From soft rock to classical - THE MUSIC DOGS MOST DIG

Favourite songs go straight to the heart, they say, but it’s more a questioin of scientific enquiry that they go directly to the regions of the brain that get us pumping up the volume. Tastes differ, however, so what moves you can leave others cold or irritated. Humans can clearly express their displeasure when the response is negative; pets are not so lucky,  being at the mercy of their owners in terms of both the volume and style of the music played.

A few years ago, researchers at the University of Glasgow in Scotland looked at how dogs actually react to music. “The effect of different genres of music on the stress levels of kennelled dogs” is the name of the study, which was carried out on 38 dogs over a period of just over six months. As dogs kept in kennels are exposed to a greater risk of chronic stress, the scientists focused on the targeted reduction of stress levels. The dogs were therefore played songs on several consecutive days from the genres of soft rock, Motown, pop, reggae, and classical music.

Music soothes – but some kinds more than others

Studies show which music genres dogs find particularly relaxing.
© iStockphoto – Eva Blanco

Whatever the genre, the first thing that became apparent was that dogs spent less time on their feet and more time lying down when the music was played, which suggests a higher degree of relaxation. Classical music, whose influence on dogs had already been tested in other (short-term) studies, was a special case. Dogs that were repeatedly exposed to classical music over a period of seven days quickly became accustomed to it, and the positive effects quickly disappeared. In contrast, the study found that “the effect of habituation may be reduced by increasing the variety of auditory enrichment provided”. The aim of the study was to determine whether the beneficial effects of auditory enrichment observed with Classical music could be extended if dogs were exposed to different genres of music. During exposure to different genres of music, dogs spent significantly more time lying and less time standing. So if the music genres alternated, the desired effect was maintained over the entire period.

The researchers found a particularly high heart rate variability – taken as a sign of reduced stress –  in those dogs that were played soft rock or reggae. The physical response was somewhat lower with pop, the aforementioned classical music, and lowest with Motown. So if you have your four-legged friend in mind when choosing a playlist, you might prefer Phil Collins and Bob Marley to Rihanna, Ravel and Diana Ross.

Music is not just for one species

If you go along with David Teie, however, such an approach is at best a well-intentioned concession. The award-winning cellist and composer belongs to the third generation of a family of professional musicians and does not just want to make people happy with his music. “I know it sounds silly, but what’s really silly is the idea that music can only be for one species,” he is quoted as saying on the website of the innovation conference TED.

In Teie’s opinion, one phase in particular is crucial for both the human and animal relationship with music: the phase in which babies are still in the womb, where they perceive their mother’s voice as well as her heartbeat and breathing. According to Teie, human voicings are part of the standard repertoire of composers who want to evoke certain emotions in their listeners at certain points in their work. Soothing songs, for example, often contain high and soft sounds that people use to express their affection in everyday life. In contrast, songs in which anger plays a role contain low and loud sounds that convey a sense of threat.

Monkeys express emotions, which in turn can be transformed into music

In order to reach animals emotionally with his music, Teie came up with the following concept. He wanted to combine the sounds they hear in their mother’s womb during their development with the sounds they use to express their emotions later in life. In Teie’s words, it sounds like this: “I could take this recipe for music, as it were, and take out the ingredients for humans and replace them with the ingredients for whatever species I was writing for.”

The Liszt monkey looks like it would be into some long-hair guitar rock, but their complex cries respond to emotional states and correspond to musical patterns.
©iStock – Denise Hasse

Due to their close relationship to humans, Teie initially concentrated on monkeys. He found support in the form of primatologist Charles Snowdon from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who provided him with recordings of a group of Cotton-top tamarin (Liszt) monkeys.

And just as Teie had hoped, he was soon able to link the monkeys’ cries to the respective emotion reflected during the utterance. Musically trained, he also recognised a correspondence with musical patterns. If the monkeys were relaxed, their cries occurred in a regular rhythm and in so-called consonant, intervals, those where notes vibrate at harmonious frequencies. But if the monkeys were anxious, this was expressed in an irregular rhythm, and at dissonant, i.e. different sounding intervals. In his compositions, he combined the different cries with the comparatively fast heartbeat and high-pitched voices of the mother animals and tested them again on the monkeys. The result: one type of song calmed the monkeys, the other got them excited.

The ideal: the perfect music for every species

Cats don’t seem to like most music for humans. That’s why there is special cat music whose frequencies and speeds they are said to like much better.
©iStock – FreshSplash

Teie then wanted to transfer his findings to a popular pet and decided on cats. In addition to the meowing and purring of mother cats, he also focused on the gentle sound that kittens hear when suckling and that accompanies them throughout their entire growing-up process. He also included ultrasonic frequencies in his songs that could only be heard by cats. Various instruments such as piano, flute, harp and cello were used so that the owners could also enjoy listening together. An album with the simple name Music for Cats was released in 2016 and can be streamed from various providers. The tracks on the album include Katey Moss Katwalk and Tigerlili And Mimi’s Mewsical.

Teie has since released more songs that are optimised for the needs of cats. And yes, in his masterful composer’s mind he is also thinking about music for dogs. According to his own statement, however, this is far more difficult than with his other works. After all, there are so many different breeds, which differ greatly not only in size but also in their voicings. The question of whether a Chihuahua and a wolfhound could relax to the same song is still unanswered.

Check out our current Hearing Dog Pin-up here.

                                         Source: Audiology News UK issue 15 /Audio Infos Germany