Its well known that a heavy bass line is in dance music is often very popular, and many people believe it is absolutely essential in order to create the best atmosphere for certain styles of music, but could we actually be addicted? Some people think it may be possible, and there is some research to suggest they are right.
To understand how this may be possible, we need to understand how sound affects our bodies. In modern life, one of our primary needs to hear is to communicate, often at moderate volume, but our ears can be much more useful than this, allowing us to be aware of things further away than we can see, and some of these things may help explain how our bodies react to sound.
Thousands of years before we had amplified music, bass frequencies, and how we reacted them, could have been critical to our survival. In nature, loud sounds, with an emphasis to low frequencies are often connected to danger. Just think of the sounds created by a stampeding herd of animals, an earthquake or a volcano erupting. Research suggests that years of evolution have developed the ‘fight or flight’ response in humans when presented with danger, this stimulates the production of adrenaline, enhancing the bodies ability to react to the danger.
You’ve heard of adrenaline junkies right? Well, it is possible that the brain associates high levels of bass with pleasure due to the mild adrenaline rush that bass frequencies may cause, and over time, coupled with other stimulants, could contribute to an addiction.
Another field of research suggests exposure to very high sound pressure levels (commonly found in bass frequencies) damages our ears and causes ‘pain’, however our bodies naturally react to this pain by creating numerous chemicals within the body, including adrenaline, endorphines and encephalons, collectively acting to blunt pain, but at the same time causing a pleasure enhancing morphine-like effect. This has yet to be proven, but the theories seem to hold true, and could also contribute to this concept.
One researcher has even gone as far as to suggest that extreme bass frequencies that penetrate the human body, causing you to literally ‘feel the bass’ may cause temporary damage to cellular structures within your body, cause the same pain blocking chemicals to be produced. These chemicals make you ‘feel good’ and may go some way to explaining the positive feeling experienced by high intensity bass frequencies.
So, is it possible to be totally addicted to bass?
Maybe….