Is your bulldog a Bob Marley fan? What about Rage Against the Machine? No? Well, actually the answer certainly is no. While it’s romantic to think that dogs love music as much as we do, research suggests dogs experience these sounds in a completely different way.

The human range of hearing is 20Hz (the lowest rumble) to 20,000Hz (the highest piercing sound that only youthful ears can hear). Dogs can hear 40Hz to 60,000Hz—their hearing is significantly higher than ours. The highest note on the piano is 4,186Hz. A dog whistle is between 25,000Hz and 55,000Hz.

A dog’s perception of pitch is very different from ours and hard for us to conceptualize. Most music is mastered with a “high-cut filter” around 20,000hz (removing any sounds higher than 20,000Hz), so even if the speakers were able to produce a higher sound, our songs don’t go into the dog-whistle range. To a dog, music sounds low.

So dogs experience pitch differently than us. What about rhythm? While you may have seen a video of dancing dogs on the internet, there is no research showing dogs are able to replicate a steady beat. A couple researchers were able to get a cockatoo and a sea lion to nod their heads in time to music. Perception of rhythm is paramount to the musical experience because repetition of rhythmic ideas is one of the main things we listen for in a song. Because dogs don’t have this ability, music probably sounds like chaotic noise to them. Sadly, my piano playing is unappreciated by my pooches.

What about dogs that howl to music? Howling is an ancestral trait that pops up from time to time. Wolves howl to strengthen the identity of their pack. When one starts howling, the others compulsively join. In contrast, domesticated dogs do much more barking. But when they howl, it’s for communication. It’s been shown that the music most likely to incite howling in dogs is produced by wind instruments such as the clarinet. The timbre of these instruments is similar to that of howling dogs.

Nevertheless, dogs do respond differently to different musical genres. One study showed that dogs were agitated by heavy-metal, but less aggressive genres like classical or reggae helped them calm down. Audiobooks were slightly more effective than music at calming dogs.

If your dog gets scared of noises, try putting on some classical music, an audiobook or even white noise to help them relax. For the most part dogs don’t care what we listen to. But the occasional mutt may enjoy relaxing to a Bach prelude or some mellow jazz.

Jack Gaffney is a local musician and piano teacher. He can be reached at JackGaffney.com.