Step 6.

Today I stumbled across a video (Conte, 2013) in which the presenter talks about why people like certain bass sounds in music. In this video he talks about the human evolution of how we perceive low frequency sounds. He talks about how at some point in human history we develop the ability to hear the sound of a roar and know it came from something dangerous such as a lion. This would then inherently cause you to produce adrenaline, meaning the ‘flight or fight’ response has kicked in. In the video this is linked to why people love bass sounds so much today, it says that back in our history a lot of the low frequency sounds you would of heard would have been from dangers such as large animals and falling rocks. The sort of things you may need to take precautions against. Unlike today’s world where low frequency sounds is everywhere, in music, the sound of traffic and industrial machinery. There is almost a constant hum of low-end noise in our modern society. In this video they suggest that our bodies still react in the fight or flight way to certain low frequency sounds as a natural response to hearing them.

This gave me my final idea for my research, I wanted to investigate whether or not any physical changes related to fight or flight occur when listening to low frequency sounds. Physical changes such as heart rate, blood pressure and anxiety levels.