Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot com? Hey, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark and with me as always
Speaker 1: as Charles W. Chuck Bryant. Uh And this is stuff
Speaker 1: you should know the podcast, the Audio Cheesecake Podcast. So
Speaker 1: mad at that guy? Oh? Really? Yeah, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: him in a minute. It will all become clear. Okay.
Speaker 1: I just took my tooth out for I'm getting the
Speaker 1: new one tomorrow finally. Congratulations, Thank god? Are you getting
Speaker 1: it after we record? Yeah? So two more episodes will
Speaker 1: feature hill Billy Chuck. It's been along, it's been like
Speaker 1: over six or seven months now. I just look back
Speaker 1: at Christmas photos and I had not too. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize it was like last year and it almost all
Speaker 1: against hill Billy. That's really derogatory, you realize, No, I
Speaker 1: love Hillbillies. Okay, Chuck, uh I, I have a revelation
Speaker 1: for you. All right, let's hear it. So. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: when you hear music and you look at art, if
Speaker 1: you don't hate art, and you look at it, ah,
Speaker 1: and you you start to feel an emotion, or maybe
Speaker 1: a memory is released, or or just just something happens
Speaker 1: to you, a change kind of comes over you. What
Speaker 1: you're doing is experiencing an emotion that was I guess
Speaker 1: created and encapsulated in a work of art, whether it's
Speaker 1: music or something visual or and it was put in
Speaker 1: there by the artist for you to come along and
Speaker 1: unlock and then bam, you're feeling some sort of emotion
Speaker 1: or whatever. That is possibly the most astounding thing that
Speaker 1: humanity has ever figured out how to do. Agreed, Like,
Speaker 1: think about it. It's like when when you're interacting with art,
Speaker 1: you are, in a way interacting with the artist, and
Speaker 1: the art is the intermediary. But if you so, you
Speaker 1: kind of understand it on that level. But imagine if
Speaker 1: you're you're an alien, an emotionless alien that came down
Speaker 1: and observed this just kind of off to the side.
Speaker 1: It doesn't it makes zero sense whatsoever. This painting is
Speaker 1: just the work on canvas, its color and brushstrokes, and yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's it is. If you look at it on
Speaker 1: a on a much more important level, it is a
Speaker 1: capsule of emotion and memory. Agreed, And I agree that
Speaker 1: that's like astounding when you think about musical notes, like
Speaker 1: there's a code inside them almost that taps into these emotions.
Speaker 1: And I'm already upset because we don't quite know why
Speaker 1: and like why it differs from person to person, and
Speaker 1: it's like I don't think we'll ever know. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: some people can hear something and I think something sounds
Speaker 1: like garbage. Someone else might hear and it might make
Speaker 1: them weep. Okay, I think we do know. I think
Speaker 1: I know, well you should written this article. Well, now
Speaker 1: think about this. I think that we have um certain processes.
Speaker 1: I did write this article smarty pan well one of them. Yes,
Speaker 1: So I do think. I think that there's um certain
Speaker 1: processes that our brains are capable of carrying out and
Speaker 1: their emotion based, right, yeah, because think about what our
Speaker 1: emotions Chuck. Uh, that's that's one of those hard to
Speaker 1: define things there, like what what is the definition? Well,
Speaker 1: it's like it's it's it's some sort of No, Okay,
Speaker 1: what's the let me rephrase because that was define is, Chuck?
Speaker 1: What what is the value of an emotion? What's the
Speaker 1: purpose that it serves? Well, I mean some people think
Speaker 1: it from early on it was a means to help
Speaker 1: us survive, like fear of the tiger, or contentment with
Speaker 1: the sun on our faces, right, or like around a campfire.
Speaker 1: So okay, I need to stay warm. So you don't
Speaker 1: even have to think that emotion is like your body
Speaker 1: thinking for itself in order to survive or achieve its goals. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So our brains are capable of carrying out certain processes
Speaker 1: and using things like art and music. It's almost like
Speaker 1: exercise for those emotional processes. And when we do this exercise,
Speaker 1: they kind of bulk up, but they bulk up differently
Speaker 1: for different people because we have different experiences. They're all
Speaker 1: along the same lines where you're feeling like things that
Speaker 1: make you happier, things that make you sad, or things
Speaker 1: that make you scared. Um, but they're different subjective experiences.
Speaker 1: That's what I think is going on. I agree, especially
Speaker 1: when you throw memory in there, which we'll get you. Uh, well,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and hit this one study then, um Germans,
Speaker 1: the gentleman's conducted. Uh they found uh, the MafA tribes
Speaker 1: people in Cameroon who had not heard Western music before,
Speaker 1: not a second of it, and they thought, well, this
Speaker 1: is perfect let's play some Western music and see if
Speaker 1: they can match, uh, this music to like an emotion
Speaker 1: like happy or sad. And they did, right, And by
Speaker 1: Western music we mean pancho music. I'll bancho. Um. There
Speaker 1: was another part of that study I thought was even
Speaker 1: more interesting, which is they played altered versions of music
Speaker 1: for them as well, with like threw it out of
Speaker 1: rhythm or made dissonant harmonies. And these people that had
Speaker 1: never heard Western music like didn't appreciate that sound very much.
Speaker 1: It in hately triggered like when they heard bad harmonies
Speaker 1: or off rhythm beat, They're like, no, right, So if
Speaker 1: there's whatever their word for knowing, if there's not something
Speaker 1: universal going on, then um, then they shouldn't have noticed.
Speaker 1: Then I'll be a monkey's uncle exactly. So that means
Speaker 1: two things that that emotion encoded in music is universal,
Speaker 1: and the ability to distinguish like what's right and what's
Speaker 1: wrong in music is universal too. Then that's what it
Speaker 1: would suggest. Yeah to a certain degree, though, But then
Speaker 1: you hear people that like don't understand when they're singing
Speaker 1: off key, and I'm like, how can you not hear that?
Speaker 1: Remember the tone deafness? One good overlooked episode anyway, I thought,
Speaker 1: I think it's all very interesting. So okay, so we've
Speaker 1: got this idea that this this is all universal. Um,
Speaker 1: there's that still doesn't explain what's going on, and there's
Speaker 1: there's different schools of thought. Like anytime there's just something
Speaker 1: really big out there that's not explained, a lot of
Speaker 1: people have some competing ideas. And one of the people
Speaker 1: with the competing idea who you're apparently mad at, is
Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker, who's a good guy, good, great guy. He
Speaker 1: knows how to like he's a linguist, and yet he
Speaker 1: can rise above the fray of like the sniping that
Speaker 1: is so characteristic of that field. Yeah, he's got a mullet,
Speaker 1: really Yeah, he's got kind of a curly per mullet
Speaker 1: a little bit. He's a good guy. Okay, you'd like him,
Speaker 1: But I don't like what he says about music. He
Speaker 1: famously said music is auditory cheesecake. Um. His his contention
Speaker 1: is basically, music is hollow compared to the language that
Speaker 1: it's based on, right or hearing or hearing, And I
Speaker 1: just I just couldn't disagree more. Well, I think he's
Speaker 1: also saying there's different ways of interpreting what he was saying, Um,
Speaker 1: there's it was an accident and evolutionary accident. Um or
Speaker 1: it's designed. It's something that's designed to exploit an existing sense.
