The Origins of Music: Preface - Preface

strongly to the songs of one’s own species,but strongest of all to the song

of the individual being tested.Presumably the process of vocal learning

alters the tuning of these neurons to render them selective for the bird’s

own song.

Learning about Music

Does the information that we have gained through studies of birdsong

learning provide a useful perspective for studies of music in human

society? In the questions that follow,I use the concept “learning about

music”to refer to the process by which an individual acquires an inter-

nalized copy of the scale used by his or her culture and expectations

regarding how those notes are used.I do not focus on acquisition of skills

such as memorizing a melody,developing proficiency on a musical instru-

ment,or understanding music theory.Rather,I think about the uncon-

scious assimilation of a musical system that allows one to break up a

continuous spectrum of sound frequencies into a meaningful series of

notes.

Studies of avian song learning have revealed that instinct guides the

process of learning.How this relates to humans is unclear but raises some

tantalizing questions.Are human children similarly predisposed to struc-

ture the acquisition of music according to species-specific universals? For

example,do surveys of the ways in which different musical systems divide

an octave uncover any universals with respect to preferred note inter-

vals? Is the special emphasis we place on octave intervals,even going so

far as using the same name for tones of doubled frequency,evidence of

a human perceptual bias that serves to simplify and order a potentially

overwhelming range of sounds? Would children as readily learn a

musical system that does not contain an interval that is twice the funda-

mental frequency?

As we have seen,birds enter the world prepared to learn a song that

must be supplied by their environment.They are not eager to learn just

any song though;an innate program focuses their attention on the

correct song for their species.Similarly,human infants are able to rec-

ognize speech sounds,even those not included in their native language.

As humans engage in the process of learning about music,what are the

pieces that must be supplied to us from our environment? Perhaps we

are programmed to organize sounds we encounter into a musical system

using our own blend of constraints and preferences (Zentner and Kagan

1996).Jackendoff (1994) suggests there may be a universal musical

grammar based in part on the preexisting organization of auditory

perception.

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