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How many times does the chorus repeat
in your favorite song?
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And, take a moment to think,
how many times have you listened to it?
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Chances are you've heard that chorus
repeated dozens, if not hundreds, of times,
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and it's not just popular songs in the West
that repeat a lot.
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Repetition is a feature that music from
cultures around the world tends to share.
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So, why does music rely
so heavily on repetition?
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One part of the answer come from what
psychologists call the mere-exposure effect.
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In short, people tend to prefer things
they've been exposed to before.
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For example, a song comes on the radio
that we don't particularly like,
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but then we hear the song at
the grocery store, at the movie theater
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and again on the street corner.
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Soon, we are tapping to the beat,
singing the words,
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even downloading the track.
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This mere-exposure effect doesn't
just work for songs.
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It also works for everything
from shapes to Super Bowl ads.
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So, what makes repetition so
uniquely prevalent in music?
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To investigate, psychologists asked
people to listen to musical compositions
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that avoided exact repetition.
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They heard excerpts from these pieces
in either their original form,
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or in a version that had been digitally
altered to include repetition.
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Although the original versions
had been composed by
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some of the most respected
20th century composers,
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and the repetitive versions had been
assembled by brute force audio editing,
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people rated the repetitive versions
as more enjoyable, more interesting
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and more likely to have been
composed by a human artist.
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Musical repetition is deeply compelling.
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Think about the Muppets classic,
"Mah na mah na."
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If you've heard it before,
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it's almost impossible after I sing,
"Mah na mah na,"
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not to respond, "Do doo do do do."
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Repetition connects each bit of music
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irresistibly to the next bit
of music that follows it.
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So when you hear a few notes,
you're already imagining what's coming next.
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Your mind is unconsciously singing along,
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and without noticing,
you might start humming out loud.
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Recent studies have shown that when
people hear a segment of music repeated,
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they are more likely to move
or tap along to it.
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Repetition invites us into music
as imagined participants,
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rather than as passive listeners.
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Research has also shown
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that listeners shift their attention
across musical repetitions,
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focusing on different aspects of
the sound on each new listen.
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You might notice the melody
of a phrase the first time,
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but when it's repeated, your attention
shifts to how the guitarist bends a pitch.
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This also occurs in language,
with something called semantic satiation.
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Repeating a word like "atlas" ad nauseam
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can make you stop thinking about
what the word means,
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and instead focus on the sounds:
the odd way the "L" follows the "T."
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In this way, repetition can
open up new worlds of sound
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not accessible on first hearing.
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The "L" following the "T" might not be
aesthetically relevant to "atlas,"
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but the guitarist pitch bending
might be of critical expressive importance.
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The speech to song illusion
captures how simply
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repeating a sentence a number of times
shifts listeners attention
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to the pitch and temporal
aspects of the sound,
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so that the repeated spoken language
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actually begins to sound
like it is being sung.
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A similar effect happens with
random sequences of sound.
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People will rate random sequences
they've heard on repeated loop
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as more musical than a random
sequence they've only heard once.
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Repetition gives rise to a kind of
orientation to sound
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that we think of as distinctively musical,
where we're listening along with the sound,
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engaging imaginatively with the note
about to happen.
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This mode of listening ties in with our
susceptibility to musical ear worms,
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where segments of music
burrow into our head,
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and play again and again,
as if stuck on repeat.
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Critics are often embarrassed
by music's repetitiveness,
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finding it childish or regressive,
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but repetition, far from an embarrassment,
is actually a key feature
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that gives rise to the kind of experience
we think about as musical.