Speaker 1: So like cheesecake, our sense of taste. It's like, we
Speaker 1: don't really need cheesecake, and but when you're eating it,
Speaker 1: you're like, this is really good, and it's designed to
Speaker 1: be like I'm gonna take your sense of taste and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna blow the back of your head out. I
Speaker 1: think people need music and art though okay, well pinker
Speaker 1: would probably contend that's not necessarily the case. That's that's
Speaker 1: the explanation is that is that he's saying if if
Speaker 1: that's if if music is just designed to assault the
Speaker 1: sense of hearing. Um, it triggers emotions because it's specifically
Speaker 1: targeted to do that. Yeah, simple as that. All right,
Speaker 1: So the other guy or there is another guy, Mark
Speaker 1: chang Zi uh cognitive scientists. He thinks that music, Uh,
Speaker 1: we associate it with movement, and we can pick up
Speaker 1: on movement and empathy, or we express and pick up
Speaker 1: on empathy and emotion through visual cues of movement from
Speaker 1: other people. Like if somebody's kind of trudging along. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: that person is sad. Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense
Speaker 1: because um and this was I thought kind of neat.
Speaker 1: Was this the first article yours? Yeah? When when you
Speaker 1: google uh musical now and hidden into Google images, it
Speaker 1: like almost everything you see it shows them like flowing
Speaker 1: and flying and there's movement. Yeah, there's very few, like
Speaker 1: just static shots of musical notes on a scale. And
Speaker 1: even if you looked at a musical scale, you know
Speaker 1: it has a flow and up and down and it
Speaker 1: all is very movement based. Right. He also pointed out
Speaker 1: to that, um we use terms about movement to describe music,
Speaker 1: like a movement is a part of a smaller of
Speaker 1: a larger composition. Um, or we say like music moves us. Um. So,
Speaker 1: I think you did a good job in making the
Speaker 1: case that we associate movement in music, But I don't
Speaker 1: think that necessarily proves his point is larger point, that
Speaker 1: that's how it evokes a motion because it's a stand
Speaker 1: in for human movement. Yeah, but I definitely thought it
Speaker 1: was worth note. You know, for sure, it's all of
Speaker 1: the things. It's like, that's kind of interesting, But what
Speaker 1: have we proven here, right, Well, there's another camp too,
Speaker 1: that that um kind of is the opposite of Pinker's
Speaker 1: assertion that um they say that no music and art
Speaker 1: or its own things. Yeah, like it it looks like
Speaker 1: this huge blur of of stuff when you put it
Speaker 1: under an m R. I but that that that process
Speaker 1: is its own thing and it's not just an offshoot
Speaker 1: of language or hearing. I think I relate to that
Speaker 1: a little bit. I figured you would. So all right,
Speaker 1: let's let's put music on the back runner for a second.
Speaker 1: Talk about art visual art. Uh. And I'll go ahead
Speaker 1: and say up front that a painting or a photograph
Speaker 1: I can find like extremely beautiful, but it doesn't move
Speaker 1: me emotionally like music or a moving image will like
Speaker 1: a you know, a movie or a TV show or
Speaker 1: and then you put music and that moving image together,
Speaker 1: and for me, that's like the recipe. That's just when
Speaker 1: it goes to blan right, So like when at the
Speaker 1: beginning of Bananca to start gueeping on exactly. But other people,
Speaker 1: you know, look at a painting and like, I'll find
Speaker 1: a painting gorgeous and beautiful, or a photograph, but other
Speaker 1: people look at a painting and weep. Let's say but
Speaker 1: not me. So it all varies from person to person, right. Um.
Speaker 1: The thing that that kind of gets me is that
Speaker 1: because it varies from person to person, I think that
Speaker 1: explains why we have such a wide swath of what
Speaker 1: we consider art. You know, why there's so many genres
Speaker 1: of music, because something that might get you might not
Speaker 1: get somebody else. Yeah, like the you know, the very bare,
Speaker 1: you know, stark art of like the dot in the
Speaker 1: center of a blank canvas. I don't get it. Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is that's that's you can't poop poo it though,
Speaker 1: because abstract art basically proves the idea that art is
Speaker 1: an encapsulation of emotion or emotion encoded for each viewer
Speaker 1: to unlock, and it may do nothing for you, but
Speaker 1: it may also trigger some of memory, like that someone's
Speaker 1: made it. Just the idea that like something beyond like
Speaker 1: people moving and talking and saying lines and they're being
Speaker 1: music in the background, unlocking you know, your emotions. The
Speaker 1: fact that just a dot in the middle of a
Speaker 1: white canvas can unlock emotions like, that's it at its
Speaker 1: most basic essential form, you know, but it's still does
Speaker 1: the trick or performance aren't Yeah, you know, uh, So
Speaker 1: one of the theories is that visual art basically simply
Speaker 1: just taps into these learned emotional cues. And whether it's
Speaker 1: ah a conscious thing or it's subconscious, like the color
Speaker 1: red for these weird lines that I see, or a Pollock.
Speaker 1: Maybe you know what that might evoke in different people.
Speaker 1: It just Franz Klein for some reason, and I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I don't know poll would be the go to.
Speaker 1: But I like that you went somewhere else, the lines
Speaker 1: in disarray, it's not nerving. See. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: things I have with visual art, with like a painting,
Speaker 1: is when I go see like a Pollock, I'm more
Speaker 1: knocked out by being in the presence of the original work.
Speaker 1: Like it looks cool and I love it and it's gorgeous,
Speaker 1: But I think about Pollock in his garage, drunk as
Speaker 1: a skunk, you know, dribbling the paint everywhere, and like,
Speaker 1: if I could touch it, I would like connect with that.
Speaker 1: If you touched it, you would get tackled by security.
Speaker 1: Or anytime I see the original stuff, I think you mean,
Speaker 1: like when I see the original handwritten lyrics at the
Speaker 1: rock on All Hall of Fame, to like the Jimi
Speaker 1: Hendrix song on a piece of notebook paper. I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: his pencil touched that paper and wrote the wind cries
Speaker 1: Mary Wham. There's that's definitely an aspect of it as well.
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree. I don't know how. I wonder
Speaker 1: how that changes things though, you know, is that does
Speaker 1: that add to it or is it distracting? Like does
Speaker 1: fame and celebrity distract us from our emotions? Oh that's
Speaker 1: a good question. I think it enhances it for me. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because when I had like this hero worship of an
Speaker 1: artist and then I meet them or I see their
Speaker 1: like original works, that's what does it for me. But
Speaker 1: it could also be an unknown you know. Um. You
Speaker 1: know that's funny though, because I wanted up say that
Speaker 1: you would be you probably wouldn't have been into disco
Speaker 1: then if you're like all about the artist and you know,
Speaker 1: seeing that something created by you know, the individual, I
Speaker 1: wasn't in the disco right. Um. But that also that
Speaker 1: when I was researching this and reading these articles, that
Speaker 1: made me wonder, like, is that a difference, Like there's
Speaker 1: a difference between experiencing live music and recorded music? So
Speaker 1: does that was that a distinction between people who are
Speaker 1: into disco and people who weren't, an uncomm an unconscious difference,
Speaker 1: although I would argue that the basis in this article
Speaker 1: at least says that the live music thing is about
Speaker 1: being in the same room with people with similar likes,
Speaker 1: partially not necessarily, because you can listen to a live
Speaker 1: recording of song and it is like hearing that crowd
Speaker 1: cheers totally different. So maybe it's evoking that. But I'm
Speaker 1: not friends with the people that I can't see on
Speaker 1: this recording, you know. Yeah, that's a good point, all right,
Speaker 1: let's get back to it. H uh yeah, the um
Speaker 1: just real quickly. It's also culturally based because you make
Speaker 1: a great point that depending on where you're from, like
Speaker 1: even color can mean something different. Like in Japan, the
Speaker 1: color white is associated with death, so melancholy will come out,
Speaker 1: whereas black supposedly is in the Western world, something we
Speaker 1: associate with that. So like a snow covered painting like
Speaker 1: a Thomas Kincaid would maybe uh, instilled dread in a
Speaker 1: Japanese person. That's why he doesn't do very well in Japan. Really. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: But then one other thing, Chuck, where the the color
Speaker 1: red those lines and disarray all that those are called
Speaker 1: cognitive antecedents, right right. And you can also make the
Speaker 1: case that a change in harmony or pitch or drumming
Speaker 1: or whatever is a cognitive antecedent too, in much the
Speaker 1: same way that the composers is changing something, is adding
Speaker 1: something that is taking something away, and that forms a
Speaker 1: cognitive antecedent. It's the thing that triggers the emotion. Awesome,
Speaker 1: So should we talk about the brain? Here's where it
Speaker 1: all comes down to science. I knew we were going
Speaker 1: to get to there. At some point, you hear music,
Speaker 1: and well, first of all, they say, it's kind of
Speaker 1: impossible to say, like, you know, we can say we
Speaker 1: have a language center and a center for like movement
Speaker 1: and things like that, but we can't really pinpoint a
Speaker 1: dead center for music in our brain because it's sort
Speaker 1: of all over the place, right, which is kind of awesome,
Speaker 1: I think. But when you first hear a song, let's say,
Speaker 1: your frontal lobe is gonna kick in and the temporal
Speaker 1: lobe and it's gonna process things like rhythm, pitch, and
Speaker 1: melody to kind of get the ball rolling. Um. They
Speaker 1: think it happens in the right hemisphere, but they aren't
Speaker 1: quite positive that that's the only place that happens. UM. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think it probably hits the left hand right. It's
Speaker 1: firing all over the place. UM. But it depends on
Speaker 1: a lot of things, Like you said, whether it's live
Speaker 1: or recorded, UM, probably whether or not you are a
Speaker 1: professional musician or not, or have any kind of training,
Speaker 1: Like you're gonna if you know how to read musical notes.
