"What is music? There’s no end to the parade of philosophers who have wondered about this, but most of us feel confident saying: ‘I know it when I hear it.’ Still, judgments of musicality are notoriously malleable. That new club tune, obnoxious at first, might become toe-tappingly likeable after a few hearings. Put the most music-apathetic individual in a household where someone is rehearsing for a contemporary music recital and they will leave whistling Ligeti. The simple act of repetition can serve as a quasi-magical agent of musicalisation. Instead of asking: ‘What is music?’ we might have an easier time asking: ‘What do we hear as music?’ And a remarkably large part of the answer appears to be: ‘I know it when I hear it again.’"
BBC World Service: The Forum
"This week on the Forum – we look at the power of expectation. How good are you at blind tasting? Could you tell if you sipped three different cups of coffee which was the best quality without seeing the price? And if you were given a pill to cure a headache – do you think it would help, regardless of whether it was real medicine or not? The Swedish neuroscientist Predrag Petrovic asks if a doctor’s expectations can affect the success of a patient’s treatment, the Indian neuro-economist Baba Shiv explains why consumers expect something to be better if they pay more, and the American musicologist Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis on why our enjoyment of music is determined by what we’re expecting to hear.
The Forum is the BBC World Service's flagship discussion programme, bringing together prominent thinkers from different disciplines and different parts of the world to try and create stimulating discussion."
BBC Radio4 Today: Repetition & Music
Discusses repetition in music with the BBC Radio 4 "Today" program
The Big Issue: Why Happy Grabbed the Nation
"Key to its success is its musical reiteration and the instructional nature of its lyrics, according to Dr Elizabeth Margulis, director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University Of Arkansas and author of On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind. 'That’s a pretty repetitive song,” she says of Happy. “There is a catchy bit that expressly invites you to clap along. It is literally inviting you.' ...
She adds: 'The thing repetition really does is it captures the motor circuitry of the brain, so you have this sense the music is really pulling you along. It can make people feel really happy. There is something about having a song that is literally about being happy that is using this technique that makes people happy. It just feels good.' "
Adapted from Chapter 4 of Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis' On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind.
The Atlantic: Why Do Songs Get Stuck In Your Head?
"Few people are spared the occasional experience of being gripped by the obstinate unfolding of an imagined line of music. Although the sound might not exist at the present moment in the real world, or be audible to anyone else, it can seem compellingly, maddeningly real. An episode of this sort often seems more like the reliving of a tune than the simple remembering of it."
Read MoreOxford University Press Blog: Encore! Encore! Encore! Encore!
How much repetition is too much repetition? How high would the number of plays of your favorite track on iTunes have to climb before you found it embarrassing? How many times could a song repeat the chorus before you stopped singing along and starting eyeing the radio suspiciously? And why does musical repetition often lead to bliss instead of exhaustion?
Music is repetitive, but just how repetitive remains a somewhat murky question. Repetition is found in the music itself, but also in your listening behavior. Your favorite track might feature a chorus that repeats several times, but you might also choose to play and replay this already repetitive track ad nauseam. David Huron estimates that more than 90% of the music people hear is music they’ve heard before. Victor Zuckerkandl explains...
WTOP (Washington, DC): How Earworms Crawl Into Your Head
by Neal Augenstein
WASHINGTON - Warning: this story contains songs you can't get out of your head.
Earworms - derived from the German Ohr (ear)+Wurm (worm) are songs that somehow crawl into your brain, where they are replayed ad nauseum.
"For many people, earworms are pretty annoying," says Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, associate professor and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at University of Arkansas, and author of On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind.
Margulis says a recent study shows more than 90 percent of participants reported being seized by an earworm in the past week, and a quarter of those people said they had earworms several times a day.
The question is, "Why?"
"We don't really have control over what gets stuck in there," says Margulis. "It might be something we love, it might be something really annoying."
Wisconsin Public Radio: The Joy Cardin Show
"Cynthia Schuster talks to Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis about the annoyance of “ear worms,” those repeating snippets of songs that we can’t seem to get out of our heads."
The Guardian: Top Ten Science & Tech Books for December
Brains, refrains and immortal souls
On Repeat: How Music Plays the Mind: Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
Exploring the integral role of repetition and "hooks" in music and language.
Discovery News: What's the Key to a Catchy Song?
Buzzfeed: Why Music Gives You the Chills
“The literature in music cognition tends to claim that between 1/3 and 1/2 of people experience chills in response to music,” says Lisa Margulis, Associate Professor and Director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas. She says certain kinds of people are more likely to get them: performing musicians (a whopping 90 percent!), women, and people who rank low on the “sensation seeking” dimension of personality. “They don’t need a roller coaster to blow their mind,” Margulis says. “A few measures of Mahler is enough.” Full Article >