PhD in neuroscience here. I didn’t specifically study musicology, but i did study the neuroscience of music.

The theory that holds the most water, in my opinion, is that music activates all the same parts of the brain as motor processing. It makes us want to move, and to make predictions about what’s coming next. People like makimg predictions. It’s also a pro-social activity that encourages bonding and communication. These are typically positive experiences.

Edit: you mentioned we like the breaking of patterns in music. Very true, we love syncopation. But we don’t tap our foot to the rhythm, we groove to the beat.

Don’t animals also “understand” music to some extent and seem to enjoy it?

Because at it’s core, music is a beautiful lack of auditory dissonance. See this minutephysics episode for an in depth explanation why. It’s fundamental. (to music itself, not to any particular style of music) https://youtu.be/tCsl6ZcY9ag

Yes I am a human, I love human things like… um… music…

finishes zipping up skinsuit

“Is it not strange that sheep’s guts should hail souls from mens’ bodies?” – Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

(Guitar/lute strings used to be made from sheep gut, for anyone confused)

But we don’t love patterns

I would disagree with that somewhat - I think we do love patterns, but the more complex and intricate the better.

Which is why music appeals so much - it’s chock full of patterns overlaying each other, echoing and counterpointing each other, contrasting each other in ways that are both conflicting and harmonious. Good music is like seeing the rhythms of the world all around you.

I’m also interested in why there is such varying tastes in music. Why do I love metal but hate pop? shrugs

I’m not a scientist, but I think it is because humans like patterns, which is what music is. What makes random banging and loud noises annoying and how is that different from music? I think the answer is that music has patterns. What makes people like or hate different types of music is that they like one pattern over another.

My pet theory is that our brain rewards us for interpreting clues correctly, because this is crucial for survival. And patterns make it easy to do this interpretation correctly, therefore triggering the reward system frequently.

But if it is too easy to interpret a pattern correctly, the reward will be lessened, because the challenge you succeeded in was lesser. And it was also crucial to survival to fade out patterns which don’t change, so that e.g. the wind brushing through leaves doesn’t drown out the noises from a predator approaching.

That’s why patterns which don’t change every so often stop triggering the reward system and therefore bore us.

I don’t. And I don’t understand why I’m the only one who just in general would rather hear silence then music.

It’s the breaking of the patterns that sound good in music, but only in specific ways. Other ways sound discordant.

I like a lot of different music and I also like harsh noise, when it’s adventurous like Merzbow. It sounds discordant, but it sounds great and I enjoy listening to it. Maybe you should go more fundamental, “why do we humans like information entropy” or something like that.

The answer is we don’t know unfortunately. I dont think scientists have found a definitive answer on this one. The theory tho is that it had some evolutionary benefit in the past, but we dont know why that would be either.

Why do we like reading? It’s just arbitrary characters, really, in a sequence.

Cause it makes me feel funny and I like it duh

I think all experience of art, enjoyable for us or not, is something the brain adheres to because it is unlike nature. Nature tries to all blend together in a very loose way. We categorize many things like animals, land, the stars… but it all is really just one thing. Art is the ability to purposefully change that continuity with intent. To see something sitting there, doing nothing, and you feel the desire to arrange it in some way.

Music is no different. We realized sound was one of our senses and most of nature’s songs are chaotic, outside the rare particularly talented bird.

We’ve found ways to harness sound into whatever we found is most pleasing. And it seems what it pleasing is different from one person to the next, but also shares ground through the instruments we use.

I imagine when we first started rhythmically hitting sticks on rocks, it wasn’t long before we had an arrangement of our favorite sticks and rocks to hit together. And we just kept getting more creative from there.