WEBVTT - The Science of Uncanny Music 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:13.560 Works dot Com. Hey, everybody, wasn't the Stuff to Blow 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.160 Your Mind? My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:18.960 It is Halloween weak here at Stuff to Blow Your 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:20.840 Mind and then the rest of the world really to 0:00:20.880 --> 0:00:23.400 be honest, and so we wanted to roll out a 0:00:23.440 --> 0:00:26.239 couple of our favorite Halloween episodes. So today we are 0:00:26.280 --> 0:00:30.520 resurrecting the science of Uncanny Music, which is one of 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:33.160 our favorites and one that we've received a lot of 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:36.280 of praise for from listeners. So we thought, hey, let's 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:38.680 bring it back. Yeah, if I remember correctly, this, this 0:00:38.720 --> 0:00:43.159 is when we explore the violent streams in Psycho and 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:47.040 the psychological effect, which is pretty interesting because can you 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:52.479 imagine a world without Psycho and that? Yeah, yeah, we 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:54.960 really get to the question, you know, is the is 0:00:54.960 --> 0:00:58.040 the music in Psycho scary in and of itself or 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:01.760 is it dependent entirely upon the movie that you're watching, 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.040 or is it some shade of gray between the two? 0:01:04.440 --> 0:01:11.160 Find out. Since this is the Halloween season and we're 0:01:11.160 --> 0:01:18.039 talking about creepy, uncanny, scary, frightening sonic experiences, let's kick 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.800 this episode off with just a little bit of the 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:45.319 uncanny from the Weirding Module. We should talk about this 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:48.560 weird module. Yes, yeah, just yeah, real quick, this is 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:51.160 the Weirding Module. This is a solo project from musician 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:54.160 Christopher Gladwin uh as soon as you may name, is 0:01:54.200 --> 0:01:59.360 one half of Team do Yobi and very accomplished musician 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:01.600 has his hands in a number of different projects, but 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:05.640 this one is all about the uncanny, about at times 0:02:05.680 --> 0:02:11.040 the frightening, the unsettling. This particular track was titled Chapter 0:02:11.120 --> 0:02:15.359 one Abysmal Cathedrals Arise from mel flurious ire from some 0:02:15.560 --> 0:02:18.960 less regions. And right there that gives you a clue. Yeah, 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.320 it gives you a clue. And uh and if you 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.440 recognize the tune, and that's because he's utilizing Symphony Fantastic 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:30.359 from Hector Berlioz. And you may also recognize it because 0:02:30.560 --> 0:02:33.359 Wendy Carlos used it in the theme to The Shining. 0:02:34.400 --> 0:02:37.440 So what we are introducing to you today is this 0:02:37.520 --> 0:02:43.160 idea that a scary movie could perhaps be less scary 0:02:43.280 --> 0:02:46.040 or not even scary without the sort of soundtrack that 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:50.200 goes along with it, really amping up our experiences while 0:02:50.200 --> 0:02:53.400 we're watching something on the screen, and when you listen 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:56.600 to something like the Weirding Module, you can already start 0:02:56.680 --> 0:02:59.760 to sense that this ease, that that sort of d 0:03:00.080 --> 0:03:02.480 centering that that music makes you feel with some of 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:05.760 the chords and some of the ways that it's arranged. Yeah, 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:07.639 so it it raises the question, and this is the 0:03:07.680 --> 0:03:10.240 question we're gonna explore in this episode to what extent 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:14.720 is there something just innately creepy, uncanny, scary, frightening about 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.720 music like this or is it all cultural? Is it 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:21.600 all contextual? So we're gonna unravel that. But but first, 0:03:22.600 --> 0:03:24.560 just to to to rehash, we did an episode of 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.440 a while back called music on the Brain where we 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:29.720 talked about the various ways that didn't music Uh speaks 0:03:29.720 --> 0:03:32.320 to us on a conscious and subconscious level. Uh, And 0:03:32.480 --> 0:03:34.720 we have to think about music and stuff. What is music? 