Transcript Were you there? - Miami University

Daniel J. Levitin:
This is Your Brain on Music, The Science of a
Human Obsession
Notes on the chapters:
1 – 9.
Chapter 1: What Is Music
From Pitch to Timbre: key multiple attributes.
 Tone (sometimes thought of as a “note”
 Pitch (purely a psychological construct)
 Rhythm (repeating patterns,
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contrasts of silence and sound.
– 2’s & 3’s,
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Tempo (fast vs slow), speed
Contour (shape of a melody, ups & downs)
Timbre (different instruments)
Loudness
Spatial location: where sound comes from
Reverberation (like an ecco).
Chapter 1: What Is Music
From Pitch to Timbre: higher-order concepts
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Meter
Key
Melody
Harmony
Chapter 2: Foot Tapping
Discerning Rhythm, Loudness, and Harmony
 Rhythm
– Tempo
– Meter
 Loudness (role of silence)
 Harmony
 Note bottom of p. 73 where Gestalt psychologists
Kohler, Koffka are mentioned. These are Lewin’s
teachers from Berlin days.
 Gestalt Principles of Grouping (bottom p. 74)
 Also see D & P on page 115-117.
Music listened to in class on Friday, February 12, 2010:
“Round Midnight”: two versions
First, by the composer Thelonious Sphere Monk
Second, by Miles Davis Quintet
Form and Structure were discussed:
AABA form/pattern for the “Round Midnight” ballad
Chapter 3: Behind the Curtain
Music and the Mind Machine
 Cognitive Science / Neuroscience
 Functionalism: similar minds can arise from quite
different brains, brains are just the collection of
wires and processing modules that instantiate
thought.
 Common illusions: pp. 97-98 illusions like those in
text and web-links Sherman provided.
 Isomorphic structures.
Chapter 3: Behind the Curtain
Music and the Mind Machine
 Note bottom of p. 89: “…emotions (frontal lobes,
cerebellum, the amygdala and the nucleus accumbens –
part of a network of structures involved in feelings of
pleasure and reward, whether it is through eating, having
sex, or listening to pleasurable music.
 P. 106-7, Imprinting: “Our brains learn a kind of musical
grammar that is specific to the music of our culture, just as
we learn to speak the language of our culture.” (Noam
Chomsky and psycho-linguistics.
Robert Plutchik’s
model of how emotions can be combined to yield blends that differ in
intensity.
Allmusic link as an example of emotion classifications:
Chet Baker singing “My Funny Valentine”, a
Rogers & Hart 1937 song
Pan’s Labyrinth (Movie) by Guillermo Del Toro
with musical soundtrack by Javier Navarrete:
“Mercedes Lullaby”
Herbie Hancock;s River: the joni letters
Title tune, “River”
Physiological Components of
Emotion
The Ear and the Brain.
Brain: 3 areas,
Forebrain, Midbrain and Hindbrain
Brain locations
Brain Locations
Chapter 4: Anticipation
What We Expect From Liszt (and Ludacris)
The Neural organization of music!
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All sound begins at the eardrum where sounds get segregated by “pitch”.
Speech and music diverge into separate processing circuits.
– Speech circuits decompose the signals in order to identify individual
phonemes.
– Music circuits decompose the signals and separately analyze pitch, timbre,
contour and rhythm.
The output of the neurons performing these tasks connect to regions in the
frontal lobe that put all of it together and try to figure out if there is any structure
or order to the “temporal” patterning of it all.
The frontal lobes access our hippocampus and regions in the interior of the
temporal lobe and ask if there is anything in our memory banks that can help to
understand this signal.
– Have I heard this “pattern” before?
– If so when?
– Is it part of a larger sequence whose meaning is unfolding right now in front
of me?
Chapter 5: You Know My Name, Look Up the
Number, How we Categorize Music.
 The debate about the ‘nature’ and function of memory in humans.
