Perhaps anyone who has heard live music can confirm that it sounds much better than when we listen to the same music, for example, through the phone in headphones.
Our favorite bands' concerts can even make us cry when they play on stage. Scientists from Switzerland have done research and found the answer to why we get so emotional when we listen to live music. Listening to live music can be more emotional than listening to recorded music because it causes more activity in the part of the brain associated with processing emotions.
Saša Fruholz of the University of Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues composed 12 pieces of music that last 30 seconds. Half of the compositions were written with the intention of conveying negative emotions, such as sadness and anger. They are slower, less harmonious and contain more minor chords than other songs, which are written to evoke positive emotions.
They then recruited 27 people, who had no musical training, to listen to these 12 pieces twice, once as a live performance by a pianist, which the participants heard over loudspeakers, and once as an audio recording. The order in which they were heard was randomized, with 30 seconds of silence between tapes. The participants did not know when they heard the recording and when they heard the live music.
The researchers found that live performances of both negative and positive compositions led to increased brain activity in the left amygdala, a brain area strongly associated with attributing sensory stimuli to certain emotions (such as sounds). Meanwhile, recorded melodies elicited significantly less and significantly more inconsistent activity in the left amygdala. This corresponded to how “emotional” the participants rated each piece of music after the experiment, writes New Scientist.
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