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You Are What You Listen To Early this year, Charles Spence published another review
article on Frontiers, called “Sonic Seasoning and Other
Charles Spence, a professor of experimental psychology Multi-sensory Influences on the Coffee Drinking Experience”
at Oxford University, published a paper in 2004 which gave us which showed us an even more comprehensive discussion. It
an interesting theory that sound and food work together with was pointed out in the review that background noise can
our minds to create certain illusions of taste – “Our senses are exert a dramatic impact over our tasting abilities. Listening
connected in some surprising ways! ” According to his research, to loud background music could reduce a range of desirable
high-pitched sounds enhance sweet and sour flavors while attributes in a cup of coffee, weaken the bitterness and aroma
low-pitched sounds enhance bitter flavors, it’s what Spence intensity, as well as lower the willingness to pay. At the same
calls “sonic seasoning.” Your brain has a previous conception time, listening to the appropriate music, rather than noise,
of what bitter and sweet flavors should taste like, so when can help to enhance the multi-sensory tasting experience.
you take a bite of food, you have an expectation of where The world famous chef, Heston Blumenthal of The Fat
that food should be classified on the bitter and sweet scale. Duck frame, has described sound as a “forgotten flavor sense”.
“Your brain cannot deal with so much information, so by When he was interviewed on BBC Radio 4, Blumenthal said:
playing that high-pitched music, it draws your attention to “I would consider sound as an ingredient available to the
that sweet taste,” he said. That sweet taste is actually a 10 chef.” Relevantly, it has been suggested that the emotion
percent jump in sweetness. The study suggested that songs evoked by listening to music can influence how we end up
with lower notes were the perfect complement to help bring seasoning a dish or making a drink, and hence even perhaps
out the bitterness of coffee. also how strong a coffee we go for. Meanwhile, it’s also worth
bearing in mind the cultural differences in coffee drinking
practices. In the other words, people around the world enjoy
their coffee in many different ways. Even if the music may
be the same, its impact on the multi-sensory coffee tasting
experience might be experienced differently.
What’s more, background music can also be an influence
on which coffee you choose to drink. “Background music has
also been shown to bias people’s covert visual attention and
eye movements. There is also a literature emerging on the
impact of variations in the physical parameters of sounds and
music on consumer choice. There are, then, likely a number
of ways in which what we hear influences both what we taste
and what we think about the experience”, Spence said.
In light of all these findings, it makes perfect sense that
the combination of music and coffee extends beyond the
coffee shop. However it makes me ponder, what kind of
music is appropriate to play in coffee shops, and what kind
of music is best paired with drinking coffee?
Actually there was an unpublished study by Gater.J
in 2010, although only a small scale experiment with sev-
en participants, it still showed intriguing results. The as-
sociation between Jazz music and a cafe-type atmosphere
resulted in participants rating the coffee’s flavor, bitterness,
and astringency as somewhat less intense than in the oth-
er conditions. There evidence of there being a preference
for listening to live rather than pre-recorded music while
drinking coffee, especially in South Africa. Elsewhere,
co-creation of music for coffee shops has also been sug-
gested as a successful strategy.
Usually, light genres of Electronic Music (Acid Jazz,
Deep House) suit coffee shops best and other successful
genres for cafes include nu Jazz, Deep House, Bossa Nova,
Lounge, etc.

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