Originally Posted by Bass Thumper
They conclude with this:
“By examining the subcortical response to musical intervals we found that consonance, dissonance, and the hierarchical ordering of musical pitch are automatically encoded by preattentive, sensory-level processing. Brainstem responses are well correlated with the ordering of consonance obtained behaviorally suggesting that a listener's judgment of pleasant- or unpleasant-sounding music may be rooted in low-level sensory processing. Though music training is known to tune cortical and subcortical circuitry, the fundamental attributes of musical pitch we examined here are encoded even in nonmusicians. It is possible that the choice of intervals used in compositional practice may have originated based on the fundamental processing and constraints of the auditory system.”
Note the points of emphasis - low-level sensory processing and fundamental processing and constraints of the auditory system.

That means the ear, not the neural processing.

But by itself, it's only enough to explain the basic building blocks. How they get used is much more interesting. It's like tension and release in a story, or sweet and bitter in food. Making art is the act of creatively using these elements. And for that, it's a lot more complex to explain because of learned expectations, form, sequence, and a ton of other factors.

-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.