How Music Shapes Taste: A Conversation with Pavle Marinkovic - Part 1

Audio Branding

“When I started researching how music affected all these different parts of the food life cycle, I stumbled upon research about how it changed our perception of taste, how it can make beer taste more bitter or wine have a more full body. So I said, well, I love chocolate, and I stumbled across a food chocolate factory in the middle of Madrid. And I said, well, let’s try it. If there’s so much research on all these other things, let’s see if there’s also something that can happen with chocolate.” – Pavle Marinkovic

This episode’s guest is a psychologist with a master’s degree in film scoring. He’s worked in a pioneering audio branding firm in Madrid and later in a market research company that used facial recognition software to scan and create emotional maps of different content, including music. Currently, he wears many hats: writer, researcher, audio branding consultant, music teacher, and violinist, and all these facets of sound are deeply intertwined in his daily work.

His name is Pavle Marinkovic, and he’s also the author of Sounds From Farm to Fork (And Back), where he talks about the impact sound and music can have on the food life cycle. I asked him about his research and the details are fascinating. If you’re a farmer, a garden hobbyist, a marketer, a restaurateur, or interested in more effective waste control and recycling, this is a discussion you don’t want to miss! It’s astonishing to realize just how much of a difference sound can make in all these things.

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(0:00:01) - Exploring Music and Audio Branding

Our conversation starts with a look back at Pavle’s early memories of sound, or, in this case, the story his grandmother tells about how he attended his first opera at eight months old, and how he tried to join in with the singers. “That wasn’t acceptable for my grandmother,” he adds, “and so she ended up rushing us out. But she always tells me this story.” He shares his career journey from film scoring to sound research, and a pioneering research project that used facial recognition technology to create emotional maps of people’s reactions to sound. “You could show them a lot of different music pieces,” he recalls, “and then, depending on the reaction, you would say which ones they are more favorable towards, and you could create the building blocks of your sound for that customer.”

(0:14:17) - The Influence of Music on Taste

Pavle tells us about how the pandemic offered a key insight into the hidden power of sound, and about his work with a chocolate company in Madrid that discovered a surprising link between sound pitch and sweetness. “There’s much more than we really know about music,” he says, “and they’re discovering a bunch of stuff all the time, so we need to take it more seriously than it is.” We discuss the impact of sound on consumer behavior, and how it can drive people without them even realizing it. “With fast-paced music, they would drink more frequently,” he explains. “When we played slow music, they would take more time. You would see the glasses full for a longer time.”

(0:26:26) - Enhancing Food With Multi-Sensory Experience

As the first half of our discussion comes to a close, we discuss a collaboration between Oxford professor Charles Spence and celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal on multimodal sound-taste tests, including a seafood dish whose secret ingredient is an iPod. “You could listen to sounds from the sea, from the ocean,” he says, “and all that experience, which was multi-sensory, would enhance this saltiness of this seafood dish that you were presented with.” He tells us about some of the mental and physical health benefits that the use of sound can bring, and one key advantage it has. “You can’t overdose on music, you know,” he explains. “Unlike other drugs, music is not something that can drive you to health issues if you listen to it while you are taking a medication or something.”

Episode Summary

• Pavle’s early memories of sound and his work on Lacoste’s “Timeless” ad campaign.
• His research on the surprising sensory overlap between sound and taste.
• Pavle’s discussion of multi-sensory restaurant meals and sound-based treatments.

Tune in for part two of my conversation with Pavle as we talk about the little-known connection between sound frequencies and plants, how playing the right music saved a sewage treatment plant 10,000 euros a year, and the medical role sound might soon play in treating diabetes.

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