31st October 2009

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Reflections on The Music Instinct

I just watched The Music Instinct: Science & Song, a PBS documentary on how and why music effects humans.  It covered a wide array of topics involving several areas of science, and I found it quite interesting overall, but a few key topics stuck out to me.

First, Brian Greene, string theory physicist (who you might remember from the Nova special on that subject), mentioned that, in string theory, the idea is that the basic constituent parts of all matter are vibrating strings.  He explained earlier in the doc that basically all sound is vibration; it’s the airwaves picked up and processed by your brain.  So, as he says, a way we can think about music is … everything.  Everything is vibrating, everything is making sound.  It’s all music.  I like this definition of music; it includes everything interesting one can imagine describing as music (and, pretty much everything else).

It seems to me that one can process music through several senses, but there’s a uniqueness to music that, to me, seems to be more than just sound or touch.  You can’t explain the sensation of music as simply a type of sound we hear, or vibration we feel.  Those are of course aspects of music, but the way in which we accept and process it seems to cause more of a psychological effect than sound, or touch, or a synthesis of the two.  I think of it as another sense all of itself. But I suppose this is based in no fact; it’s just the way I think about it.

The second idea that resonated with me was the idea a few of the speakers backed up near the end of the program, that music is a way to connect people.  This seems to make sense, intuitively; anyone who’s been to a show where the audience really connected can see how this might work.  Take a look at this video, which you might remember from a post earlier this week:

Watch how the crowd reacts to the starts and stops in the music. I think it’s clear that music connects people.  The problem, I think, with a lot of pop music, is that it’s an empty connection.  Most of the music that seems to connect to so many people does nothing with that relationship.  There are so many things one can do with music that can stimulate people, but much of contemporary pop music attempts nothing.  It can be political, social, comedic, or simply musically exploratory, but something should be done with this power.  Use it for good, shit, use it for evil, but use it for something.  I can’t take this music that stagnates.

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