Speaker 1: When you hear musical note, you're probably going to visualize it.
Speaker 1: Whereas like if I hear music like I do not
Speaker 1: do that, maybe see colors or um fractals or something,
Speaker 1: depending on whether I'm listening to Pink Floyd or not.
Speaker 1: And then whether or not music has lyrics. If it's
Speaker 1: um as lyrics and you can understand these lyrics, then
Speaker 1: you're gonna be processing language through Broca and Wernicke's areas,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before, Two great areas. What was
Speaker 1: that in We talked a lot about linguists in the
Speaker 1: two areas. There's so many shows. No, man, I have
Speaker 1: such a hard time. It didn't come out very long ago.
Speaker 1: I think it was in UH the one on prohibition UH,
Speaker 1: and it activates a visual cortex, because you know, when
Speaker 1: you close your eyes and listen to music, you're probably
Speaker 1: gonna visualize something. Well, that would that would lend credence
Speaker 1: to the idea that music is associated with movement. Yeah. Sure,
Speaker 1: as we check movement with our eyes. I see really
Speaker 1: high glossy music videos. When I close my eyes, I
Speaker 1: just see money for Nothing over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: You see the the day glow in the purple leopards print. Um.
Speaker 1: And it can also trigger the motor cortex, of course,
Speaker 1: because that that's what you start tapping, the hand, tapping
Speaker 1: the feet, bob in the head like in the disco
Speaker 1: episode when he played some of that music. Even though
Speaker 1: I don't like that music, it still gets the head
Speaker 1: bob and oh it's good music, so you say, and
Speaker 1: activates your motor cort text whether you like it or not.
Speaker 1: And the Cerebellum, I think is the last one. And
Speaker 1: that's pretty interesting because, um, that means you're like following
Speaker 1: the music and trying to figure out where it's headed
Speaker 1: based on what you've heard before. Yeah, because we love
Speaker 1: to keep our ourselves occupied. Sure, Um, that's not the
Speaker 1: last one. There's a medial prefunnal cortex. Yeah, you're right, um.
Speaker 1: And that word also is usually pronounced pre frontel um.
Speaker 1: And that one is the one where are that unlocks
Speaker 1: our memories? Like the music goes in there as a
Speaker 1: key and goes and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's one of your old old ones? Uh? Hot Blooded?
Speaker 1: What does that gave you? It was I think of
Speaker 1: myself as a little three year old cowboy boots because
Speaker 1: that was like the first song I ever knew the
Speaker 1: lyrics too, so I walked around singing hot Blooded. Nice?
Speaker 1: How about that? That's pretty good. My big one is um,
Speaker 1: how Deep is Your Love? By the Bgs. It makes
Speaker 1: me almost want to cry when I hear it because
Speaker 1: this one day when I was like in the third grade,
Speaker 1: that was a bully that was not even picking on me,
Speaker 1: but he just scared the crap out of me on
Speaker 1: the bus one day with his bullying. And I was
Speaker 1: such a little wimpy kid, you know, And I ran
Speaker 1: to my dad's office he was principal, and he wasn't there,
Speaker 1: and I was. She was just like, you can wait
Speaker 1: for him, and I was like crying, And how Deep
Speaker 1: is Your Love? Was on the on the the Hi
Speaker 1: Fi and Uh, to this day, it just still makes
Speaker 1: me incredibly sad to hear that song. See you like
Speaker 1: this guy, Well, it makes me cry it moves you.
Speaker 1: Or like Centerfold by Jake Giles Man that always takes
Speaker 1: me to like the skating rink. Yeah immediately, ye good. Um.
Speaker 1: So if you want to talk about memory, you should
Speaker 1: go look up. Um have you seen the video on
Speaker 1: YouTube I posted about the guy in the nursing home.
Speaker 1: I don't follow you on Facebook, jerk. Uh, it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Just go to YouTube and put in man and nursing
Speaker 1: home reacts to music. And there was this this old
Speaker 1: timer in a nursing home who it showed him before
Speaker 1: he listened to anything, and he, you know, it's kinda shaky,
Speaker 1: had a hard time stringing together sentences. And then they
Speaker 1: put these headphones on and played like Cab Calloway and stuff,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden his speech is fluid. Oh dude,
Speaker 1: it's like remarkable and just gut wrenching to see this. Well,
Speaker 1: they were saying that the medial prefrontal cortex is whe
Speaker 1: of the last areas to go with alzheimer exactly, So
Speaker 1: you may have trouble with just about everything else, but
Speaker 1: music can still unlock memories. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome.
Speaker 1: It's cognitive vanta stin is uh. And then there was
Speaker 1: another study with UM. They studied this woman who had
Speaker 1: damaged to her temporal lobe and she couldn't distinguish between
Speaker 1: like melodies and things, but she still had the UH
Speaker 1: in the in the m r I machine had the
Speaker 1: emotional reactions lighting up that you would anticipate with like
Speaker 1: quote happy music or sad music. Yeah, pretty amazing. Um.
Speaker 1: Again it's like the MafA tribes people. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: have a pretty good idea that this this that our
Speaker 1: brains are being activated these certain regions are right. We've
Speaker 1: seen it in the mr iye that's full of listening
Speaker 1: to music in MR eyes while scientists of studying them
Speaker 1: they love that kind of stuff. Um. And so from
Speaker 1: that and like that Alzheimer's revelation, we started to realize like, okay,
Speaker 1: well maybe we can like artists, um, create music or
Speaker 1: art too, um to get you in with the emotions. UM,
Speaker 1: maybe we can kind of use this as like a prescription.
Speaker 1: And hence music therapy has been born and it's actually
Speaker 1: been proven as um what was the UM noun for efficacy? Efficatic? Effective? No, way,
Speaker 1: that's a an effect. It's effective. Okay, thanks Chuck, Sure
Speaker 1: go ahead, man, something bad just happened to me. Okay.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, so music therapy has been born and it's effective.
Speaker 1: It's been shown effective, effic had of exactly like uh
Speaker 1: for instance, Well, they think it grows as we grow
Speaker 1: like this, this tie to music and emotion intensifies this
Speaker 1: we grow even though they've seen it in little babies. Babies, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it starts early, right, Yeah, but like you know, fast
Speaker 1: tempos and a major key will tend to make someone
Speaker 1: happy and it just you kind of take it for granted,
Speaker 1: but like there's stuff going on there to make this happen.