0:03:35.080 --> 0:03:36.720 You know? It's obviously it's a deep part of our 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:40.880 cognitive architecture. It changes our mood, it heightens our emotions. Uh. 0:03:40.880 --> 0:03:44.000 And we'd have to find a culture that didn't or 0:03:44.120 --> 0:03:47.640 doesn't have it. And some evidence even suggests that the Neanderthals, 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:50.960 in absence of language, may have used music as a 0:03:51.000 --> 0:03:54.680 means of communication. Um. Indeed, there are also parts of 0:03:54.680 --> 0:03:57.640 the brain that respond to music. They don't respond to languid, 0:03:57.880 --> 0:03:59.920 separate parts of the brain that respond to the male 0:04:00.000 --> 0:04:02.280 pality of language, different from the parts that respond to 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:06.600 the melody of music. So music is really kind of 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.120 this uncanny thing in and of itself. Yeah. I like 0:04:09.160 --> 0:04:12.280 to bring up cognitive psychologists and ling with Stephen Pinker 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.440 because he's the guy who he's probably pretty brilliant guy, 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:19.520 but he did say music is just auditory cheesecake, an 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.800 accident of evolution. But when we look at music a 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.520 little bit deeper than we really begin to see that 0:04:26.680 --> 0:04:29.599 the case that was made in the documentary The Music 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:34.000 Instinct with Bobby McFerrin, that music actually maybe a precursor 0:04:34.080 --> 0:04:37.520 to languages. You had said, um is there because you 0:04:37.520 --> 0:04:40.760 think about music and there's no one music center in 0:04:40.800 --> 0:04:43.680 our brains. And as you had said, their music used 0:04:43.720 --> 0:04:46.600 a certain parts of our brain that language doesn't. UM. 0:04:46.720 --> 0:04:49.640 One of the parts that music recruits, and I think 0:04:49.680 --> 0:04:52.640 this is so interesting is the visual cortext And it's 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.640 thought that the visual cortex actually maps a visual of 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.240 how the pitch and tone are changing, and in turn, 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.720 music moves us literally moves us. We dance to it 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:06.520 because we envision the movement in it. So keep that 0:05:06.560 --> 0:05:08.680 in mind as we continue to talk a little bit 0:05:08.720 --> 0:05:12.280 more about music and how it manipulates this um, and 0:05:12.440 --> 0:05:15.920 particularly spooky music, how that might motivate us. The manipulation 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:19.159 is key here because when when music psychologists talk about 0:05:19.360 --> 0:05:23.880 music and emotion, they often distinguished between emotion perception, which 0:05:23.920 --> 0:05:26.880 refers to the perception of emotions expressed by the music. 0:05:26.960 --> 0:05:31.360 Like oh um, the sprint the boss is singing about 0:05:31.400 --> 0:05:34.520 some sort of sad working class story and run in 0:05:34.600 --> 0:05:37.320 with the law. That's a sad story. The song is sad. 0:05:37.600 --> 0:05:39.839 I'm interpreting the sadness of it. Can you say the 0:05:39.839 --> 0:05:42.800 boss you're talking about? Of course, of course he's still 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.400 the boss. I don't I don't think he's that that 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.480 position has has not been vacated yet. Uh. And then 0:05:47.480 --> 0:05:50.440 there But then there's emotion induction, and this refers to 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:53.680 the listeners effective response to the music. But I think 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:56.560 it's interesting about this. It's not just the emotional arousal. 0:05:56.720 --> 0:06:00.520 It's that we actually will show a physical demonstration of emotion. 0:06:01.240 --> 0:06:03.640 And there's a two thousand and nine study of twenty 0:06:03.680 --> 0:06:07.600 six people who it turns out for a strong correlation 0:06:07.680 --> 0:06:12.160 between subjective emotional response and objective physical response to music. 0:06:12.240 --> 0:06:15.880 The paper is called the Rewarding Aspects of music listening 0:06:15.880 --> 0:06:18.440 are related to a degree of emissional arousal, and it 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:22.320 details the chills that someone can feel when they're listening 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:25.960 to something flesh, whatever you want to call it, and 0:06:26.200 --> 0:06:28.479 have you you yourself experience this when you listen to 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.280 any music. Um, I think the one that comes to 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:37.440 mind is um Centerman by Nana Simone, and I'm talking 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:40.080 about the live version. It's like a ten minute long song. 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:45.279 It is Actually you don't want me to do that, 0:06:45.320 --> 0:06:47.440 because I would do that for ten minutes gonna be insane. 