 Two theories: the Relational School (also called the Constructivist
view) AND the Record-keeping theory.
 Constructivist Theory = lacking sensory memory specifics, we
construct a memory representation of reality out of the relations (with
many details filled in or reconstructed on the spot.
– EXAMPLE. Functional invariants (Piaget), p. 134, “…the memory system must be
extracting some generalized, invariant information about songs and storing that.
 Record Keeping Theory = memory is like a tape recorder or digital
video camera, preserving all or most of our experiences accurately,
and with near perfect fidelity.
– EXAMPLE. The recognition of hundreds, if not thousands, of voices.
Chapter 5: You Know My Name, Look Up the
Number, How we Categorize Music.
 Eleanor Rosch’s conclusions and thoughts on “Category
Formation”. (Levitin, 2007, p. 141)
– (A) Categories are formed around prototypes.
– (B) These prototypes can have a biological or physiological
foundation;
– (C) Category membership can be thought of as a question of
degree, with some tokens being “better” examplars than others;
– (D) New items are judged in relation to the prototypes, forming
gradients of category membership;
– (D) There don’t need to be any attributes which all category
members have in common, and boundaries don’t have to be
definite.
Chapter 5: You Know My Name, Look Up the
Number, How we Categorize Music.
 Note some connections to our Davis &
Palladino (2007) text book and PowerPoint
Slides (ppt):
– Chapter 9 ppt, slides 48-55 where the
developmental theories of Jean Piaget are
discussed.
Chapter 6. After Dessert, Crick Was Still Four
Seats Away from Me.
Music, Emotion, and the Reptilian Brain.
 Orchestration of brain regions
 Precision choreography of neuro-chemical release
(dopamine)
 Uptake between logical prediction systems and emotional
rewards
 When we ‘love’ a piece of music, it reminds us of other
music we have heard and it activates memory traces of
emotional times in our lives
 The “Groove” is an ‘expectation
 This is Piaget’s “assimilation” and “accommodation”
process
Music listened to in class this
week: 3/26/2009
 Tirmakan/Eg Vippa Meg, from the CD, “From Senegal to
Setesdal by Kirsten Braten Berg. Included the “Griot,” Solo
Cissokho singing the Mandeng history of Tirmakan and
Kirsten Braten Berg singing a Norwegian Lullaby (Eg Vippa
Meg) at the same time.
 Soli (lent & rapide). Music that accompanies the
rite/initiation of circumcision in the Malinke tradition.
Chapter 7. What Makes a Musician:
Expertise Dissected.
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Many forms of musical expertise
Dexterity at playing an instrument
Emotional communication
Creativity and the role of “naiveté” or lack of
formal training (Joni Mitchell).
 Special mental structures for remembering
music
 Expert listening abilities
Music listened to on 4-2-2010
Raga Jait, Performed by Hariprasad Chaurasia on Flute. India
“These are a few of my favorite things” Performed by
Julie Andrews
John Coltrane
Several of Sherman’s Flutes.
Chapter 8. My Favorite Things,
Why do We Like the Music We Like?
Chapter 9. The Music Instinct
Evolution #1 Hit.
Back to Charles Darwin and the ‘evolution’ of music.
Steven Jay Gould and the “Spandrel”
Steven Pinker, and “Music is Auditory cheesecake.”
Music evolved out of “Language development” which is
also auditory.
 Multiple reinforcing cues of a good song: rhythm, melody,
contour – cause music to stick in our heads. Nostalgia!
 Levitin’s last words: “As a tool for arousing feelings and
emotions, music is better than language. The combination
of the two – as best exemplified in a love song – is the best
courtship display of all.”
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The World in Six Songs: How the musical brain
created human nature. Functions of music.
Darwinian evolution, natural selection etc.
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Friendship (Social Functions)
Joy (Pleasures)
Comfort: before there was Prozac
Knowledge (assists knowing and learning)
Religion (spiritual feelings and emotions)
Love