Speaker 1: And like minor keys, D minor the saddest of all
Speaker 1: keys slow tempo. Is that the Devil's key that's from
Speaker 1: spinal tap, but it is it's a very sad key
Speaker 1: and minor keys when you hear it, especially as a musician,
Speaker 1: you you know, it just lends itself to like darkness.
Speaker 1: I wonder if that's the Devil's key. There's something called
Speaker 1: like I think the Devil's key. Yeah, I can't remember
Speaker 1: what it is it's worth, like, maybe we'll do it
Speaker 1: smarter in sixty seconds on it, I would love to. Okay, Um,
Speaker 1: but as far as uh study these go with medical benefits,
Speaker 1: they have found that UM at cal State University that
Speaker 1: hospitalized kids, we're happier during music therapy when they could
Speaker 1: play something along with like a teacher on guitar, let's say.
Speaker 1: Then even getting like toys and puzzles like they they valued,
Speaker 1: and we're happier during music time than playtime right there. Uh,
Speaker 1: like just playing doing their own plaything just stunk compared
Speaker 1: to playing a triangle. Yeah, I was always like putting
Speaker 1: a bad mood when I was given a triangle or
Speaker 1: a recorder? Do you remember recorder lessons? Mandatory recorder left?
Speaker 1: Why was that the one? Probably kids is easy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What did I guess? The recorder lobby was much stronger
Speaker 1: when we were kids than it is today because you
Speaker 1: don't see those any longer. Yeah, well there was no
Speaker 1: read on it, like it's just any kid could pick
Speaker 1: up a recorder and play. You don't have to hit
Speaker 1: it just right with like the flute or and then
Speaker 1: what were those ones dicks? They were like ribbed sticks
Speaker 1: that you just like zip along one another because there
Speaker 1: wouldn't corduroy. Yeah, this is a percussive instrument. I don't
Speaker 1: know the name of it though it was boring. Uh,
Speaker 1: the augmented fourth, my friend, it's the Devil's Key. We'll
Speaker 1: have to check that out. Maybe our guests can play it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, um, which is coming up soon by the way. Uh,
Speaker 1: breakup songs. I was a little bit I couldn't quite
Speaker 1: figure out if they've proven that a breakup song. It
Speaker 1: seemed like all anecdotal, like you know, of course I
Speaker 1: will survive, is gonna pump you up if you're gonna
Speaker 1: show him, or you know, she's always a woman to me,
Speaker 1: will make you weep. If you love Billy Joel and
Speaker 1: your girlfriend love Billy Joel and you just broke up,
Speaker 1: well it feels good to pear those songs and to
Speaker 1: cry it out because your medial prefrontal cortexes is crying
Speaker 1: out for that. I guess, yeah, because I mean, like
Speaker 1: you have a memory formed in relation to a song, right,
Speaker 1: But no, I think the point that Congress is trying
Speaker 1: to make is that there's not a study out there
Speaker 1: that showed that breakup songs have a certain effect. No
Speaker 1: one's done that yet, but she did lay out like
Speaker 1: a pretty good case for how it would work. Why
Speaker 1: people were walking around knowing that like, yeah, this, this works,
Speaker 1: this has its effect. Right, Well, she's saying, like there's
Speaker 1: this um this Rutgers University anthropologists named Helen Fisher, who
Speaker 1: studies the effects of breakups, and basically she is the
Speaker 1: one who came up with the concept of the breakup
Speaker 1: as a going cold turkey on an addiction, like you
Speaker 1: can compare it to cocaine. And the reason why is
Speaker 1: because when you're in love with somebody, your limbic system
Speaker 1: is stimulated, and then when that's taken away, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, this stimulation that you used to have is
Speaker 1: not there any longer, your olympics system, it gets kind
Speaker 1: of irritated. What Congress saying is that it makes sense
Speaker 1: that music, which has been shown to stimulate the limbic system,
Speaker 1: probably does some sort of number on it to kind
Speaker 1: of wean you off that cold turkey person. You just
Speaker 1: oh okay, you just yeah, got you. That makes more sense, now,
Speaker 1: that's yeah, But there wasn't an actual study, You're right, okay.
Speaker 1: But she also pointed out that music um has been
Speaker 1: shown to be a pain reliever. Yeah. This one study
Speaker 1: in from two thousand eleven found that cancer patients undergoing
Speaker 1: mastectomies had lower blood pressure and lower anxiety when they
Speaker 1: played music prep during the operation, even in post op
Speaker 1: and um. And not not an enormous amount. It's not
Speaker 1: like a shot of morphine or anything like that, as
Speaker 1: like point five, uh half a point on a ten
Speaker 1: point scale, you know, the pain scale, the line drawing
Speaker 1: of the person. Just like, I never know what to say.
Speaker 1: They're always think I need to say a lot so
Speaker 1: I'll get a better pain pill. Well, they ask you
Speaker 1: like one to ten. I know, that's why I always
Speaker 1: say ten, okay, but I never I mean, it's hard
Speaker 1: to qualify. If you want to get the good pain pills,
Speaker 1: you have to stay eleven. They think that's hilarious. Have
Speaker 1: you said that this one goes to eleven. That's the
Speaker 1: second spinal tap reference. Um. Yeah, and that's actual physical pain.
Speaker 1: It shows to ease a little bit. But where it
Speaker 1: really comes in handy is as like an anxiety reducer
Speaker 1: and as an emotional woob. Yeah. They found that people
Speaker 1: who suffer from anxiety, they actually responded to music as
Speaker 1: an analgesic more than a pharmaceutical. It is, and it's
Speaker 1: not just them like you you mentioned, like blood pressure lowering.
Speaker 1: Other studies have been conducted that showed that pregnant women
Speaker 1: um were less stressed out than when they listen to music.
Speaker 1: UM people uh with cardiac patients, their blood pressure lowered,
Speaker 1: um immune systems were boosted in post surgery patient's like,
Speaker 1: there's it has this really great effect on us. It's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty obvious why it's. It's the Olympic system has
Speaker 1: a calming effect. I had that happened to me once,
Speaker 1: actually to my detriment. I was uh so living in
Speaker 1: New Jersey at the time. I was going to the
Speaker 1: bank and like really stressed out about getting to the
Speaker 1: bank before it closed, and this song came on about
Speaker 1: that I've never heard before. Like halfway there, I get
Speaker 1: to the bank, it's like literally like a minute and
Speaker 1: a half for this bank closes, and I could not
Speaker 1: get out of the car. I couldn't quit listening to
Speaker 1: this song. Well, its song was that I can't remember now,
Speaker 1: but I literally remember watching the dude come up and
Speaker 1: locked the door in front of me and sitting there
Speaker 1: in my car and thinking, you know what, this is
Speaker 1: worth it because this is amazing and I'm not stressed anymore.
Speaker 1: And who cares about the bank? That is? That is
Speaker 1: quite a song, Yeah, and I think it probably pounce
Speaker 1: some checks because of it. But who did you go
Speaker 1: back and listen to the song after you're looking at
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember what it was. This is
Speaker 1: a long time ago. That's really made them like a
Speaker 1: classical thing because I broke down at Carnegie holland cried
Speaker 1: one time. Yeah, Beethoven's like I did, uh, Beethoven's ninth
Speaker 1: Oh to Joy with like the full choir. That thing
Speaker 1: pumped in joy man, oh to joy? Yeah, oh joy.
Speaker 1: Uh that's right, that's like those are the lyrics. I
Speaker 1: just activated your were Nikki's area. Now you activated another area?