0:06:47.720 --> 0:06:50.560 But if you listen to that piece of music, it's 0:06:50.560 --> 0:06:54.119 a rollicking right of emotions and the piano just gets 0:06:54.160 --> 0:06:57.360 crazy at some points, and it's a it's a very 0:06:57.400 --> 0:07:01.440 emotional song and there's um a lot of syncopated rhythm 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:03.719 with the clapping which is a stand in for the 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.640 percussion in it. Very nice. Well, well, I was trying 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:08.800 to think of songs that have the similar effect on me, 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.559 and for my own part, radioheads everything in its right place. 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:15.480 Every time I listened to that, particularly just the first 0:07:15.880 --> 0:07:19.960 few seconds of it, when with this kind of cascade 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:23.800 of notes, sort of finding synchronicity like that always gives 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.200 me chill bumps. Again, I think if you stay cascading 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.840 and there's that movement, yeah, it's definitely the movement of 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:31.320 the music, and and my body moves with it. I 0:07:31.360 --> 0:07:33.679 just get to get the chills every time. These twenty 0:07:33.720 --> 0:07:37.640 six people who underwent this experiment, well machines measured their 0:07:37.720 --> 0:07:41.680 heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, and galvanic skin response. 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:44.320 This is how much basically they were sweating in response 0:07:44.360 --> 0:07:48.320 to the music and their blood volume pulse and uh. 0:07:48.880 --> 0:07:52.080 They were asked to click a button every time that 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.680 they felt really aroused. And so number four, they're four 0:07:56.680 --> 0:08:00.360 clicking button was the button that correlated with chills. And 0:08:00.400 --> 0:08:03.200 so they found that the chills occurred at the highest 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.560 moment of pleasure reported I think that's interesting that it's 0:08:06.600 --> 0:08:09.760 a pleasurable response and yet chills is the expression of 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.920 the body. Yeah, you're you're intensely satisfied by the music, 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:16.160 but it's giving giving you chills. Um. And there's another 0:08:16.160 --> 0:08:17.960 study we looked at here from You're All just Jack 0:08:18.040 --> 0:08:21.520 Panckship of Bowling Green State University. This one's interesting because 0:08:21.520 --> 0:08:24.280 he found that people listening to music often experienced goose 0:08:24.320 --> 0:08:27.480 bumps because of sad feelings more so than happy or 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.000 excited emotions. But a lot of this came down to 0:08:30.360 --> 0:08:35.240 um melancholy associations with the past, which which is kind 0:08:35.280 --> 0:08:37.680 of like, you know, getting into the context issue of 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:40.320 all of this. For instance, that song that you listen 0:08:40.400 --> 0:08:42.760 to a hundred times in a row during a breakup, 0:08:43.120 --> 0:08:46.320 you listen to it ten years later. You don't care 0:08:46.600 --> 0:08:49.320 the least bit about that individual, but that music can 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:51.360 still stir something and there's a bit of nostalgi in 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:53.480 that as well. You know, it sort of sucks you 0:08:53.520 --> 0:08:56.559 back a little bit into that emotional state. It wasn't. 0:08:56.600 --> 0:08:59.760 The idea behind that is that the listener is filling 0:08:59.840 --> 0:09:03.679 us logic or sad because they and having these bumps 0:09:03.720 --> 0:09:07.840 as a response because they physically are missing the warmth 0:09:07.840 --> 0:09:10.760 of that person. Yes, the researcher argues that music and 0:09:10.800 --> 0:09:13.640 news chills are tied into the chemicals released in our 0:09:13.640 --> 0:09:16.960 brain to deal with social loss. So the idea is 0:09:17.040 --> 0:09:20.040 that our ancient ancestors might have experienced as if they 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.720 are separated from a family member all right, you you 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:25.520 wander off, and then the cries you hear in the 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.880 air of of of of the lost family members that 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.520 that will call it cause a chill inside you and 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:33.760 cause you to have this desire to reach out to 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:36.320 the warmth of others. And I thought it was interesting 0:09:36.360 --> 0:09:39.520 that this was the response, that these chill bumps, even 0:09:40.040 --> 0:09:42.640 for someone who would be singing or listening to the 0:09:42.640 --> 0:09:46.000 Star Spangled Banner. And I thought, Okay, that's a little 0:09:46.040 --> 0:09:48.600 bit odd. But when you a little cheesy, no, it's fine, 0:09:48.640 --> 0:09:51.960 it's fine, it's nice, it's nice. But if you peel 0:09:52.040 --> 0:09:54.400 that back a little bit, and then you can say, okay, 0:09:54.440 --> 0:09:58.120 well what is it to be to be moved by 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:02.120 that song? You feel united with your countrymen and country women. 0:10:02.559 --> 0:10:06.040 So in a sense, there there's that community based longing. Well, 0:10:06.080 --> 0:10:08.600 it's like with with with so many issues we've discussed. 