...try reading the actual study. Both Wired and you guys completely hosed this.

The study is about how people react to expected, somewhat unexpected, and VERY unexpected chord progressions. Basically, the human brain has a tendency to expect certain sounds to come after certain other ones; do it right and the brain's happy. Alter it a little and you can make the brain REALLY happy, but screw it up TOO much and the brain gets very sad indeed.

The study has nothing to do with whether computers make lousy musicians. The mention of that was in passing, and in reference to raw plonk-plonk-plonk playbacks of note sequences used in other studies, and was there to highlight differences in study methodologies, not to say "computers can't play music".

But hey, might as well pick the funnier headline. What does truth have to do with journalism, anyway?

People get paid for these studies? I thought it was common knowledge! It was long ago discovered that it's the imperfections in timing, pauses, and various other "inaccuracies" which give music it's character. In fact MIDI sequencers account for this by allowing you to tweak this... You can quantize all the notes and their durations to mechanical perfection, or "fix" them by only 50% or not at all.

Don't strip me off of House, Trance and Drum n' Bass.

Are you being serious? Girls Aloud are NOT plastic. They are very talented girls, all 5 of them. Hence the reason they won a TALENT show. They're amazing live singers.



WOWZERS what a profound revelation, how much does this guy get payed for such ground breaking research ?? O_O

*note,

research results not applicable to fruity shiny music player/mobile toys :O)