Speaker 1: What else you got? Nothing? Man, I've had plenty of
Speaker 1: those A lot of times. It's live music that gets
Speaker 1: me because of the shared experience. Um, but it can
Speaker 1: happen on just you know, in a movie or a
Speaker 1: television show. Yeah. Like I said, you married the moving
Speaker 1: picture and music together for me, and it's like it's
Speaker 1: all over. It's like chocolate and peanut butter. You got
Speaker 1: any good breakup songs, any good sad songs are you like? No,
Speaker 1: but only like I think who doesn't do that, you
Speaker 1: know when they go through a breakup, to sit around
Speaker 1: and listen to like the most Morrow's stuff you can find,
Speaker 1: like put on the Smiths and the Smith's the Cure.
Speaker 1: One of my all time favorites was a Secret Machine
Speaker 1: song called the Loan Jealous and Stone good Audio kill you.
Speaker 1: M Yeah. Strangely, Genesis Ripples is really yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great one to me, Like, but that one is so
Speaker 1: magnificent because it depending on my mood, it's either sad
Speaker 1: or very reflective. It's not it's not ever like happy,
Speaker 1: like yeah, I feel like I'm gonna go take on
Speaker 1: the world. It's not that kind of song. But it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily like sad. It's just contemplative in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways too. And there's a range too, you know.
Speaker 1: I think with the breakup, like at first, you do
Speaker 1: want to just keep being bummed out and so you've
Speaker 1: gotten it all out of your system, and then that's
Speaker 1: when you want to put on you know, I had
Speaker 1: the Tiger Well. Also, Molly pointed out she wrote the
Speaker 1: second article, I think she points out that. Um, if
Speaker 1: if we are hitting our um limbic system with music
Speaker 1: and we are, it's like a drug, we become addicted
Speaker 1: to it, then there's a really good case for unplugging
Speaker 1: and not listening to music for a while. I don't
Speaker 1: know about that, which kind of points out something that
Speaker 1: I've known for a very long time. Good listen to
Speaker 1: stuff you should know is very refreshing. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we have a special treat here, Chuck. Okay. So um,
Speaker 1: we've been talking about the idea of experiencing music like
Speaker 1: unpacking it and experiencing music and art. We should probably
Speaker 1: talk to somebody who packs that a great way to
Speaker 1: say it. Thank you, Um we have you might remember
Speaker 1: him from the Mountaintop Removal mining episode. Mr Ben so
Speaker 1: Lee is joining us again. That's right, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: get his insights on a music and emotion as an
Speaker 1: artist and then as a special treat. Just like last time,
Speaker 1: he's going to play for us. So our second musical
Speaker 1: guest is the same as our person. All right. Uh
Speaker 1: so let's just get been in here. It's like magic
Speaker 1: then soil he is in the studio. Wow, that was Ben,
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming. Oh it's my pleasure. Hello. Thanks,
Speaker 1: it's good to be here. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: So we did things out of order and Ben actually
Speaker 1: just played although through the magic of editing, you will
Speaker 1: hear that song in or songs afterwards. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: have to give away all our secrets? I know, but
Speaker 1: I just wanted to say that I was supercharged after
Speaker 1: doing this podcast on music and emotion to experience that
Speaker 1: with you in a room with just a few other people. Well,
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear what you've been talking about. That. Well,
Speaker 1: that leads me and I see, by the way, into
Speaker 1: my first question, which we talked a lot about in
Speaker 1: the podcast about um music and emotion and how it
Speaker 1: depends on whether or not it's live. Like there's a
Speaker 1: difference emotionally whether or not it's live music or like
Speaker 1: on a CD. And as an artist, I mean we've
Speaker 1: got scientist perspective. As an artist, what has been your
Speaker 1: experience with playing live and with how fans receive it
Speaker 1: live as opposed to on a CD. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: there's on recordings, there's kind of the there's a lot
Speaker 1: of room for the listener to um place their own
Speaker 1: images and their own ideas into the music and everything,
Speaker 1: and it's there's certainly room for that in the live
Speaker 1: show as well, but they're also visually seeing what your
Speaker 1: body is doing when you say these words, and of
Speaker 1: course physical body language is a huge part of of
Speaker 1: how we manipulate the meanings of things, and I think
Speaker 1: that has a huge amount of input, Um, But I
Speaker 1: also think that sometimes it can confuse things. You know,
Speaker 1: sometimes people can be seeing you and kind of be
Speaker 1: so overwhelmed with what was happening and how it's happening
Speaker 1: visually on stage that it doesn't necessarily they don't get
Speaker 1: to focus on what might impact them as much musically.
Speaker 1: So I think I do think there's two music affects
Speaker 1: people differently in live and then recorded settings. That's pretty
Speaker 1: much what I said. I think he kind of just
Speaker 1: confirmed what you said to me. Um. We talked about
Speaker 1: there's a theory that one of the ways music moves
Speaker 1: us is because we it's it's a stand in for
Speaker 1: human movement. So that would make a lot of sense
Speaker 1: that if you're also seeing movement while you're listening to music,
Speaker 1: you're just have your mind blown. It's a stand in
Speaker 1: for movement. Huh. That's what what was his name, Mark
Speaker 1: Changzi something like that. Yeah, that's his theory. That's why
Speaker 1: our emotions are unlocked through music is because we we
Speaker 1: um visualized movement and we can feel empathy towards human movement.
Speaker 1: So the music just reminds us of that movement. It's
Speaker 1: a theory. I think he's working on it still. I
Speaker 1: think there's I think be interesting to see how it
Speaker 1: gets to that part of the brain and what path
Speaker 1: it goes through, whether you know, because music kind of
Speaker 1: exists through this kind of backdoor in the brain, maybe
Speaker 1: the place where speech began and then got its own
Speaker 1: apartment later on in life. We we talked all about that.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love this podcast. I've got a question, Okay,
Speaker 1: So one of the things we talked about Ben was, um,
Speaker 1: how when you're observing art or when you're listening to music,
Speaker 1: it's like you are unpacking, um, what the artists put
Speaker 1: in there emotionally, or the artist is using some sort
Speaker 1: of cues to trigger your own emotions. As an artist,
Speaker 1: on say the packing side of this whole equation, do
Speaker 1: you ever just go like this note is gonna make
Speaker 1: everybody just weep on cue or this one's really gonna
Speaker 1: get them, Like, do you ever do you think like
Speaker 1: that or is it more when you're creating something that
Speaker 1: you're you're end of putting yourself in there and it's
Speaker 1: open for interpretation. I think there's there's generally two ways
Speaker 1: I go about it, and both of them have their
Speaker 1: own dangers and pitfalls. When you think when you try
Speaker 1: to think of a musical device that's going that can
Speaker 1: and will affect people in a certain way, especially if
Speaker 1: you're talking about anything with words and music, Um, there's
Speaker 1: a danger of kind of watering, watering the emotion down
Speaker 1: to something that can be to affect people in a
Speaker 1: broad way. Um, not something on Broadway, just people being
Speaker 1: affected in kind of like a like for pop music.
Speaker 1: We'll just use that as an example. You know a
Speaker 1: lot of times when you're listening, you hear things and
Speaker 1: sounds and musical repetition that's used because people feel like
Speaker 1: it will be a hit or will affect a lot
Speaker 1: of people. And uh, And of course when I'm writing songs,
Speaker 1: sometimes I could think that I'm being that I can
Speaker 1: be too personal with an idea, Like I can get
Speaker 1: something that's so personal I'm packing up that bag and
Speaker 1: I'm putting you know, undy's in and all this other
Speaker 1: stuff and like too specific, and you lose people because
Speaker 1: they can't relate to that specific item. But if you
Speaker 1: talk about the gesture that's there and try to find
Speaker 1: that the essential human expression that's in there, um, then
Speaker 1: you have a universal idea, even if it springs from
Speaker 1: a very personal experience. So if I was going to
Speaker 1: say that another way, I think I would say that, Um,
Speaker 1: when you're packing up the bags, you have to be
Speaker 1: careful not to be too personal, um, because otherwise you
Speaker 1: can lose people. People can almost feel like, um, not
Speaker 1: necessarily grossed out, but like they're like they're seeing something
Speaker 1: that they shouldn't see or it's too private, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And and so what you need to do is figure
Speaker 1: out how your private things relate to their private things
Speaker 1: and so create a personal experience that has some type
Speaker 1: of universal meaning or expression to it. So when you're
Speaker 1: packing the bags, you leave out like the metaphorical leather
Speaker 1: hood with the zipper mouth, Yes, I'll leave that out.
