Scientists Shine Light on Why People are Crazy about Bass

The power behind the bass is sensational. It can trickle up your spine, send you chills and create a state of euphoria in your body. However, there hasn’t been a concrete explanation until recently regarding the significance of the bass and how our brain interacts with different pitch frequencies. Canada’s McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind performed a study on this specifically. After carefully monitoring the electrical activity in the brains of 35 subjects, results signaled that lower-pitched tones are much easier for humans to follow.

McMaster Director and neuroscientist Laurel Trainor says, “There is a physiological basis for why we create music the way we do. Virtually all people will respond more to the beat when it is carried by lower-pitched instruments.” The majority of dance music productions showcase high-pitched lead melodies with deep bass lines. Both pitch frequencies are able to be clearly heard by listeners, but scientists are suggesting that it is easier for people to psychologically sync up with bass sounds.

Trainor and her colleagues delved deeper into this study, applying the same sequences of differently-pitched tones that they conducted for the human subjects to a computer model ear. The model ear revealed the same results, once again signaling that the ear can better identify low-pitched patterns rather than high-pitched patterns.Cognitive scientist Dr. Tecumseh Fitch of University of Vienna believes that this study “provides a very plausible hypothesis for why bass parts play such a crucial role in rhythm perception.”

Source: Huffington Post