How Neuroscience Explains the Human Connection with Music

Hello everyone, I'm AI Jake and welcome to the Sound Connections recap series where we distill the most valuable insights from each episode into a quick and engaging summary. In this episode we discuss the world of AI in the music industry with our guest Tom Fritz. So who is Tom Fritz? Hello everyone, so I'm Tom Fritz. I have this little research group at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences. It's called Music Evoked Brain Lasticity and what we try to do is we try to optimize the use of music in rehabilitation, but more recently also in fitness.

Before going any further, I should mention that Dr. Thomas Fritz traveled to a remote mountain region of northern Cameroon. There he met the Mafha tribe that he refers to a few times here in this episode. The Mafha had no access to radio, MTV, or YouTube, so they had never heard western music. This was a crucial condition for one of his earlier experiments. Dr. Fritz wanted to see if the Mafha could recognize the emotional expressions of happiness, fear, or sadness in the western music he brought with him. If they could, it would provide strong evidence that musical understanding is innate and universal. Tom explained how making music together creates universal connections across cultures, giving meaning to the musical experience.

What we know from the experiments with the Mafha, for example, is that you do have a huge influence of unculturation, you know, so cultural experience. So one of the realizations I had from my musical ethnological experiences is that probably the most cross-culturally valid universal of music is making music together. Being yourself in the act of music making. You take two people from two different cultures, and they're playing two instruments from totally different backgrounds, and they will still be able to have this musical dialogue. And although it may not be that you understand all the words, it is that you create these situations together. And these situations and the atmosphere in these situations, they will also give meaning to what you do together. Because people will immediately build up this, you know, the context of what the music actually means.

He emphasized that live performance and simple, authentic storytelling are crucial in connecting with audiences and can often create a magical impact. In the end, you see a lot of that happening all the time, is that it may not be enough to just make nice recordings and put them out there, playing live. It's also important in this storytelling procedure. This is actually, this is real. This type of storytelling aspect to it may become even more important in the future, you know, to follow up on what are people actually trying to achieve and identifying with these goals.

In the end, I don't think it always needs a very complex or anything story. It can be something very simple. You know, it can be, oh, this girl singing for her grandpa. And that could be enough. Sometimes there's, you know, perceived magic happening where you don't know what the hell is it that kicks this song off and the world wants to listen to it. Yeah. Tom discussed the importance of agency in music, explaining how even the illusion of control can significantly enhance the listener's experience. The key word is agency. Agency with music can happen on many levels. So if you're putting on the song as a DJ, you have the agency. If you switch the radio station, you've got the agency to change something. If you play a musical instrument, you have a lot of agency. This aspect of agency is enormously important. And if you're just listening to music passively, there's also already this agency, either it's triggered or it's not triggered. Sometimes it's even enough to have an illusion of agency. So for example, when you're running to music and you're synchronizing with the beat of the music,

I think that's exactly what's happening is you have this illusion of an increased agency with the music. So even if it's an illusion of agency, that can still be key to all this positive physiological and cognitive effects. Okay. He also highlighted how the rise of AI generated music pressures the industry to simplify and improve the music licensing process and be more transparent. And also let's not forget that this drive for AI generated music is partly because it's so difficult also to have music licensed. This puts a tremendous pressure also on the industry to solve all these issues. People could be comfortable just letting them sleep for all this time. And now there's a certain pressure on the industry to say, okay, you know, if you want your license, you get out your license music where there's real people behind and you know, they're paid and everything. All this has to be very easy and transparent to do for users and people who want to use this music for

something, etc. Yeah, it has to be a feasible process. Tom predicts that live music will endure despite AI because the human connection and identification with artists are crucial for differentiating human made music from machine made music. So I have a little prediction that I think that no matter how much AI we have, the act of making live music will probably never die out exactly for this reason, because there's this human and you can relate to them. I mean, something about the intentions or the life of the artists. And I think this will play a huge role also differentiating human made music from machine made music. The key is your identification with the music. The main key to all these psychological effects is something we call self-efficacy.

This identifying with an artist, for example, can do a lot. And this can be knowledge about the artists. It could be even information not related to the music at all, like the face she's in. When she recorded this music, I know how she felt then. Yeah, I can relate to that. This does a lot. This connection between the artists and the listeners is going to be enormously relevant. He further explained that when a personalized music creation reflects your intentions, it significantly boosts your sense of involvement and identification with the music. If you feel that what you're imagining is being reflected in what you're getting, if you say, hey, I would like to have something that sounds like happy birthday and I'm talking with Jakob today, it should include his name and maybe the name of his sister, his brother, blah, blah. And maybe the song about us going this afternoon to the park to celebrate his birthday and we'll invite him with a bath of champagne. And

that's what the song should be about. And it should sound a little bit like this and that song. And you then have an outcome. You probably feel, oh yeah, I actually was involved in designing this, you know, and I can hear that. And it's reflecting all this information that I want, want in there. And I thought of that and now it's there. Identification will be a million times higher, of course, you know. Lastly, he reemphasized that real time control over music creation is a powerful, universal way for people to connect with and identify with music. We give people ways how to, in real time, control, for example, the musical sounds themselves. Seems that this can always, you know, making the music yourself, that's probably the most universal way how to identify with music.

Throughout the episode, Tom emphasized that the enduring power of music lies in human connection, whether through live performances, authentic storytelling or personal involvement in music creation. That's all for today, folks. Tune in next time for another episode recap.