Of all my blog topics that I write about, the topic of music and the brain seems to generate the most response and the most comments and questions. I can see why too! Everybody loves music although taste in music varies radically from pop, rock and jazz to symphonies, chamber music and opera. Then there are the zillion categories in between! I have a blog devoted entirely to the subject (http://the-brain-and-music.blogspot.com/) and I think you’d really enjoy reading it and learning how music enters the brain through the 8th cranial nerve, goes round and round in the ear and brain and quickly affects the whole body, one’s mood 🙂 and a whole host of other variables. As far as we know, humans have been creating their version of music since the beginning of time! Early instruments included the voice (of course!), drums, stringed instruments and reed instruments. Brass instruments ad keyboards came much, much later!!
Anyway, here’s a post from my brain blog that I know you’ll enjoy!!
But Levitin believes that the brain itself has evolved to make sense of music and that we’re each born wired for music, just as we are for language.
DANIEL LEVITIN: If you’re born listening to Chinese opera, your brain is going to become wired to the rules of that musical form. If you’re born listening to Pakistani music, Indian music, Indian ragas, your brain will become wired to those. Our brain is plastic, and malleable, and able to wire itself up to whatever language we hear, to learn those rules.
Similarly, I would argue that we all are born with a music module. We’re born with the wiring to accommodate any music that we hear, and we learn those rules effortlessly just by listening.
JEFFREY BROWN: Levitin says there’s an area of the brain, in the prefrontal cortex, specifically dedicated to comparing what we hear with our expectations of learned patterns of music. That’s the reason we can be surprised, pained or delighted when those expectations are tampered with, something great musicians know to exploit.
DANIEL LEVITIN: When you listen to Stevie Wonder drumming on “Superstition,” for example, he’s playing in time, and you’re forming predictions about what’s going to happen next. The additional nuance that he brings to it is that he changes the beats ever so slightly, throughout the whole song, “Superstition,” never the same.
So he’s going a little bit different. He varies the pressure on the high-hat cymbal, so it’s a little bit louder, a little bit softer. The beauty of it is that the cerebellum is trying to figure out, “OK, where is the next beat going to come? What’s it going to be?” And he’s surprising the cerebellum at every turn, so that your brain…
JEFFREY BROWN: We don’t talk to too many scientists who are doing Stevie Wonder drum solos for us, I’ve got to tell you that.
I hear that. I pity anyone who is on the road with me when I’ve got some heavy metal on. On the other hand if some classical guitar is on I’m the mellowist fellow you could ever meet.
Thank you
I just purchased a CD from The Brian Setzer Orchestra called “Wolfgang’s Big Night Out” A swinging jazzy take on some familiar classical melodies. It’s a fun album and puts me in a happy mood. I, in my amateur opinion, reccomend it.
Gerry
It as shown that angry music makes you angry. And bob marley will have you doing the things he is talking about on a track lol.