Musicians

Written by Karl Leif Bates, Duke News & Communications
A pair of studies by Duke University brain scientists shows powerful new evidence of a deep biological link between human music and speech.
The two new studies found that the musical scales most commonly used over the centuries are those that come closest to mimicking the physics of the human voice, and that we understand emotions expressed through music because the music mimics the way emotions are expressed in speech. Composers have long exploited the perception of minor chord music as sad and major chord music as happy, now the Duke team thinks they know why.
In a paper appearing in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (JASA), the Duke team, led by Dale Purves, a professor of neurobiology and member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, found that sad or happy speech can be categorized in major and minor intervals, just as music can. So your mother was right: It’s not only the words you say, but how you say them.
In a second paper appearing Dec. 3 in the online journal PLOS One, Kamraan Gill, another member of the team, found the most commonly used musical scales are also based on the physics of the vocal tones humans produce.
“There is a strong biological basis to the aesthetics of sound,” Purves said. “Humans prefer tone combinations that are similar to those found in speech.”

http://www.dibs.duke.edu/news/research-findings/2009/12/03/the-biological-link-between-music-and-speech/