do much?
For a similar reason, when choosing music to listen to, I generally listen to the same songs again and again - those which have a connection to my past. It is very hard to feel anything about a new piece of music.
This means that I may regularly listen to one track by a particular artist, but have no interest in any of their other songs. I don't even like listening to remixed or live versions of songs that I enjoy - they are sufficiently different that they do not evoke any memories and hence are uninteresting to me.
You know, I also don't dream. I wonder if there is a name for never dreaming and if there is any link between not dreaming and not having an emotional response to music.
Quite possibly. I do enjoy watching a movie on occasion, but there are many other things I would rather do with my time. It turns out that compared to most people, I don't watch many movies - I've seen well under 100 of the "IMDb Top 1000 Movies of All Time" [1].
I've never considered this to be related to music, but I guess it could be.
[1] https://www.listchallenges.com/top-1000-greatest-movies-of-a...
There's actually quite a lot of this: it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.
I sometimes wonder what people with pain asymbolia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_asymbolia) or aboulia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboulia) make of the rest of us talking abut pain and wanting things.
Some links: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/baTWMegR42PAsH9qJ/generalizi... http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/17/what-universal-human-ex... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11554894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10148792
Also, while I'm at it: when your nose is stuffy but which nostril it is seems to cycle over the course of the day, you're not imagining it and that's called the 'nasal dilation cycle' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_cycle ; those things you see crossing your vision are also real and part of your eye fluid, called 'floaters' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floater ; and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-eye_hallucination is probably self-explanatory.
That's exactly what's happening to me right now! I always just kind of assumed people were just using overly flowery speech to describe music! I remember one time in high school a kid who was way into music got really mad at me when I said I didn't really like music much. He said that I didn't seem much more than a sack of meat if I couldn't enjoy music.
> it takes some people a surprisingly long time to realize that they can't smell things the way everyone else can ('anosmia'), or that they don't see the same colors.
I've known I had a color vision deficiency since I was really young, but it isn't very strong so I don't run into trouble much. I only really got a strong example (outside of a purpose-built color vision test type thing) recently while playing Dwarf Fortress. Dwarf Fortress has a world map which represents volcanos as little red "^" marks. I was generating worlds repeatedly looking for a volcano near some grasslands. I was getting frustrated because I'd look at a map and wouldn't see anything. But after staring at the grassy areas for a while, I'd slowly start to see them. There were usually quite a few volcanos actually, it just was hard for me to find them. I was kind of confused as to why I wasn't seeing them easily before it hit me that the grassland is shown as green characters.
I tried showing a map to my sibling and my partner, both of whom have normal color vision. They both found all the volcanos immediately with no issues. It was wild!
Fortunately, Dwarf Fortress lets you customize all the colors used by the game. I should be able to make a higher contrast color palette for myself in the future.
Yes! I realised this a few years ago. When people say "that's a sad song", they really mean that the song makes them sad in and of itself.
Whereas, for me, the only way a song can make me sad is if it brings back sad memories - i.e. if I had previously heard the same song on a sad occasion.