Speaker 1: And Norton, nor do I make repetition of things that
Speaker 1: everybody knows is already there all the time. You know,
Speaker 1: like if everybody knows that the doors are closing and
Speaker 1: chatting all the time. You don't use that musical device,
Speaker 1: which is to say you don't just like, for instance,
Speaker 1: in dubstep music, there's a very simple musical pattern that's happening. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's a big build, usually for about thirty two bars,
Speaker 1: where it's just there's no low end or anything. There's
Speaker 1: just big build, build, build, build, and then there's something
Speaker 1: called the drop where the base drops back in and
Speaker 1: it's like it's supposed to be like this quake of
Speaker 1: emotion that happens and everybody's head started just going up
Speaker 1: and down, and um. You have to be careful because
Speaker 1: it's a pretty simple device and there's lots of different
Speaker 1: variations you can do in that on that, but if
Speaker 1: you do it too much or too similar each time,
Speaker 1: then people are just like, ah, is that just a crescendos. No,
Speaker 1: it's not a crescendo, it's a it's a it's an orchestration,
Speaker 1: it's an arrangement thing. So a criscendos when things just
Speaker 1: kind of grow in volume, and uh, this is much
Speaker 1: more of arranging sounds, so that there's some that are
Speaker 1: absent and you know, they're going to return, but how
Speaker 1: you bring them back in and create anticipation is is
Speaker 1: the strength of your composition as a As a dub
Speaker 1: step artist, I guess good stuff. We actually have an
Speaker 1: article on that and it's on my list dub step.
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb will kill you if we record dub step? Uh?
Speaker 1: So Ben? As an artist, do you think, like we
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the emotional kick like the drug
Speaker 1: and you know it releases dopamine and it's actual, there's
Speaker 1: science behind it going on? As an artist, do you
Speaker 1: find it more difficult to still get that kick or like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you hear a song, do you think
Speaker 1: I was like as a musician, like, oh I hear
Speaker 1: what this person is doing there? Or is it just
Speaker 1: still pure emotion going on? Or does it very um?
Speaker 1: I think as an artist, once you start repetitively doing something,
Speaker 1: there is a tolerance that builds up, which is kind
Speaker 1: of a sad thing. Um, And people kind of find
Speaker 1: ways to convey that they're still getting that stuff when
Speaker 1: they're really not. That makes sense, especially in a live show,
Speaker 1: like you'll see a rocker contorting themselves in all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird ways and then after the show, they act
Speaker 1: like just you can tell that they're not completely high
Speaker 1: off of off of the show, at least they're they're
Speaker 1: just kind of like, yeah, thanks, um, as opposed to
Speaker 1: someone who you've just seem to go through a pretty
Speaker 1: magical musical experience and you and you can tell that
Speaker 1: everything that they had just kind of came out of
Speaker 1: them and they're either bouncing around or they're just completely
Speaker 1: a puddle on the floor. You know. I remember seeing
Speaker 1: Andrew Bird play a show like that once and he
Speaker 1: just gave everything to it, and you can tell he
Speaker 1: was having an overwhelming experience and stay went to talk
Speaker 1: to him afterwards and he was just he was basically
Speaker 1: a puddle. He was a human puddle at the end.
Speaker 1: He had just kind of given everything, and you know,
Speaker 1: he talks about that and in some of his songs
Speaker 1: as well. That actually was one of my other questions
Speaker 1: as an artist on stage, like how do you night
Speaker 1: after night? How do you draw that up? And does
Speaker 1: the emotion of the audience, Um, how much do you
Speaker 1: feed off that? And can you you probably just can't
Speaker 1: whip that up, so like how does that all work? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's something I probably have to think about how to
Speaker 1: answer just for a little bit. But like I guess
Speaker 1: the basic question is, like, what's the difference between a
Speaker 1: good show and a bad show? Yeah? Sometimes up to
Speaker 1: me what was good and bad? Because sometimes I'll have
Speaker 1: what's sometimes when I'm playing a live show, I'll have
Speaker 1: what seems to be a fairly kind of mundane night,
Speaker 1: like nothing really special instrumentally happened. I didn't shred really
Speaker 1: much on anything, and I didn't really feel impact. And
Speaker 1: then people walk up to this show, walk up to
Speaker 1: me after the show, and they'll be kind of having
Speaker 1: this intense emotional reaction to it, you know. Um So
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of stories and networking going on when
Speaker 1: you're playing live on stage. People are getting to know you,
Speaker 1: they've spent two hours getting to know you. Uh, They're
Speaker 1: checking all kinds of visual cues from you, and of
Speaker 1: course you're actually talking to them and telling stories. Um
Speaker 1: they're taking cues from everybody else in the audience. So
Speaker 1: there's kind of like a tribe build up mentality. Um So,
Speaker 1: I think part of it is getting everybody to participate
Speaker 1: socially in the show, if you want to get to
Speaker 1: that in that energy place where something overwhelming happens to
Speaker 1: you and the audience UM, and that usually starts with
Speaker 1: it's very much like a combustion, like you have to
Speaker 1: ignite it in some way and you feel that coming on.
Speaker 1: Like have you been in a show where you feel
Speaker 1: like not so much as happening and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: all right, now it's going on. Yeah, you can definitely
Speaker 1: feel it when it turns on. There's a a sort
Speaker 1: of friction in the room, if that's a good word.
Speaker 1: There's some there's definitely some type of resistance that you
Speaker 1: can move with, if that makes sense. Like in dance,
Speaker 1: when you're doing like ballroom dance, even though the motion
Speaker 1: is very fluid, there's a lot of rigidity in it.
Speaker 1: Like between partners. You have to you have to kind
Speaker 1: of push against your partner and they have to be
Speaker 1: rigid to be able to communicate the movement to them,
Speaker 1: because you're not gonna be okay, spending the right degrees now,
Speaker 1: dip down forty five, You're not gonna use language to them.
Speaker 1: You're you're touching and pulling, and but you want to
Speaker 1: do it in a fluid, very connected way, and you
Speaker 1: can you have that same sort of push and pull
Speaker 1: with the audience where when you push against them you
Speaker 1: can hear them here or feel them kind of get excited,
Speaker 1: and then when you pull back, you can hear them
Speaker 1: kind of breathing more. Uh. And when I say pull back,
Speaker 1: I mean that can be volume, that can be tempo,
Speaker 1: that can be uh frequency range you're including in. There
Speaker 1: can be a lot of things. And of course, as
Speaker 1: a chela player who did a lot of time sitting
Speaker 1: in the back of the orchestra, you I got to
Speaker 1: spend time paying attention to that from an orchestral standpoint
Speaker 1: where you're on stage with A D people playing to
Speaker 1: an audience of however many people, And so that's an
Speaker 1: even trickier thing because you got to get the A
Speaker 1: D people to create the spark before the audience can
Speaker 1: really start combusting, like you can really start feeling that energy.
Speaker 1: And that second chair clarinetis is always just messing it up.
Speaker 1: Did you play clarinet? Okay? Um? But sometimes the audience
Speaker 1: can walk in and create something that may not have
Speaker 1: been there otherwise. I really I felt that too, um
Speaker 1: where maybe you had a really crappy day or maybe
Speaker 1: you just you don't have any energy left after doing
Speaker 1: a bunch of media or traveling on the road, and
Speaker 1: the audience walks in and they're just they've got an
Speaker 1: idea and an expectation that is just buzzing or around
Speaker 1: the room, and suddenly you kind of get this encouragement
Speaker 1: or a feeling that you're going to fill their cups.
