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Notes -
I’m pretty sure all the potency of music is “longterm memory association of sound with emotions and physical states”. As we get older, we experience emotions and physical sensations which have sounds associated to them. The Western music scale is mnemonically optimal because of the “seven plus or minus two rule” of memory (we can only remember about seven things, in short term memory). There is also “natural” proportion in intervals which probably plays a part. IMO it must have to do with longterm associative learning because: (1) children are born with primitive music taste and understanding; (2) not everyone has a good or sophisticated taste in music, and this seems unrelated to general intelligence, so it can’t have to do with mathematical pattern recognition per se; (3) the best songwriters are not the best theorists, meaning there is something different from theory at work (social-emotional awareness likely); (4) listening to more music young seems to enhance taste in music, probably acting as additional training in the recognition of aural-emotional association
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