Music too has a vibrant syntactic identity. As with spoken
language, infants will absorb the utterances of their “native”
musical language and by similarly statistical learned cues will
gradually develop rules, conventions, and hierarchies regarding
how musical structures “should” and “should not” proceed.
Indeed, studies by Sandra Trehub and others have shown that
musical syntax develops no more slowly or comprehensively than
does linguistic syntax—with basic competence by age two to
three and adult-level mastery by age ten to twelve in both
realms. Mastery of musical syntax, moreover, develops
regardless of whether or not a child receives formal music
training—though training can naturally affect the speed or level
of this mastery.

So, what accounts for the song’s unbridled success? To a great
degree, of course, it is by virtue of Eminem’s very accomplished
rapping “skillz” and his uncanny ability to capitalize on the power
of repeating rhythmic patterns. Again, Eminem is celebrated for
the humor in his lyrics (e.g., on “My Name Is” and “The Real Slim
Shady”), but in this intense exhortation to seize opportunity de-
spite all odds that is the theme of “Lose Yourself,” humor is
uncharacteristically absent. Instead, the song’s impact is derived
from the cleverly infectious—and often quite syncopated—
rhythmic patterns whereby the rapper accentuates multiple
internal rhyme structures.

An example is in the second half of the first verse (from “Snap
back to reality”), where he produces a two-beat pattern or
ostinato that, with occasional variation, is repeated no fewer
than fourteen times—producing a potent level of momentum that
drives the musical narrative headlong into the first chorus

(seen here in part, Figure 12.10):

What precisely do we mean by musical surprise? There is, to be
sure, the explicit kind of “oh my God” surprise that music is
capable of producing, as through sudden shifts in volume—e.g.,
the unexpected fortissimo chord in the second movement of
Haydn’s Surprise Symphony or Roger Daltrey’s vocal scream in
the Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” There are also the more
nuanced instances found in complex, compositionally driven
musical works, especially in the classical species—such as the
surprising resolution of the “Tristan chord” at end of the
“Liebestod” in Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. But these are all
quite rare or require expert musical training to discern in the first
place.

But while overt or expertly discerned musical surprise is rare, its
impact on our overall musical experience is decidedly not. As
noted in Interlude C [on Music & the Brain], Leonard Meyer was
the first to point to expectation as the “basis of the affective and
the intellectual aesthetic response to music,” crediting it to the
composer’s ability to “choreograph” the thwarting, delaying, or
granting of what our ears expect to hear. By far, the greatest
attention in this regard has been placed on the most palpable
manifestation of musical expectation, what we’ve called “thrills
and chills.” Other expressions for this psychophysical response
include “shivers down your spine,” “gooseflesh,” the tantalizing
label “skin orgasm,” and the most academically embraced,
“frisson.”