How many times does the chorus repeat in your favorite song? And, take a moment to think, how many times have you listened to it? Chances are you've heard that chorus repeated dozens, if not hundreds, of times, and it's not just popular songs in the West that repeat a lot. Repetition is a feature that music from cultures around the world tends to share. So, why does music rely so heavily on repetition? One part of the answer come from what psychologists call the mere-exposure effect. In short, people tend to prefer things they've been exposed to before. For example, a song comes on the radio that we don't particularly like, but then we hear the song at the grocery store, at the movie theater and again on the street corner. Soon, we are tapping to the beat, singing the words, even downloading the track. This mere-exposure effect doesn't just work for songs. It also works for everything from shapes to Super Bowl ads. So, what makes repetition so uniquely prevalent in music? To investigate, psychologists asked people to listen to musical compositions that avoided exact repetition. They heard excerpts from these pieces in either their original form, or in a version that had been digitally altered to include repetition. Although the original versions had been composed by some of the most respected 20th century composers, and the repetitive versions had been assembled by brute force audio editing, people rated the repetitive versions as more enjoyable, more interesting and more likely to have been composed by a human artist. Musical repetition is deeply compelling. Think about the Muppets classic, "Mahna Mahna." If you've heard it before, it's almost impossible after I sing, "Mahna mahna," not to respond, "Do doo do do do." Repetition connects each bit of music irresistibly to the next bit of music that follows it. So when you hear a few notes, you're already imagining what's coming next. Your mind is unconsciously singing along, and without noticing, you might start humming out loud. Recent studies have shown that when people hear a segment of music repeated, they are more likely to move or tap along to it. Repetition invites us into music as imagined participants, rather than as passive listeners. Research has also shown that listeners shift their attention across musical repetitions, focusing on different aspects of the sound on each new listen. You might notice the melody of a phrase the first time, but when it's repeated, your attention shifts to how the guitarist bends a pitch. This also occurs in language, with something called semantic satiation. Repeating a word like atlas ad nauseam can make you stop thinking about what the word means, and instead focus on the sounds: the odd way the "L" follows the "T." In this way, repetition can open up new worlds of sound not accessible on first hearing. The "L" following the "T" might not be aesthetically relevant to "atlas," but the guitarist pitch bending might be of critical expressive importance. The speech to song illusion captures how simply repeating a sentence a number of times shifts listeners attention to the pitch and temporal aspects of the sound, so that the repeated spoken language actually begins to sound like it is being sung. A similar effect happens with random sequences of sound. People will rate random sequences they've heard on repeated loop as more musical than a random sequence they've only heard once. Repetition gives rise to a kind of orientation to sound that we think of as distinctively musical, where we're listening along with the sound, engaging imaginatively with the note about to happen. This mode of listening ties in with our susceptibility to musical ear worms, where segments of music burrow into our head, and play again and again, as if stuck on repeat. Critics are often embarrassed by music's repetitiveness, finding it childish or regressive, but repetition, far from an embarrassment, is actually a key feature that gives rise to the kind of experience we think about as musical.
Koliko puta se ponavlja refren u vašoj omiljenoj pesmi? I razmislite na trenutak, koliko puta ste je preslušali? Velike su šanse da ste čuli kako se taj refren ponavlja desetine, ako ne i stotine puta, i zapadnjačke popularne pesme nisu jedine koje se mnogo ponavljaju. Ponavljanje je svojstvo koje deli muzika u kulturama širom sveta. Dakle, zašto se muzika toliko zasniva na ponavljanju? Jedan deo odgovora dolazi iz nečega što psiholozi nazivaju efektom samog izlaganja. Ukratko, ljudi su skloni da preferiraju stvari kojima su ranije bili izloženi. Na primer, na radiju kreće pesma koju ne volimo baš naročito, ali zatim je čujemo u prodavnici, u bioskopu i opet na ulici. Uskoro, udaramo u ritmu, pevamo reči, čak i skidamo pesmu sa interneta. Ovaj efekat samog izlaganja deluje ne samo kod pesama. Takođe deluje za sve, od oblika do reklama za fudbalsko prvenstvo. Dakle, šta je to što čini ponavljanje tako naročito rasprostranjenim u muzici? Da bi ovo istražili, psiholozi su zatražili od ljudi da slušaju muzičke kompozicije koje su izbegavale tačno ponavljanje. Čuli su odlomke iz ovih komada ili u njihovom originalnom obliku, ili u verziji koja je digitalno izmenjena tako da uključuje ponavljanje. Iako su originalne verzije komponovali neki od najpoštovanijih kompozitora 20. veka, a ponavljajuće verzije su montirane prostim audio uređivanjem, ljudi su ocenjivali ponavljajuće verzije kao prijatnije, interesantnije i kao verovatnije da ih je komponovao čovek umetnik. Ponavljanje u muzici je neodoljivo. Pomislite na klasik Mapetovaca: "Mana Mana". Ako ste ga pre čuli, gotovo je nemoguće da, nakon što otpevam "Mana Mana", ne odgovorite sa: "Du du du du du". Ponavljanje neodoljivo povezuje svaki delić muzike sa narednim delom koji dolazi posle njega. Tako da, kada čujete par nota, već zamišljate šta ide sledeće. Vaš um nesvesno peva zajedno, i pre nego što primetite, možda već počnete da glasno pevušite. Skorija istraživanja su pokazala da kada ljudi čuju da se ponavlja segment muzike, skloniji su da se kreću ili udaraju u njegovom ritmu. Ponavljanje nas poziva u muziku kao zamišljene učesnike, pre nego kao pasivne slušaoce. Istraživanje je takođe pokazalo da slušaoci premeštaju pažnju kroz ponavljanje u muzici fokusirajući se na različite aspekte zvuka pri svakom novom slušanju. Možda ćete prvi put primetiti melodiju fraze, ali kada se ona ponovi, vaša pažnja se pomera na to kako gitarista okida žicu. Ovo se takođe dešava u jeziku, što se naziva semantička zasićenost. Ponavljanje reči kao što je atlas do besmisla može učiniti da prestanete da mislite o tome šta reč znači, i umesto toga se fokusirate na zvuke: na čudan način kojim L sledi T. Na ovaj način, ponavljanje može otvoriti novi svet zvukova koji nisu dostupni pri prvom slušanju. L koje sledi T možda nije estetski bitno za "atlas", ali okidanje žice gitariste može biti od kritičnog ekspresivnog značaja. Iluzija od govora do pesme odslikava kako jednostavno ponavljanje rečenice više puta skreće pažnju posmatrača ka tonalitetu i temporalnim aspektima zvuka, tako da ponovoljeni izgovor zapravo počinje da zvuči kao da se peva. Sličan efekat se događa sa nasumičnim sekvencama zvuka. Ljudi će nasumične sekvence koje su čuli kako se ponavljaju oceniti kao muzikalnije od nasumične sekvence koju su čuli jednom. Ponavljanje proizvodi neku vrstu usmeravanja ka zvuku, što smatramo karakterističnim za muziku, dok slušamo uz zvuk, priključujući se u mašti notama koje će uslediti. Ovaj obrazac slušanja poklapa se sa našom prijemčivošću da postanemo zaraženi pesmom, kada nam se delovi muzike uvuku u glavu, i sviraju iznova i iznova, kao pokvarena ploča. Kritičarima je često neprijatna repeticija u muzici, smatrajući je detinjastom ili regresivnom, ali ponavljanje, daleko od neprijatnosti, zapravo je ključno svojstvo za proizvodnju iskustva koje smatramo muzičkim.