0:10:08.720 --> 0:10:11.360 You can find the sort of core of like ancestral 0:10:11.400 --> 0:10:14.760 animal organism sense to what happens, but then you pile 0:10:14.920 --> 0:10:19.160 enough layers of human complexity and human cognition and it 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:21.640 just turns it into a maze. Yeah, And just to 0:10:21.760 --> 0:10:23.920 further compound that the maze too, of course, we're going 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:25.959 to have to look back at the brain because I 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:28.400 want to look at the amygdala for a moment, in 0:10:28.440 --> 0:10:32.840 particular when we talk about scary music, because the amygdala, 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:37.079 as we know, processes emotion, memory, fear, and to test 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:39.760 out the theory that certain strains of music can ramp 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:43.480 up or dial down the fear response, researchers in Oxford, 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:47.160 England played different kinds of music for people's who who'se 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:51.160 amygdala's had been removed because of an illness or an accident, 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:53.800 and then people without this part of the brain the 0:10:53.840 --> 0:10:58.040 actually had trouble recognizing scary music, whereas people with their 0:10:58.040 --> 0:11:03.760 amygdala's intact had a definite response when scary music was played, 0:11:03.880 --> 0:11:06.920 as shown by the brain scanners. So again there's an 0:11:07.000 --> 0:11:09.120 idea that there's so many different parts from your brain 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:12.520 that are weighing in on the notes that you hear. Now, 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:14.520 I know what in a reviewer probably wondering to what 0:11:14.559 --> 0:11:18.160 extent is it contextual? Is it cultural? Um For instance, 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:20.120 the music we heard at the top of the the 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.400 program um A, it's by an act known as the 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:25.559 weirding modul So some of you would if you hear 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:29.240 that you interpret this kind of strange sounding name you're 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:32.320 bringing that into the game, or you're recognizing the piece 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:35.360 of music sample in the work as a as being 0:11:35.360 --> 0:11:37.640 familiar to something in the shining. We're bringing all this context, 0:11:37.679 --> 0:11:39.680 we're bringing all this culture, and so of course we 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.080 interpret it as creepy. So if you were to play 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:46.360 creepy music for someone who had zero experience with any 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:49.000 of that, would they still find it scary. You're talking 0:11:49.000 --> 0:11:52.280 about the study of the MafA people in Cameroon who 0:11:52.320 --> 0:11:57.120 had never ever heard any sort of strains of Western music, 0:11:57.600 --> 0:12:01.280 and they were introduced to three Western musical clips. One 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:05.040 that is typically thought to be sad, one that's happy, 0:12:05.120 --> 0:12:08.199 and one that's spooky. All three examples. By the way, 0:12:08.200 --> 0:12:11.280 it sounds like something that would play during like a um, 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:13.600 an old silent film that would be played on the piano, 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:17.120 you know, trying somebody to the railroad tracks kind of 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:20.679 a thing right in the music speeds up, um all right. 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:26.440 These Cameroonians were also shown something called Ekman faces, and 0:12:26.440 --> 0:12:30.680 these Ekman faces are photos of standardized expressions of emotions. 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:33.960 So in this case, they had a happy, sad, and 0:12:34.440 --> 0:12:37.480 scared face to look at while they listened to the music. 0:12:37.880 --> 0:12:41.680 And just like Westerners the Cameroonians correlated the music type 0:12:41.679 --> 0:12:45.400 with the same facial expressions. So that would tell you 0:12:45.440 --> 0:12:48.760 that there's some universality to it. Now that's not There 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:51.880 are other studies that say, no, that's there. You know, 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.400 some that negate this because there are other cultures that 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:58.360 might hear certain notes in interpret in different ways. Yeah, 0:12:58.360 --> 0:13:00.520 when you get in deep into saity of difference between 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:04.840 Eastern and Western music trends in Middle Eastern music versus 0:13:04.880 --> 0:13:07.800 Western music, then things get a little more complicated. Well, 0:13:07.840 --> 0:13:11.720 I was just thinking about Chinese opera, which the tones 