Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
Speaker 1: what's your go to lallaby? You still do lallaby? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And I do it in this kind of like jazzy
Speaker 1: way because I can't stand this lallaby. But it has
Speaker 1: been introduced to my daughter Rugby baby in the tree
Speaker 1: jobs and when the wind blows that grata will rock.
Speaker 1: When the bow breaks that Greta let hey down, We'll
Speaker 1: come baby great And oh do you find that this
Speaker 1: is too jazzy for a go to sleep song? Yes,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it negates the weirdness of that song.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah, it's not like, how is this in
Speaker 1: any way comforting? Like there's a baby. It's tied up
Speaker 1: in a tree there. It's just precariously hung there so
Speaker 1: that when the wind comes, that just topples over and
Speaker 1: the baby just falls to the forest floor. Yeah. You know,
Speaker 1: I started thinking about this when you when you brought
Speaker 1: this up earlier, I was sinking back to my own childhood.
Speaker 1: And there are two songs that my mom would would
Speaker 1: pretty much use as the default lullabies. One path Magic Dragon,
Speaker 1: which is also said, which also does have this at
Speaker 1: tenage of sadness, but not you know, morbid sadness. It's
Speaker 1: just about, Hey, you're gonna get older and then you're
Speaker 1: gonna you know, some of your dreams are gonna die,
Speaker 1: and you're going to die, and you're gonna eventually gonna die.
Speaker 1: The Magic Dragon will live on and look for another
Speaker 1: child to replace you. Well, I mean I wouldn't go
Speaker 1: that dark on it, but essentially yes. But then the
Speaker 1: other one was all the Pretty Little Horses, which at
Speaker 1: first I was like, oh, there's nothing wrong with that
Speaker 1: one at all. It's just about when you you know, wake,
Speaker 1: you're gonna have all the pretty little horses. But then
Speaker 1: I actually looked at the lullaby up and there's this,
Speaker 1: like the second verse that my mom didn't sing. It's
Speaker 1: talking about how there's a poor little lamby and with
Speaker 1: bees and butterflies pecking out its eyes until the poor
Speaker 1: lamby cries cries for mama. Well, I think what makes
Speaker 1: that worse is that your last name is Lamb, So
Speaker 1: she's probably like, well, my kids, thinking that he's going
Speaker 1: to get his eyes pecked out him specifically. Um. But
Speaker 1: you also know when Cormick McCarthy makes the title of
Speaker 1: a lullaby his his book title, that is probably not
Speaker 1: serene terrain. Yeah, there's probably yeah, there you go, because
Speaker 1: he's not going to write about something unless there's a
Speaker 1: little death or a lot of death woven into the
Speaker 1: tapestry of the subject matter. And that's what we see
Speaker 1: with lullabyes. We see we see a lot of darkness
Speaker 1: in the lullaby as well as a lot of comfort.
Speaker 1: And and that's one of the reasons it makes for
Speaker 1: such a delightful podcast topic because it's not this the straightforward,
Speaker 1: cutout thing, no, yeah, because it really yeah. There there
Speaker 1: are a lot of different layers to this, and one
Speaker 1: is again that universality of it. There are lullabies all
Speaker 1: over the world in according to Zoe Palmer, who is
Speaker 1: a musician working on a lullabies project at Royal Landon Hospital,
Speaker 1: she says that wherever you go in the world, women
Speaker 1: use the same tones, the same sort of way of
Speaker 1: singing to their babies and she's seen this in the
Speaker 1: project over and over again. UM, and lullabies are usually
Speaker 1: in triple meter or six eight time, which kind of
Speaker 1: gives them that character characteristic rocking feeling to them or
Speaker 1: that motion. Yeah, that rock a vibe and back and forth,
Speaker 1: slow soothing tones. Yeah. Yeah. Again, that's kind of interesting
Speaker 1: to see that in so many different cultures around the world. Now,
Speaker 1: the more abidity thing is also a universal and we
Speaker 1: see both of those in the the fact that you
Speaker 1: can look back to two thousand years b c. To
Speaker 1: ancient Babylon and you find evidence of lullabies used then,
Speaker 1: and it's a menacing lullaby in which a baby is
Speaker 1: chastised for just serving the house um, the house god
Speaker 1: with its crying. So the idea is is, look, it's
Speaker 1: really it's time for you to go to sleep, because
Speaker 1: if you do not stop crying, you will wake a
Speaker 1: demon and it will eat you. I love it and
Speaker 1: I love that it's inscribed on clay tablets. It's like
Speaker 1: one of the first lullabies, and it's this is I
Speaker 1: found this to be a suitable you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: a it's it's suitable insight into the parenting mind. You know,
Speaker 1: when you're reaching that point with a child where we're like,
Speaker 1: I love you, you need to get some sleep. I
Speaker 1: need to get some sleep. If you do not get
Speaker 1: some sleep, demons are going to come for all of us. Well,
Speaker 1: I think it explains the popularity of the adult book
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna have to get bleeped out here called
Speaker 1: Go to Sleep? Oh yes, which is this book for
Speaker 1: parents that kind of it ends in this refrain every
Speaker 1: page like saying, you know, saying like okay, like goodbye Moon,
Speaker 1: good night. Yeah. It's in a way, it's kind of
Speaker 1: a take on the whole good Night Moon book, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which I've I've read a thousand times. And I didn't
Speaker 1: get the Go that Go the f to Sleep books
Speaker 1: so much before I had a child, because before I
Speaker 1: was like, that seems a little harsh, you know, even
Speaker 1: in you know, I know it's a joke, and I
Speaker 1: know it's for the adults, enough for the kids, but
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know about that. That seems
Speaker 1: it seems a bit much. But but then I had
Speaker 1: a child who we brought back to the country with
Speaker 1: a completely reversed sleep cycle, and I totally got it.
