Why recorded music will never feel as good as the real thing

In a world of music streaming services, access to almost any song is just a few clicks away. Yet, the live gig lives on. People still fill sweaty basements, muddy fields and gilded concert halls to hear their favourite musicians play. And now neuroscientists might know why: live music engages the brain’s emotion centres more than its recorded counterpart.

Concerts are immersive social experiences in which people listen to and feel the music together through crescendos, key changes and drops. They are also dynamic—artists can adapt their playing according to the crowd’s reaction.

It was this last difference that led neuroscientists, based at the Universities of Zurich and Oslo, to study the brain responses of people listening to music. In the “live” experiment, participants lay in an MRI scanner listening to the music through earphones, while a pianist was positioned outside the room. The pianist was shown the participant’s real-time brain activity as a form of feedback. In the recorded condition, participants listened to pre-recorded versions of the same tunes.

The scientists were interested in how live music affected the areas of the brain that process emotions. In the live condition pianists were instructed to try and modulate their playing in order to drive the activity in one of these regions known as the amygdala, an almond-shaped area deep inside the brain.

The results, just published in the journal PNAS, showed that live music had far more emotional impact. Whether the music was happy or sad, listening to the pianist playing in a dynamic way generated more activity in both the amygdala and other parts of the brain’s emotion processing network. The researchers also found that participants’ brain activity tracked the acoustic features of the music, like tempo and pitch, far more closely when it was played live.

The study was far from replicating the real experience of a gig, and the authors noted that the live music ended up sounding quite different from the recorded tracks, which may have driven some of the differences in participant’s brain activity. But the results indicate that the ability of artists to change the way they play in response to the audience may be one aspect of what makes live music special.

Some musical acts now attempt to recreate the real gig experience with everything but the artist—ABBA Voyage is a social, immersive show performed entirely by pre-recorded hologram avatars. But without Benny’s ability to read the mood of the room, it will never quite match the real thing.

为什么录制音乐永远无法与现场音乐带来的感觉媲美

在这个音乐流媒体服务的世界里，几乎任何歌曲都可以几次点击就能听到。然而，现场演出仍然存在。人们仍然涌入闷热的地下室、泥泞的田野和金碧辉煌的音乐厅，去听他们最喜欢的音乐家演奏。现在，神经科学家可能知道原因了：现场音乐比录制音乐更能激活大脑的情感中心。

音乐会是一种沉浸式的社交体验，人们一起通过渐强、调性变化和跌宕起伏来聆听和感受音乐。音乐会也是动态的——艺术家可以根据观众的反应调整他们的演奏。

正是这个最后的区别促使苏黎世大学和奥斯陆大学的神经科学家们研究人们听音乐时的脑部反应。在“现场”实验中，参与者躺在核磁共振扫描仪中，通过耳机听音乐，而钢琴家则在房间外。钢琴家可以看到参与者的实时脑活动，作为一种反馈形式。在录制条件下，参与者听的是预先录制的相同曲目的版本。

科学家们对现场音乐如何影响处理情感的大脑区域感兴趣。在现场条件下，钢琴家被指示尝试调整他们的演奏，以驱动其中一个区域——杏仁核（大脑深处的一个杏仁状区域）的活动。

刚刚发表在《PNAS》期刊上的研究结果显示，现场音乐有更大的情感影响。无论音乐是欢快还是悲伤，动态演奏的钢琴音乐都能在杏仁核和大脑情感处理网络的其他部分产生更多的活动。研究人员还发现，当音乐是现场演奏时，参与者的大脑活动更紧密地跟随音乐的声学特征，如节奏和音高。

这项研究远未能复制真实的演出体验，作者指出，现场音乐最终听起来与录制曲目有很大不同，这可能驱动了参与者脑活动的某些差异。但结果表明，艺术家根据观众反应改变演奏方式的能力可能是现场音乐特别之处的一方面。

一些音乐表演现在尝试用除了艺术家本身之外的一切来再现真实的演出体验——ABBA Voyage 是一场完全由预录全息影像化身表演的社交沉浸式演出。但没有了Benny读取房间情绪的能力，它将永远无法完全匹敌真实的演出。

笔记区

streaming services 流媒体服务

live gig 演唱会

sweaty 闷热的

neuroscientists 神经学家

counterpart n. 对应的人（或事物）

crescendos n. 声音渐增

MRI scanner 核磁共振扫描仪

pre-recorded 预先录制的

instructed adj. 受教育的；得到指示的 v. 指示；教育

modulate  v. 调整

amygdala n. [解剖] 杏仁核

almond n. 杏仁

generate v. 产生，引起

track v. 跟随

acoustic  adj. 声音的，听觉的

tempo n. （音乐的）节奏

pitch n. 音准，音高

replicating v. 复制（replicate 的 ing 形式）；

recreate v. 再现

hologram  n. [激光] 全息图；全息摄影，全息照相

avatar n. 化身，替身