- Author
- Gregory A. Bryant and Paul E. Smaldino
- Published
- 3 April 2025
- Kind
- Peer-reviewed journal paper with an agent-based model
- Original
- royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2024.0014
- Subject
- Consonance and tuning
- Themes
- How forms evolve
What it is
Gregory Bryant and Paul Smaldino wrote this paper for a theme issue on animal vocalizations. It offers an account of why distorted timbres arise and vary.
What it says
- Musical distortion is noisy timbre that emulates nonlinear phenomena in animal vocal signals.
- Listener sensitivity to these phenomena is said to have aided distortion technologies.
- Distortion keeps evolving because groups must coordinate internally and differ from other groups.
- The authors present an agent-based model of norm evolution for traits like distortion.
- The model depends on a functional optimum, group cohesion and differentiation, and groupishness.
- The authors say the account explains diversity in sounds and genres, and subgroup norms.
What evidence it gives
The abstract names a computational model as support. It mentions no listener data or recordings. Model design and results were not read.
Interests and limits
The authors have an interest in their own framework. The abstract says the model shows possible dynamics. It does not claim history followed them. Only the abstract was read; the publisher site blocked access to the full text.
Connections
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- Developing Taste. Bryant and Smaldino say distortion norms persist partly because groups must differ from each other. Kowalski tells readers to follow a curated list of tastemakers. Together they raise a sharp question. How much of taste in software is a marker of belonging?
- Harmony Explained. Wilkerson looks for consonance in how hearing recognizes the harmonic series. Bryant and Smaldino explain a preferred noise partly through group dynamics. The two need not conflict. One says what a sound can do, and the other why a group keeps it.