Speaker 1: At four am, You're like, ah, that book is brilliant.
Speaker 1: I got it um all right. So if you look
Speaker 1: at a lullaby something by the Lua people in western Kenya.
Speaker 1: It starts with rock rock like rock a by baby,
Speaker 1: but then it's it ends with the baby who cries
Speaker 1: will be eaten by a hyena, which is an actual
Speaker 1: possibility in the part of the world. Yeah, and certainly
Speaker 1: if you if you go back through time and think
Speaker 1: of our primordial ancestors, the baby is crying because it's
Speaker 1: the crying response is supposed to get human attention. Uh.
Speaker 1: And arguably UH is also there so that if the
Speaker 1: child dies too early, you're not going to be as
Speaker 1: upset about it. I've seen that theory proposed as well.
Speaker 1: But it could conceivably uh clue in animal predators other
Speaker 1: human adversaries to your whereabouts. I was thinking about that too.
Speaker 1: That would be a tell tell science. So it's like hush,
Speaker 1: hush man that hyena is going to come and get us.
Speaker 1: And then it made me think about when when kids
Speaker 1: get older and they start playing hide and seek, and
Speaker 1: maybe this is a way of teaching children how to
Speaker 1: become quiet when they when they can understand this game
Speaker 1: of trying to escape a predator. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: sometimes that's the only time my son is quiet is
Speaker 1: he's he's running off to hide somewhere, or Niver says,
Speaker 1: you know, hide behind the door or whatnot. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a kind of interesting little hangover there of that. But
Speaker 1: so it turns out though that not all lullabys are
Speaker 1: completely morbid. And Zoe Palmer, again from the Lullaby Project,
Speaker 1: has said that some of them are telling you the
Speaker 1: history of a country or telling you how you should
Speaker 1: or shouldn't run your life, and she says it's kind
Speaker 1: of like advice columns for babies. Yeah, I mean, in
Speaker 1: a sense, you are, you're talking to this child. You're
Speaker 1: talking at this child, and on some level you want to,
Speaker 1: you know, you want to already start imparting important information
Speaker 1: to them. I mean, on a very basic level, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're dealing at them with it, with language and
Speaker 1: the very basics of human communication. But already you're projecting
Speaker 1: all these additional wants and needs and expectations on this
Speaker 1: child that they should be familiar with their their their
Speaker 1: country's heritage, they should be familiar with you know, expected morality, etcetera. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that just reminds me too that we do teach
Speaker 1: a lot of things with song, right our a b
Speaker 1: c's are learned this song. And we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: the power of song to instill a really strong memory
Speaker 1: in the brain. So it would make sense that this
Speaker 1: is the way that kids are getting information about hyenas
Speaker 1: and such. Yeah, I mean, in addition to the songs,
Speaker 1: I feel like so much of the language we end
Speaker 1: up using with with with with young children were choosing
Speaker 1: everything is kind of sing song. You know, like the
Speaker 1: first time you point out an elephant, you don't go
Speaker 1: take if that's an elephant, you elephant, you know, you
Speaker 1: make You're making the word into a song. And that
Speaker 1: makes sense, as we discussed in our our our episodes
Speaker 1: dealing with the with with the power of music and
Speaker 1: how music works with the mind. That's that's part and
Speaker 1: partial to how we acquire language. Yeah, And so it's
Speaker 1: not so crazy when you think about this idea that
Speaker 1: lullabys have a kind of power beyond developing cognition in
Speaker 1: children or cognitive skills. There's a two thousand and thirteen
Speaker 1: study published in the Psychology of Music Journal that showed
Speaker 1: that lullabys have really beneficial effects on the body and
Speaker 1: the music study involved thirty seven pediatric patients at the
Speaker 1: Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, and those patients had
Speaker 1: cardiac or respiratory problems. Now, the patients were between the
Speaker 1: ages of seven days and four years old, and each
Speaker 1: child was involved in three ten minutes sessions involving lullaby
Speaker 1: singing or story reading or control session with just no interaction.