0:13:12.160 --> 0:13:16.000 in a Chinese opera might sound very um, harsh or 0:13:16.080 --> 0:13:21.040 dissonant to the Western year, but very pleasant to Eastern year. Yeah, 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:23.200 there's a fabulous I think in ther piece in the 0:13:23.200 --> 0:13:26.720 past year about Western and Western musician a Western opera 0:13:26.760 --> 0:13:30.520 singer traveling to China and engaging in Chinese opera and 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.320 sort of dealing with the the the contrast between Western 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:35.640 opera and Chinese opera, I mean, some of the overlap 0:13:35.679 --> 0:13:38.480 of the performers, and it's it's interesting because they are 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:44.040 such different animals well and even in language. And Alison 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:45.839 and I had kind of talked about this a little bit. 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:48.880 There's a musicality to language, and if you look at 0:13:48.920 --> 0:13:53.720 something like Vietnamese, one word can be said in five 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:57.880 different tones, I mean five entirely different things. So similar 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:00.640 thing in Mandarin. Yeah, yeah, so it's much more nuanced 0:14:00.880 --> 0:14:04.440 and it has to be taken into account. But Christopher Gladwin, 0:14:04.840 --> 0:14:08.080 the man behind the Weirding module, had some very interesting 0:14:08.559 --> 0:14:12.240 thoughts on this universality. Yeah. It was exchanged some emails 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:14.520 UH with Chris and he had a lot of great 0:14:14.559 --> 0:14:17.560 in photo to share and sadly between the two of us, 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:19.800 we didn't have time to do an audio interview, but 0:14:19.840 --> 0:14:22.320 I'll hopefully be sharing some stuff on the blog from 0:14:22.360 --> 0:14:24.800 him in the weeks they had. He said, quote, there 0:14:24.800 --> 0:14:27.560 are sounds which almost universally caused revulsion or fight or 0:14:27.560 --> 0:14:29.960 flight responses. The sound of vomiting came out is the 0:14:29.960 --> 0:14:34.160 most obnoxious auditory experience in a worldwide Internet survey conducted 0:14:34.200 --> 0:14:37.400 by Professor Trevor Cox. The reason for this, UH is 0:14:37.440 --> 0:14:40.640 that we're it's hardware to our biology avoid those that 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:43.400 are disgorging the contents of their stomachs unless you want 0:14:43.440 --> 0:14:45.880 the same to happen to you. Other sounds that came 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.040 out on top where babies crying and nails down at blackboard. 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:52.360 Both of these sounds have relatively complex, high frequency tones 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:55.680 that we are evolutionarily designed to respond to. Having a 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:59.040 year old daughter, I can appreciate this. Many industrial bands 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.360 have used such a casual tactics robbing gristle and their 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:05.960 use of recordings of dogs attappicking a dummy, etcetera. And 0:15:06.240 --> 0:15:09.360 he goes on to UH to discuss this in further depth, 0:15:09.560 --> 0:15:12.560 and I will hopefully share that with everyone later on. 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.680 But but yeah, there's certain things that just as an organism, 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.960 we feel this either discussed with or this aversion to, 0:15:20.200 --> 0:15:22.120 or it just sets up all our alarms. I mean, 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.240 the baby crying. I I too am experiencing that one 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.760 with the toddler that time my wife and I have 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:31.960 have adopted and he will he'll start, you know, crying 0:15:32.040 --> 0:15:33.360 or tuning up a little bit in the middle of 0:15:33.360 --> 0:15:36.760 the night, and it just has this intense effect on me, 0:15:37.080 --> 0:15:39.720 uh to where even after I've I've put him back 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.320 to sleep, my heart is just still beating like crazy, 0:15:42.400 --> 0:15:45.320 like it's just it's reaching behind my brain and uh 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.600 and you know, grabbing hold of the reptilian portion there 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:52.760 right now, is your camp biscuit mimicking the cries of 0:15:52.840 --> 0:15:55.400 a newborn? Yeah, well, you know there's that argument that 0:15:55.400 --> 0:15:58.320 that's what cats are doing anyway, and they're they're perverse 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.760 means of manipulating a humans, And so yeah, we'll have 0:16:01.800 --> 0:16:05.080 they'll be situations where the child is authentically crying and 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:08.320 then the cat is also crying and it's mock human voice, 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:11.800 and it's it's you know what this is like, it's frustrating. 