The emotional impact of live music finally explained

Hearing live music can be more moving than listening to a recording of the same song. This is because the parts of the brain associated with emotional processing become more active.

Sasha Frewholz from the University of Zurich in Switzerland, composed 12 pieces of music, each 30 seconds long. Half were written with the purpose of conveying negative emotions such as sadness or anger. These are slower than the rest of the songs, are less harmonious, contain more minor chords, and were written to evoke positive emotions.

They then recruited 27 people with no musical training and asked them to listen to these 12 songs twice. The first performance was performed by a live pianist, and the second performance was played to the participants as a recording.

The order of hearing was randomly assigned, with 30 seconds of silence in between. Participants did not know when they were listening to a recording or a live performance.

While listening to music, they lay in an MRI scanner so the team could monitor their brain activity. The pianist was told to adjust the volume and speed of the piece according to this activity. For example, if participants showed little activity in response to positive music, they may have played louder.

“Recorded music does not adapt to the listener's response, but live pianists often adapt their music to the audience to get the best response from the audience,” says Frewholz.

The researchers found that live performances of both negative and positive pieces consistently caused brain activation in the left amygdala, an area of ​​the brain strongly associated with assigning sensory stimuli such as sounds to specific emotions. was found to lead to an increase in

The recorded songs, on the other hand, activated activity in the left amygdala much less and more inconsistently. This matched how emotionally participants rated each piece of music after the experiment.

The findings show that live music enhances our emotional responses, perhaps because of its free-flowing, dynamic nature, Fruhholz says.

The researchers hope to repeat the experiment with a larger audience in a concert setting. “When you go to a live concert, you're not alone,” Fruhholz says. “This intense emotional experience is also a social experience.”