Speaker 1: Then their physiological responses and perceived pain levels were measured
Speaker 1: before and after each session. So I wanted to cover
Speaker 1: just the mechanism by which they were measured, because it's
Speaker 1: probably a big question mark, especially with a seven day old,
Speaker 1: like how do you measure pain? So their heart rates
Speaker 1: and oxygen levels were measured with non invasive device called
Speaker 1: a pulse oxometer, and then their pain level was measured
Speaker 1: on the Children Hospitals of East Ontario Pain Scale, which
Speaker 1: is this really trusted behavioral scale used to assess pain
Speaker 1: and young children. So the chiop scale includes six categories crying,
Speaker 1: facial child, verbal, torso, touching legs and scoring ranges from
Speaker 1: four to no pain to thirteen, which is the worst pain. Alright,
Speaker 1: So we got all that out of the way, so
Speaker 1: now we know how have they did this. What they
Speaker 1: found is that the children's average heart rate had reduced
Speaker 1: from a hundred thirty four point one two hundred eight
Speaker 1: point seven, and their pain rating had fallen from six
Speaker 1: point two one to five point six four. So here's
Speaker 1: the thing. It was just the lullaby sessions that have
Speaker 1: this effect, not the storytelling and not the control. Okay,
Speaker 1: So there's something to them, not just to the interaction,
Speaker 1: but to the musical uh interaction that's going on here.
Speaker 1: It's also crazy when you when you think about the
Speaker 1: fact that an infant can recognize a lullaby heard in
Speaker 1: the womb several months after birth. So the child is
Speaker 1: in the wound in utero listening to music, but hearing
Speaker 1: the lullaby that the mom is singing it, and then
Speaker 1: months and months later it can it can recognize Twinkle
Speaker 1: Twinkle Little Star. Uh. This was actually a proven out
Speaker 1: in a study of the University of Helsinki twenty four
Speaker 1: women during the final trimester of their pregnancies. Half the
Speaker 1: women UH were played the melody Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Speaker 1: to their fetuses five days a week for the final
Speaker 1: stages of their pregnancy, and the bins of the babies
Speaker 1: who heard the melody in utero reacted more strongly to
Speaker 1: the familiar melody, both immediately and four months after the
Speaker 1: birth would when compared to the control group that didn't
Speaker 1: hear the music. So the take home here, the larger
Speaker 1: take home outside of aid byes, is that fetuses can
Speaker 1: recognize and remember sounds from the outside world. But but
Speaker 1: already we're seeing the soothing power of music even before
Speaker 1: it has has exited the wound. And I think that's
Speaker 1: an important point because people don't typically think of the
Speaker 1: auditory qualities of the womb or or fetus is absorbing that.
Speaker 1: But imagine if you were closed inside this this you know,
Speaker 1: nice fluid filled room, almost like the soaking um I
Speaker 1: was say, soaking tobes, but they're not that the sensory
Speaker 1: deprivation chambers, right, and you had nothing but sound to
Speaker 1: orient yourself too, then you probably would have this really
Speaker 1: strong relationship with those sounds around you and the sounds outside.