Speaker 1: You're gonna you're gonna really have an emotional impact. But
Speaker 1: there's no one way that I get my self psyched
Speaker 1: up for it to generate that spark. There's not like
Speaker 1: one tool, there's no drug that I use. It's just
Speaker 1: kind of one of those things where I try to
Speaker 1: from the very beginning, it's I try to write songs
Speaker 1: that have that personal experience and in it for me
Speaker 1: that that igniting artistic moment. Whether whether it's um, you know,
Speaker 1: a love song, or whether it's a song about something
Speaker 1: stupid that happened between politicians, or a belief in um
Speaker 1: some type of social change, or it's or a war
Speaker 1: song or something like that. It can be any sort
Speaker 1: of thing. When I write it, I tried to be
Speaker 1: really honest and genuine about something that really moves me
Speaker 1: so that whenever I play it over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. The three time I play it, I can
Speaker 1: still look back into that song. And for me, it's
Speaker 1: very much like that. When I play a song, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm remembering and and kind of reliving a little bit
Speaker 1: of what happened in that song, but not just what
Speaker 1: happened to that song, what happened when I played that
Speaker 1: song for the first time in front of a certain
Speaker 1: group of people, or when I played that song on
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know or whatever you know. It kind
Speaker 1: of a creates experiences in it, and so that keeps
Speaker 1: me getting excited about it, and I think that probably
Speaker 1: helps ignite things. Um, have you ever made a stranger
Speaker 1: weep with your music? And if so, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about that? Now? When you say stranger, you mean
Speaker 1: like somebody who just just walking by, has no clue. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, just somebody you didn't know, Like somebody who
Speaker 1: came to see one of your shows, and like you
Speaker 1: look down and you saw like they were crying and
Speaker 1: it was obvious it was because your music had brought
Speaker 1: something out in them. What was that like? So it's amazing, man?
Speaker 1: What is it like? So when I'm when I'm playing,
Speaker 1: when I'm playing a song that has a heavy emotion
Speaker 1: to me like I've got this one song called Panning
Speaker 1: for Gold, and I wrote it about my grandparents who
Speaker 1: both had dementia, and UM as they slipped further and
Speaker 1: further into that it was it's Alzheimer's and which was
Speaker 1: caused the situation of dementia. UM, they kind of forgot
Speaker 1: all the good stuff that they've done in the world.
Speaker 1: And I used this character, this spiritual character of God
Speaker 1: forgetting all the stuff that he created, UM in the
Speaker 1: song as a as a kind of like a lyrical
Speaker 1: device to show that it's our job to remind each
Speaker 1: other of how all the beautiful things that are in
Speaker 1: the world. And UM, that was what the song meant
Speaker 1: to me. And that's when I first started explaining to people.
Speaker 1: But I quickly learned that people would weep to that
Speaker 1: song all of their various reasons. The song had was
Speaker 1: so um sticky as an artistic idea, the idea of
Speaker 1: someone old for getting something that a young person was
Speaker 1: supposed to reconnect them with. H or maybe it was
Speaker 1: about protecting or preserving something that the audience would all
Speaker 1: fill their own minds with ideas and they would just weep,
Speaker 1: and some of them would be leaping for joy, someone
Speaker 1: would be missing somebody and it was a real, real
Speaker 1: mix and I had no control over it. That's the
Speaker 1: that's the thing. That's how it feels. It feels like, ah,
Speaker 1: I've I've. Even though you feel like you've impacted somebody
Speaker 1: in a deep way, you don't feel like you've got
Speaker 1: any control over how it happens. So I guess that's
Speaker 1: kind of what I was asking was, do you you
Speaker 1: don't feel do you feel responsible for putting that out
Speaker 1: there and the people are crying or like that you're
Speaker 1: just playing and they're attaching they're thing to it. I mean,
Speaker 1: usually the thing that coordinates with it is I feel
Speaker 1: like I've had a really genuine expression in the song,
Speaker 1: you know, from a performance standpo, I feel like it
Speaker 1: was a really honest performance. At the time, I'll feel
Speaker 1: good about the performance, but I don't really feel like
Speaker 1: it's something that I did. I feel like, if I'm
Speaker 1: being really honest, it can happen. It's something that I
Speaker 1: can create a situation for, but I don't feel like
Speaker 1: it's something that I do. I feel like that's kind
Speaker 1: of like the communal choice or that person's that person's thing.
Speaker 1: Earlier in the show, we talked about each other's um.
Speaker 1: We talked about music and memory and how it's tied
Speaker 1: to memories and very evocative of You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of times songs from like your childhood will keep getting
Speaker 1: really specific with a certain memory. And you know, one
Speaker 1: of mine was the BGS and a very specific memory, Josh,
Speaker 1: what was yours hot Blood in my Foreigner? But I
Speaker 1: think everyone wants to know what's the first thing that
Speaker 1: comes to your head when you about a song from
Speaker 1: your past, from your childhood that really evokes a very
Speaker 1: specific memory, Like when you hear it, you're just there. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: at this point, I've got a bunch At this point
Speaker 1: in my career, since I've written a lot of music
Speaker 1: and experienced a lot of music, I've got a huge
Speaker 1: pile of them. Um. You know, there's a couple of
Speaker 1: this this song Wayfaring Stranger traditional Tune. When I play
Speaker 1: or sing or hear that song, I go immediately back
Speaker 1: to sitting behind my grandfather's house and um, hearing him
Speaker 1: play that on fiddle and sing. Um. There's other weird
Speaker 1: songs like two Dy Fruity is the song that I
Speaker 1: got over stage fright for for some reason. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was in uh grade school choir and I had terrible
Speaker 1: stage fright at the time. It was like fifth grade
Speaker 1: or whatever, and I was playing chill at the time,
Speaker 1: but I was singing in the choir and just I
Speaker 1: just couldn't get with it. I was like, I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be up there, shouldn't be up here. And at some
Speaker 1: point I was kind of food and I looked out
Speaker 1: and like there was kids on roller skates and the
Speaker 1: hula hoops and the parents were all laughing, and I
Speaker 1: was up on stage singing, and I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: this is this is affecting people. This is really fun,
Speaker 1: this is really affecting people. I can just see myself
Speaker 1: up there. I just started shaking. It's like doing food.
Speaker 1: Oh rude. And I just I went I go straight
Speaker 1: back there whenever I hear that song. That's funny. Yah.
Speaker 1: And as a musician, like, what has been your what's
Speaker 1: been your best moment as as a fan of music
Speaker 1: when you've been in the audience and feeling you know,
Speaker 1: that spark in that fire in the room. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that long ago that I saw an artist
Speaker 1: named a Neus Mitchell familiar with her at all I
Speaker 1: think I know that name. It's really good. She did,
Speaker 1: Um she did this kind of contemporary telling of the
Speaker 1: story of your ID. It's and Orpheus, but she did
Speaker 1: as a folk opera with like Audie d Franco and
Speaker 1: Greg Brown and um, gosh, what's the guy from bon
Speaker 1: I Just yeah, dude, Yeah, she put together all those
Speaker 1: different folks and and created this modern contemporary telling of
Speaker 1: it and it's so beautiful. But anyhow, I saw her
Speaker 1: performing live and she's just got this way about how
Speaker 1: she she just loses herself and and and it's like
Speaker 1: she's trying to shake off these words that she just
Speaker 1: has to say. Um. Yeah, that's the that's the most
Speaker 1: recent times in the audience. I mean, she's just she's
Speaker 1: really breathtaking the way she would just flip the words
Speaker 1: out and try to Yeah, it was almost like she
Speaker 1: was trying to shake off the emotion and when she
Speaker 1: shook it off, it ended up all over you in
Speaker 1: the audience. That's awesome. It's kind of like galli or
Speaker 1: it's very much like Gallagher. I love hearing that is that,
Speaker 1: you know, as a music fan, to know that you
Speaker 1: can still go out there as a musician and you're
Speaker 1: not jaded or cynegal and yeah you can still get
Speaker 1: lost like that, Oh, get super lost in it. I
Speaker 1: mean right now. The most overwhelming sound that I hear,
Speaker 1: of course is an orchestra, because I spent a lot
Speaker 1: of years playing in them. And then I also think
Speaker 1: they're so um special now because we have so few
Speaker 1: of them that are playing at super high levels, because
Speaker 1: so many orchestras have closed down, and um, I think
Speaker 1: that's a really interesting thing because orchestras ask you to
Speaker 1: change your social habit at least for us young folks.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you went and saw an orchestra,
Speaker 1: either of you? Well? Mine was actually my one of
Speaker 1: my best stories from seeing alive. I saw Beethoven's Night
Speaker 1: that Carnegie Hall and uh, the oh de joy thing,
Speaker 1: Like literally I was sitting there crying like a little baby.
