What makes live music special?
With festival season upon us, music fans are heading out to revel in the joy of hearing and seeing their favourite performers up close.
But what is it that makes live music special? What is different about the way we experience live music from the way we experience recorded music?
To answer these questions, researchers at the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) and the University of Manchester are looking at what happens in our brains when we listen to music. The answers may also provide hints as to how music can help sufferers of lifelong medical conditions.
What happens in our brains?
To study how live and recorded music affect our brains, the researchers brought a local orchestra into the neurology lab. Over a weekend, 20 keen concert-goers watched the Manchester Camerata perform a piece under 3 conditions: live, a pre-recorded live performance, and a pop-music-style video.
While they watched, the audience’s brain activity was measured on an electroencephalogram (EEG) — a technique using sensors placed on the scalp to pick up electrical signals from the brain.
During the live performance, the researchers saw more activity in EEG waves associated with sensory processing and attention, implying the audience were more engaged when the music was live.
“The data showed with statistical significance that a live music experience is different,” says Dr Michelle Phillips, Senior lecturer in Music Psychology at the RNCM, who led the research. “There’s something about live music in people’s brains that could indicate that it’s more engaging, or attracts more attention, or people are more focussed.
“And this matches what people say: that live music is more enjoyable and more immersive.”
“Having those musicians in the lab and watching them was absolutely fantastic. It was the best weekend of my scientific career,” says Jason Taylor, Lecturer in Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Manchester and a collaborator on the project. “Then watching the same thing again on video, I thought ‘Oh, that’s nice, but it’s not quite the same.’ So that’s what we’re trying to capture: what the brain is doing when we have those different experiences.”
A unique experience
So why do people enjoy live music so much? What makes it different from simply watching a recording?
The researchers believe it is a combination of 3 factors: being physically present and immersed in a concert environment, sharing an experience with others, and the sense of occasion.
“Live music is a shared experience,” says Dr Phillips, “There’s a lot of evidence that what people value in a live performance is feeling like they are sharing the experience with other people in the room, both the performers and the rest of the audience. And this ties into the idea of music as a social communication tool.
“But the other thing that came through really strongly in that data was that people value the sense of occasion. They like to go out for a drink beforehand, and get dressed up.
“People value live music in a very special way, and they value it for specific things that aren’t to do with the music.”
Music as medicine
With music having such a profound effect on an audience, there may be ways to use it to help those suffering from lifelong medical conditions, such a Parkinson’s disease. In the next stage of their research, Dr Phillips and her colleagues plan to study how music affects the brains of Parkinson’s sufferers.
“If you talk to people with Parkinson’s, and you say, ‘What’s the role of music in your life?,’ they say, ‘It’s totally vital,’” says Dr Phillips.
“I spoke to an accordion player with Parkinson’s a couple of weeks ago, and he said, ‘If I go to my music-making group on a Wednesday afternoon, my tremors stop until Thursday morning.’ At the moment there’s no research which captures that.”
With the incidence of Parkinson’s expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2030, finding new approaches to managing the condition will become increasingly important.
Making music better
The music industry can also benefit from understanding the role live performances play in people’s lives. Musicians at the RNCM are already being taught to make their performances more interactive, to improve audiences’ sense of shared experience.
Knowing what is important to people about live performances — immersion, shared experience, and sense of occasion — can help improve the experience of recorded music too. Facebook live, for example, can create a feeling of immersion by showing multiple camera angles, and a sense of shared experience through the ability to see who is watching and post reactions.
It is clear, though, that what people really want is to be there, in person, with the musicians, and surrounded by the music.
“Post-covid, the live music industry is very much alive and kicking,” says Dr Phillips. “I think we all wondered whether it would get back on its feet. And it has, because people still want it, because it’s special.”
“We want live music, we need live music, and there are lots of things in live music that you can’t get elsewhere.”
Want to know more?
If you’re a UK taxpayer, your contributions helped fund this work, via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — the funding body that allocates government funds for research — and the nine research councils. You can read more about what we do here.
The research in this article received financial support from the Centre for Cultural Value, which is funded by the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
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