Speaker 1: This also brings my mind back to our podcast episode
Speaker 1: on underwater sound and underwater music, which is is not
Speaker 1: a huge area of music listening, but you do see
Speaker 1: people who get really into listening music to music underwater
Speaker 1: because that the way that the sound ways carrying the water,
Speaker 1: how it interacts with the skull. UH is supposedly a
Speaker 1: very unique way to take in the sound. I'm sure
Speaker 1: that it's got to be a very soothing way as well,
Speaker 1: unless it's just like total headbanger stuff, but even that
Speaker 1: in a muffled way might be kind of nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like these sort of the the the ambient noise of
Speaker 1: the one might experience in the womb. UM. And of
Speaker 1: course you more often encounter this with the individuals who
Speaker 1: are saying throwing a bunch of Mozart at their they're
Speaker 1: they're still womb in prison child, or or some other
Speaker 1: type of music, thinking they're going to have some sort
Speaker 1: of profound impact on the child to make the child
Speaker 1: smarter or or more inclined to like blue grass upon
Speaker 1: exiting the womb. And speaking of exiting the womb, UH,
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before the fact that humans just
Speaker 1: eate for just three trimesters, which is pretty short in
Speaker 1: the mammal world, and so some people have theorized that
Speaker 1: once the baby is born, those first three months are
Speaker 1: more like the fourth trimester, and therefore UH babies need
Speaker 1: to be comforted in a way that is more womb
Speaker 1: like with the sounds and with the swaddling. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: read that this is uh due in part to our
Speaker 1: bipedal nature, because when we made the shift from a
Speaker 1: quadruped to to a biped uh, suddenly we're walking on
Speaker 1: two legs. It changes the way that our pelvis is shape,
Speaker 1: which narrows the the exit route, the escape route for
Speaker 1: that for that baby. So the baby has to come
Speaker 1: out earlier, when it's smaller, and therefore, to a certain extent,
Speaker 1: all human babies are premature. So now consider true premature
Speaker 1: babies and you really get that sense of how important
Speaker 1: it is to have that sort of womb like exterior
Speaker 1: uh refuge for the child. And if you look at
Speaker 1: lullabys and you look at premies, you can see some
Speaker 1: really astounding information. There was a study published online and
Speaker 1: Pediatrics in two thousand and thirteen. It detailed two hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy two babies and eleven eleven different nick us
Speaker 1: around the country. And nick you is just an acronym
Speaker 1: for basically neonatal clinic for newborns. And the babies were
Speaker 1: born at at least thirty two weeks in gestation, and
Speaker 1: they were all pretty small for their gestational age, and
Speaker 1: they had different health issues, as premies often do now.
Speaker 1: Three times a week for two weeks, music therapists would
Speaker 1: play two tone heartbeat, womb sounds and other woosh audio
Speaker 1: cues which were synchronized with the baby's vital signs and
Speaker 1: it was monitored by their breathing rate, their eye movements,
Speaker 1: and other monitors. So think about this. This is an
Speaker 1: intentional sort of gestational sounds that are synchronized with our bodies. Now.
Speaker 1: Parents and therapists were also asked to sing a preferred
Speaker 1: lullaby called Songs of Kin, which I'm not familiar with,
Speaker 1: or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star if they didn't have a
Speaker 1: selected song remo Ocean disk and this is the type
Speaker 1: of music device was associated with the best blood oxygen
Speaker 1: levels and quiet alert states in the premise and sucking behavior,
Speaker 1: which is super important in premise because they don't they're
Speaker 1: not quite there yet so that they can accept milk
Speaker 1: from the mother or or even breastfeed. So the second
Speaker 1: thing is really important developmentally in in premies, and that
Speaker 1: was best with something called the Gotto box, which is
Speaker 1: again another kind of music device. Now, singing was shown
Speaker 1: to increase alert times the best and babies of parents
Speaker 1: who chose their own song had better feeding behaviors and
Speaker 1: they consumed more calories compared to the twinkle babies. So
Speaker 1: this it doesn't say this in the study, but perhaps
Speaker 1: this ties back to this idea that um, those children
Speaker 1: became familiar with those tunes in the womb. M hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: because those are personal to the parents, to their experience.
Speaker 1: It also makes it sound like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
Speaker 1: is no parents favorite lullaby and yet kids love it. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: they love it because it's, uh, it's easy to sing.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of like it's e bitsy spider. Kids
Speaker 1: love it's epitsy spider, but it's it really doesn't offer
Speaker 1: much to the adult. I think it's because they couldn't
Speaker 1: coordinate their hands to it the spider going up the spout,
Speaker 1: And the same thing with Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, because
Speaker 1: they use their hands to flash up the sign of
Speaker 1: flashing stars. I suppose. All right, we're gonna take a
Speaker 1: quick break, and when we get back, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the effect of lullabies on adults. All right,
Speaker 1: we are back, and we're going to talk about adult
Speaker 1: pregnant women, Yes, and them listening to lullaby, Yes, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: It turns out music therapy can reduce psychological stress among
Speaker 1: pregnant women as well. UH. And this makes sense because
Speaker 1: pregnancy is a very stressful time. It's also a long
Speaker 1: a period of long term um periods of stress, anxiety, hope, fears,
Speaker 1: everything you can pretty much feel as a human, you're
Speaker 1: gonna feel stream changes as well. And so we we
Speaker 1: have an interesting study here. This was from the College
Speaker 1: of Nursing at cal Sturing Medical University in Taiwan. They
Speaker 1: randomly assigned a hundred and sixteen pregnant women to a
Speaker 1: music group and one and twenty two a control group.