0:16:11.920 --> 0:16:15.800 It becomes a loud household at three am. Yes, yeah, um. 0:16:15.920 --> 0:16:18.360 Christopher Gladwin also mentions there was a sound that he 0:16:18.360 --> 0:16:21.080 found difficult to describe. Michael Geret of the Swans, he said, 0:16:21.080 --> 0:16:24.240 put it best that sex death sound that comes from 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.920 somewhere deep inside. There are some experiences of sound that 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.440 you just get that right. You tried to spot off. 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.400 That's the best I can do. Feeling from and some 0:16:35.480 --> 0:16:38.560 sort of possession occurs. I believe that this connects with 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:43.120 some subterranean evolutionary memory, something in our ancestral reptilian fish brain. 0:16:43.480 --> 0:16:46.640 We still have this the sigil fish ears, you know, 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:49.680 and I thought, you know what that sound? Let me 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:51.800 tell you this and I'm gonna give you the context 0:16:51.880 --> 0:16:54.120 it was not a sexual context, so you don't have 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.480 to put your hands up to your ears and say no, 0:16:56.480 --> 0:16:59.400 no, no no no. I did something called the seven minute workout. 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:03.080 Do know about this? It's awful. It is like this 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:07.520 ramped up, high density crazy workout you do for seven minutes, 0:17:07.960 --> 0:17:11.720 just the best and highest rate that you can. Okay, 0:17:11.840 --> 0:17:15.760 And I heard these noises coming out of myself that 0:17:15.880 --> 0:17:19.800 I was a little bit ashamed of. I felt a 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.680 little bit like freaked out that they were actually coming out. 0:17:22.680 --> 0:17:24.959 But I understand what he's saying. There's a guttural like, 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:28.160 oh my god, I'm dying inside noise that I had 0:17:28.280 --> 0:17:31.840 never heard come out of myself before. And so there 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:35.840 is something to that, this evolutionary like, oh there's something wrong. Yeah. 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:40.080 An example of that, I was driving my child around 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:41.640 in the middle of the night, trying to get him 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:44.400 to sleep immediately after returning home, and his super jet 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:46.880 lagged now his jet lag, And so I was listening 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:49.800 to Radio Lab catching up in some Radio Lavish episodes, 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:52.000 and there's an excellent one they did recently on rabies. 0:17:52.720 --> 0:17:56.080 And in that episode they play some audio of humans 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.840 who have rabies and are experiencing that rage and that 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.520 just you know, the mindless rage that is associated with 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:06.760 the later stages of Rabies. And it was extremely unsettling 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.000 to hear those sounds like and it's and I wonder 0:18:09.080 --> 0:18:10.800 to what extent that's kind of cross somebody, that this 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.400 this idea, that that that is on some level human, 0:18:13.440 --> 0:18:16.680 but it must be bodily possessioned by some outside force 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:19.080 that is making that kind of noise. And you're right, 0:18:19.200 --> 0:18:22.440 that bodily possession, as if you are outside of yourself 0:18:22.560 --> 0:18:25.680 or something was outside of itself. All right, we should 0:18:25.680 --> 0:18:28.200 probably take a quick break, and when we get back, 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:31.920 we you and I Robert Lamb are going to actually 0:18:32.000 --> 0:18:35.880 sing some of the strains of music classics, not because 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:38.600 we necessarily want to do that to your ears, but 0:18:38.640 --> 0:18:46.720 because we have no budget, correct, right, So stand by 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:52.000 all right, we're back, Robert. Did you know that in 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:56.480 the original cut of Psycho that Hitchcock did not want 0:18:57.040 --> 0:19:02.400 those high pitched violin screens to accompany the shower scene 0:19:02.680 --> 0:19:09.760 fa iconomy. He sorry about that. Again, we have no budgets, 0:19:09.760 --> 0:19:12.000 so that's which you guys are getting. Um. It was 0:19:12.000 --> 0:19:16.119 actually his wife, Alma Revel, who was a script writer 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:20.480 and actually a director of her own right, and an 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:22.600 editor who said, no, no, no, you need to check 0:19:22.640 --> 0:19:26.919 out Bernard Herman's score that he's created for this. It's amazing. 