Turn Up The Bass To Get People Dancing, Research Finds

Research done by scientists from McMaster University says that music that makes people want to move tends to have more low-frequency sound, and bass instruments typically provide the musical pulse that people dance to.

Researchers have taken a closer look at the relationship between bass frequencies and dancing, thanks to an experiment conducted during a real-life electronic music concert.

The results, published on Monday in the journal Current Biology, showed that participants danced almost 12 per cent more when researchers introduced a very low-frequency bass -- one that dancers could not hear.

"They couldn't tell when those changes happened, but it was driving their movements," neuroscientist David Cameron of McMaster University, who led the study, told AFP.

The results confirm the special relationship between bass and dance, which has never been scientifically proven.

The pulse of the music 

Cameron, a trained drummer, notes that people attending electronic music concerts "love when they can feel the bass so strong" and tend to turn it up very loud.

But they are not alone.

In many cultures and traditions across the world "it tends to be the low-frequency instruments like the bass guitar or the bass drum, that give the pulse of the music" that gets humans moving.

"What we didn't know is, can you actually make people dance more with bass?" said Cameron.

The experiment took place in Canada, in a building known as LIVElab, which served both as a concert hall and a research laboratory.

About 60 out of 130 people who went to see a concert by electronic music duo Orphyx were equipped with motion-sensing headbands to monitor their dance moves.

During the concert, researchers intermittently turned very-low bass-playing speakers on and off.

A questionnaire filled out by concert-goers confirmed that the sound was undetectable. This allowed researchers to isolate the impact of the bass and avoid other factors, such as dancers reacting to a popular part of a song.