Why So Strangely?

One of the most famous examples of music science research was the discovery of the Speech-Song Illusion by Diana Deutsch. Turns out that looping a short clip of someone talking, playing the same exact utterance over and over, changes how we processing the sound. What is initially perceived as a simple excerpt of speech becomes a rhythmic, melodic song.

Deutsch first demonstrated this with a clip of her own speech from the sentence:

“The sounds as they appear to you are not only different from those that are really present, but they sometimes behave so strangely as to seem quite impossible.”

She looped the phrase “sometimes behave so strangely” in several clever experiments.

In the years since, “Sometimes behave so strangely” has become a catch phrase in music cognition, and many people no longer need an audio reference to recall this curious and persistent effect.

And beside some famous words, this podcast is called “So Strangely” because music science research often behaves in unexpected ways.