The Big Question

The big question is: "What is Music?".

It seems an easy question to answer, because we are all so familiar with music. But being familiar with something is not the same thing as knowing what it is.

When I ask myself this question about music, I ask it as a scientific question. So I want an answer which relates music to our scientific understanding of the world. And I want an answer that makes predictions about music (and for bonus points, it should make predictions about other things besides music).

Current Developments

My ideas and theories about music are currently under very active development.

All the newest developments are being posted to my blog.

Musical Examples

Some tunes I have written

The question, "What is Music?", and its many answers ...

The Superstimulus Hypothesis: an earlier attempt of mine to explain music, about which I wrote a whole book. Over time I drifted away from the superstimulus hypothesis.

Very recently I have developed the hypothesis that music is actually a glial illusion.

Depending on the specific details of the hypothesized glial illusion, this may still actually be a hypothesis about a form of super-stimulus, for example music may be a super-stimulus for the perception of slow speech tempo.

 Copyright © 2006-2024 Philip Dorrell