MUSIC AS BIOLOGY

What We Like to Hear and Why

Dale Purves
Introduction to the Course
 Organization
• Six Modules each 40-50 minutes in length
• Modules are broken up into several Lessons
• Musical demonstrations by Ruby Froom
• Further examples available as Supplements
• Glossary of terms
• Purpose: To introduce a biological way of thinking
about music and why we are addicted to it
 Module I.
The Perception of 

Sound Stimuli
 Lesson 1.
Organization of the 

Auditory System
The Peripheral Components
The Central Components
 Lesson 2.
Sound Signals and 

Sound Stimuli
 [Demonstration of a sine tone]
Sound Signals
Sound Stimuli

“When a tree falls in the forest and there is no one

to hear it, is there a sound?”
 Lesson 3.
Tones versus Noise
Tonal Sound Signals
Most Natural Sound Stimuli are Noisy

Amplitude (dB)

Frequency (Hz)
 Lesson 4.
Determining the Sources 

of Sound Stimuli
The Conflation of Source Information at the Ear
Given this problem, how
does the auditory
system give us the
information we need to
behave correctly?
 The General Argument
• We evolved hearing to take advantage of the
information in sound energy
• Key among these advantages is social
communication
• For humans music of this involves understanding
the information in conspecific vocalization
• Music presents this information in its essential form
 The Main Points
• The auditory system generates what we hear for reasons
of biological advantage
• Itis important to distinguish sound signals (physics) form
sound stimuli (biology)
• Tonal signals are rare but especially important
• Most natural sound signals are non-tonal and noisy
• Sound sources are conflated at the ear
• Thus it is difficult to understand how what hear
(subjective) is related to the objective signals
Next time: An introduction to auditory perception.