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:29.360 It's going to do its thing. And they actually tested 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.840 two versions, one with the with the violins and one without, 0:19:33.480 --> 0:19:37.280 and apparently when they showed the audience when without, they 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:39.720 were a little like, okay, so this this one is 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.600 getting hacked enough in a shower. But when they accompanied 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.920 the violence strains of Bernard Herman, people freaked out. It's 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.920 interesting to think of having not scene the scene without 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:54.159 the music, and it's hard to imagine because such an 0:19:54.240 --> 0:19:57.840 iconic scene and you go together so well, and when 0:19:57.840 --> 0:19:59.600 I imagine the scene in my mind, and I think 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:02.400 that's a really horrific scene. You know, even even though 0:20:02.440 --> 0:20:06.240 it it doesn't show as much um in way in 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:09.200 the way of nudity or bloodshed that you might. You 0:20:09.240 --> 0:20:11.639 know that I'm sure you can get away with today. Uh. 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.920 It's so effective and so disturbing, and yet the music 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:19.919 is what seems to make it so effective, like in 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.280 in a sense we can't feel or even imagine what 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.719 those the stabs feel like physically, because most of us 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.359 have not been brutally stabbed with a butcher knife before, 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:32.480 but the music kind of fills that place. It's interesting 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.359 that you say that it's it's not that much nudity 0:20:35.400 --> 0:20:38.440 and it's not that much violence, because then what you thought, 0:20:38.520 --> 0:20:40.920 because a lot of people when they when they ask people, 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.040 you know, about that scene, they tend to envision much 0:20:44.080 --> 0:20:46.320 more violence and nudity than there actually is because of 0:20:46.359 --> 0:20:50.320 that heightened emotionality there. I think, Um, and of course 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:52.720 it's that high pitch sound, and we'll get a little 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.919 bit more into that in terms of the animal world. Um, 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.240 but I wanted to mention that in terms of pitch. 0:20:58.440 --> 0:21:03.119 Daniel Blumstein uh He scrutinized on two films and found 0:21:03.160 --> 0:21:06.679 that horror films had a higher than expected number of 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:09.960 abrupt shifts up and down and pitch, which he reported 0:21:10.000 --> 0:21:14.439 in the Royal Society Journal Biology Letters. So already you 0:21:14.440 --> 0:21:17.879 can see that they are very different ways that UM 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:23.800 filmmakers and musical composers can manipulate the brain. In terms 0:21:23.800 --> 0:21:27.480 of psycho that was just something that they didn't necessarily know, like, hey, 0:21:27.520 --> 0:21:29.879 we've got all these neuroscientists saying like the amygdala is 0:21:29.920 --> 0:21:32.080 going crazy. It was just sort of a hunch that 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:34.680 this music would heighten the effect. Yeah. So, like you said, 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:38.240 they didn't have the neuroscientists, but they did have musical tradition. Obviously, 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:41.399 run Herman knew what worked because when you look at 0:21:41.400 --> 0:21:43.439 stuff like Peter and the Wolf, you know, that's a 0:21:43.480 --> 0:21:45.879 classic one that we always learned in like elementary music class, 0:21:45.880 --> 0:21:48.000 where every character has kind of their own little jaunty 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.360 number and you you're you're told by your music teacher, oh, 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.520 well this this music is behaving like this, because this 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.080 is what's happening in the story. Um. Some of the 0:21:57.080 --> 0:22:03.280 basics though, cord tempo in amplitude. Okay, So with chords, 0:22:03.320 --> 0:22:06.680 we have minor and major chords, and in a very 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:12.160 very broad sense, minor chords evoke sad feelings. Major chords 0:22:12.240 --> 0:22:15.520 are happy. Um, at least again in Western music. Um, 0:22:15.760 --> 0:22:17.680 you tay. And the interesting thing is if you take 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:20.720 something in a major key and you translate it into 0:22:20.800 --> 0:22:24.280 a minor key, you go from happy too sad. As 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:27.040 a as an engineer, a musician by the name of 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:31.119 Oleg Berg has demonstrated he's a from the Ukraine and 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.000 he has a YouTube account. Takes a number of songs 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:37.200