Speaker 1: But I think that's probably the last one I saw
Speaker 1: that when the dudes come in. Yeah, actually I saw
Speaker 1: The Decembrist a couple of years ago with the Land
Speaker 1: Symphony Orchestra, which is pretty great. Yeah, a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago and as banded with the orchestra. What about
Speaker 1: the orchestra? It's been a while and it so yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think it's because orchestras ask us to change
Speaker 1: our social habits so much to come see them, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean for us young folks, like we
Speaker 1: don't see shows in concert halls and pay sixty bucks
Speaker 1: to do it, and we're a time and we're a
Speaker 1: time sitting seats. I don't have drinks, you know, like
Speaker 1: and and so even though it's one of the most
Speaker 1: um incredible sounds that we create as humans, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's really powerful sound when you get a full
Speaker 1: orchestra there plan as you as you know from your experience,
Speaker 1: but we still don't do it because it's so outside
Speaker 1: of our zone. And I wonder you know what that
Speaker 1: means as we become more and more visually based, like
Speaker 1: what does music mean to us? And how does it
Speaker 1: really affect us? And and how as musicians can we
Speaker 1: uh still affect people in the same way regardless of
Speaker 1: an environment. And that's a that's the biggest challenge facing
Speaker 1: us right now because most you know, most of our
Speaker 1: music is being consumed at MP three quality through people's
Speaker 1: you know, phones, streaming or watching an MP three video
Speaker 1: or YouTube video something. So you know, as a musician,
Speaker 1: I'm looking for the best way to affect people, uh,
Speaker 1: and the best way to convey my song or art
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to call it. And nowadays it's
Speaker 1: just it just gets consumed so many different ways, and
Speaker 1: you don't you have no idea how people are gonna
Speaker 1: resonate with it, if they're going to resonate with it.
Speaker 1: So the best shot that you got at it is
Speaker 1: writing something that's really genuine to you as an artist
Speaker 1: and then performing it in a really passionate, genuine way.
Speaker 1: And in some ways that harkens back to how we
Speaker 1: got all started with this thing, which was a bunch
Speaker 1: of people sitting around playing music, not professional musicians, playing
Speaker 1: two audiences and um, and that's I mean, that's what
Speaker 1: people originally were willing to start paying for. Yes, that emotion,
Speaker 1: that kind of those those endorphins hit and yeah, all
Speaker 1: that stuff that that emotion, that physical effect on your body. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen some of the best stuff I've seen has
Speaker 1: been like in the subways of New York. You know,
Speaker 1: I saw Gota do uh wild Horses by the Rolling Stones,
Speaker 1: just by himself acoustically, and no one was paying attention,
Speaker 1: And it was one of the most awesome like versions
Speaker 1: of that song I've ever heard in my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and no one was paying attention. Help for you, I
Speaker 1: think a couple of people were, but yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean that's just it is. How do you get
Speaker 1: this kind of goes back to when we just first
Speaker 1: started talking, is how do you get folks to pay
Speaker 1: attention and get them to realize that there's their stuff
Speaker 1: here to be felt and had without whatever using musical
Speaker 1: devices that water everything down where you're trying to use
Speaker 1: repetition and loudness and big crazy sounds to get their attention,
Speaker 1: and you know, you make sure not to leave any
Speaker 1: spaces in the song because Heaven forbid you lose their
Speaker 1: attention or they not give it to you. Um you know.
Speaker 1: So that I think that's one of the challenges for
Speaker 1: us is as musicians, as we um march on into
Speaker 1: this technology technology ages, not letting the huge pool that
Speaker 1: we're swimming in from an industry standpoint where we're trying
Speaker 1: to compete for attention or CD sales, whatever you wanna
Speaker 1: call it, um affect how we actually make our music. Right,
Speaker 1: you still need to make something that is genuine to
Speaker 1: yourself otherwise you're not gonna be happy playing it. And
Speaker 1: then if you're not happy playing you have got zero
Speaker 1: shot at affecting people emotionally. If you don't affect people emotionally,
Speaker 1: then they're not going to come to your shows. And
Speaker 1: that's really all that we got these days. If you
Speaker 1: gonna want to be in a professional musician, been solely
Speaker 1: doing things right. When's the album coming out? The new
Speaker 1: record Halfway Man's come out September sept Where it's the
Speaker 1: best place to buy it? Um, iTunes is a great place.
Speaker 1: Um these days, you can get it pretty much anywhere,
Speaker 1: but iTunes is a fine place. And you're on tour
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, on tour. We're on tour in our
Speaker 1: sweet tour van Tammy as well as on bicycle. All right,
Speaker 1: this will be coming out probably close to the release
Speaker 1: date of the CD, so you are going to be
Speaker 1: on tour this fall as well. Yeah. Absolutely, I'll be
Speaker 1: all over the country riding your bike two shows at times.
Speaker 1: At times we'll be riding our bike. Most times we'll
Speaker 1: be in our tour van and we'll be hitting all
Speaker 1: the towns in this country. Ben Silly dot Com. Anything else,
Speaker 1: I'm good, Ben, Thanks for coming you were like the
Speaker 1: best interview, like literally that was that was a little
Speaker 1: bit cyclical. You know, I had to I had to
Speaker 1: work my way around some of those answers. You elevate
Speaker 1: it to my friend, but you know good. That's the
Speaker 1: great thing about this show is that you all let it,
Speaker 1: let it comes, not try to design it's existence. We
Speaker 1: would fail. I appreciate that. But traditional wrap up. If
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me and Chuck
Speaker 1: and Ben Silly, we can pass things along to him.
Speaker 1: You can tweet to us at s Why SKA podcast.
Speaker 1: You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff
Speaker 1: you Should Know, and you can send us an email
Speaker 1: to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Killing Young Today
Speaker 1: that out and feel this on the high. Don't tell
Speaker 1: me to slow down. You see I grew up this week, tee.
Speaker 1: This shows in highlights. Don't sucking leaves fell into today,
Speaker 1: Willow like a time you've been through this Sha looking
Speaker 1: for hid All I need is one but you yeah,
Speaker 1: study I guess he is. If you want something down right, oh,
Speaker 1: you got to do it to say that. If you
Speaker 1: want something bad enough, you got to do what you say.
Speaker 1: It's a man in a cage he's started like a
Speaker 1: feel for the time. We this people who got the
Speaker 1: right nicking bess on my car? Your sneak or I
Speaker 1: can't look. I know this gout to be a day
Speaker 1: a way. And if you ain't gonna do it, I
Speaker 1: guess I'll have to because he and you are something
Speaker 1: d right. You got to do it. Sit and you
Speaker 1: are something bad enough. You've got to do it. SI
Speaker 1: do your chip. They gotta do your chip. H go
Speaker 1: do you got to do it? Ship, you got to
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