so, for this one we're gonna talk bout human biology first
in fact, we still don't know much about the nature of music. there are even speculations about why music appeared in the first place. of the main theories:
• music as part of social bonding. it is known that joint activities bring people together, and music requires a high level of coordination of group activities. a feeling of belonging to a group
• music as a by-product of speech (аuditory cheesecake). then music is a by-product of adaptations such as language, signal recognition, which affects the pleasure centers without providing any practical survival benefit. highly doubt
• and music as sexual signal. music requires a lot of brain activity, and the selection of partners was based, among other things, on intellectual characteristics
and we don't know enough about eridians to say whether any of these principles might apply to them. we don't know about their evolution, ancient societies, etc. so we'll accept it as a fact that they have music
but will it be pleasant to our ears? and will they like our music?
first, let's figure out why we like our music. speaking about music in general, the prediction theory is popular. the brain has evolved to constantly predict possible future outcomes. research has shown that the brain releases dopamine not only at the moment of climax, but also before it. the brain doesn't like to be too accurate in its predictions because it's boring, but it also doesn't like to be completely wrong. something close to the truth in music turns out to be just right
the reasons why we like rhythm are quite simple. our body adapts to the rhythm, the brain to some extent synchronizes with it, “resonates”
harmony is a little more complex, but has a lot to do with our biology. we love consonances because of their frequency relationships and we don't like dissonances because when two frequencies are not at the right distance, it creates a "roughness" effect in our ears due to the resulting beats. the brain finds it more difficult to process information and the sound feels tense, it also creates more sensory overload
so, knowing that our perception of music is very much dependent on our biology... would the music of a creature with a different biology be as pleasant to us?
we already know that many animals don't like human music. scientists conducted research and found that even monkeys, in general, do not enjoy our music as much as music created specifically for them (but they surprisingly appreciated heavy metal). you can listen to music created for animals (i found cats) by david teie - it sounds interesting. i can't find his music for tamarin, but, I'm quoting "Snowdon says even the music that made the monkeys content is not pleasant to the human ear."
so it is almost certain that humans and eridians would not be able to aesthetically enjoy each other's music. from a scientific perspective? yes, they would be delighted to explore each other's biology and culture. but I think listening to this on a regular basis would quickly start to irritate them
it would be interesting to think about what rhythms, frequencies and patterns would be pleasant to the eridians. would they love repetition as much as we do, to give their ever-working brains a rest, or would they hate routine and try to add constant pattern changes? would they like very low sounds that resonate in the body, or very high sounds that are inaccessible to human hearing but suitable for the language? idk man im not andy weir
