What happens if you play hard techno or Death metal to a person that never listen to music? I would bet they won’t appreciate it. Musical taste is usually built over time. People usually start listening music with something “simple” like radio pop, then they like some songs and dive deeper into a genre, starting with easy pop-like songs, and then discovering lots of sub-genres. Switching from metal to techno is also usually through more predictable slower songs. Our journey through genres is a gradual process of building a predictive model in our brain.
Our brains are constantly predicting what comes next in a melody or rhythm. As neuroscientist Daniel Levitin... (read 561 more words →)