Can you "taste" music?

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Published 2017-04-06
Recent findings confirm an association between sound patterns and the four basic tastes: Sweetness, saltiness, sourness and bitterness. And what about umami? This tricky fifth taste still eludes researchers.

SOURCES:

1) A composition algorithm based on crossmodal taste-music correspondences
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3338107/

2) The taste of music.
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21650094

3) When music is salty: The crossmodal associations between sound and taste
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journ…

4) Hector Berlioz's treatise on orchestration
www.metronimo.com/fr/bibliotheque/berlioz-traite-i…

5) Basic properties of umami and its effects on food flavor
www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/87559129809541…

6) Chromaticity as a signal of ripeness in fruits taken by primates
jeb.biologists.org/content/203/13/1987

7) Crossmodal correspondences between sounds and tastes
link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-012-0321-…

8) The Influence of Background Music on the Behavior of Restaurant Patrons
bit.ly/patronbehaviour

All Comments (21)
  • @TheQubePlayer
    So you're not just making a great video, but you even film it in front of a nicely made background... that's fantastic!
  • @maxscribner1743
    Last time I was this early I thought sound didn't have meaningful correlation to taste
  • @kungfusaini
    Wish I found this channel earlier. Such great content and knowledge on display for us with excellent presentation. Great job!
  • @AngryJ
    Another fantastic video, thanks for the entertainment and education!
  • @Bu88alicious
    Well presented and well sourced information that is also interesting, excellent work. Thank you.
  • @maxscribner1743
    The book "Green Eggs and Ham" is the best possible example I can think of for color unconsciously telling us whether to eat some food.
  • @Julika7
    Great video. :) First I missed umami, but you said something about that too.
  • @toniyo3
    Dope video! Love this channel, wish you the best of luck man!
  • @ArtFreak17
    When I first saw that title, I was wondering 'is he going to talk about synesthesia?' I'm not a synesthete, but I find the bit of neurodiversity very fascinating. Likewise some of the theories for why it happens and the possibility that everyone experiences it on some level in early development - but most people grow out of of it (as the brain makes more robustly "linear" pathways for sensory processing). But the associations made in this video also made me think of the bouba/kiki effect. (Unsure if you've covered that one, but it seems up your alley!)
  • @TheDustyForest
    I am actually a professional chocolate taster so this was really interesting! Great video!
  • @ValorousFogey
    I subscribed recently. Another great video! Keep it up! :D
  • @deszczak
    That was cool! I liked it so much!
  • @klutterkicker
    Sweet has a long cultural history in music, Sour surprised me with an very close association I never knew I had, Salty I'm on the fence about, it's more irritating than I would expect and maybe just a strange example choice, while bitter... I would strongly expect bitter to be raspy, growling and dissonant. This bitter is like a happy stroll downtown.
  • @Qjimbo
    The fact the words had no effect on what people identified the flavours with actually suggests the words themselves are closely related to the taste, which makes sense. A word is a "sound" that people have to match up with something that isn't always audible itself. The word "bitter" itself is percussive, much like the music people chose for it.
  • @technicality
    hey, I see me! great video, by the way, I learned a lot!
  • @PierreMiniggio
    J'ai trouvé ta chaîne par hasard suite à un de tes commentaires sur une vidéo de boyinaband. Ta façon de parler m'a fait penser un peu à vsauce (je suppose que tu connais vu comme sa chaine est connu), j'aime beaucoup :P