Speaker 1: So it's, you know, pretty obvious what's going to happen here.
Speaker 1: The people in the in the music group, they're listening
Speaker 1: to music. They're listening to h a lullaby CD that
Speaker 1: include songs like Brahms, Lullaby, Uh, Twinkle Twink a Little Star,
Speaker 1: as well as stuff like a little Beethoven, a Little
Speaker 1: Debu se as a little bit of classical go to
Speaker 1: sleep music. And they in fact found that the music
Speaker 1: group showed significant reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression after
Speaker 1: just two weeks. UH and They used three different established
Speaker 1: measurement scales on this particular study. Yeah, the scales are
Speaker 1: important just and we won't go way deep into this,
Speaker 1: but just so you know how they kind of weeded
Speaker 1: this information out. They used the Perceived Stress scale, and
Speaker 1: they also used the State Traite Anxiety Inventory, and then
Speaker 1: a third scale which was called the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale.
Speaker 1: So they took those three different scales and they tested
Speaker 1: them before and after, and what they found is that
Speaker 1: there were significant drops in um in their scores when
Speaker 1: they were listening to music that particularly like the lullaby
Speaker 1: music and the nature sounds and crystals tinkling in the background. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's important to know too, that it wasn't just classical
Speaker 1: music and traditional nursery uh songs, but also these sort
Speaker 1: of soothing nature sounds, sort of ambient music, and the
Speaker 1: control group just they had very tiny, minuscule drops that
Speaker 1: just weren't really significant. So of course this would bear
Speaker 1: out this idea that the actual music therapy they're just
Speaker 1: going to listen to this would actually decrease any thoughts
Speaker 1: of depression or anxiety, which is really important. I also
Speaker 1: wanted to point out that these thirty minute music CDs
Speaker 1: had music that kind of mimic the human heart rate,
Speaker 1: and we're talking about between sixty and eighty beats per minute,
Speaker 1: which I think is the key to a lot of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's sort of getting me back to the
Speaker 1: relaxed level of of human operations, right. Yeah, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like I was thinking about this, it's placing the
Speaker 1: pregnant woman inside the memory of the womb of her
Speaker 1: mother in which they were sixty two eighty beats per minute.
Speaker 1: Because if again, like put yourself in the place of
Speaker 1: the fetus, if you're in there, what are you gonna hear?
Speaker 1: What's going to be that strong signal coming through? If
Speaker 1: the human heartbeat? So that I think is the key
Speaker 1: to that kind of music becoming a soothing, sort of
Speaker 1: oceanic quiescence that that our minds can kind of just
Speaker 1: float on, and that takes us this idea of electronic
Speaker 1: music is perhaps having the ability to embody this and
Speaker 1: one of the best ways that different types of music can. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that the second that you mentioned the heartbeat sound,
Speaker 1: I started thinking of various pieces of music that I've
Speaker 1: heard that that echo that kind of heartbeat. Uh. In
Speaker 1: one way shape or another. And also that sort of
Speaker 1: that that floaty feeling, that liquid e feeling that and
Speaker 1: and and sort of the muffled ambient noise outside of
Speaker 1: the womb. I mean you do hear that a lot
Speaker 1: in uh, in ambient music, and in music that has
Speaker 1: a sort of ambient DNA. Now this is from pop
Speaker 1: Matters is the website. In the article, it's called the
Speaker 1: Science of Sleep The Electronic Lullaby by Timothy Brill, and
Speaker 1: he writes the womb is a regular fallback cliche for
Speaker 1: the music writer, particularly one fumbling for a description of
Speaker 1: murky psychedelic sonics. Floating there, comfortably perched in a vat
Speaker 1: of amniotic fluid. The fetus's ear, not yet fully developed,
Speaker 1: is encased with liquids, surrounded by a protective layer of vernex,
Speaker 1: muffling the roughly eight and ninety decibel chronic din of
Speaker 1: blood pumping through the mother's arteries. When he goes on
Speaker 1: to say that newborns, it would seem to him, are
Speaker 1: predisposed to noise music, specifically that of a fuzzy, warm
Speaker 1: and liquid timber. That liquiditydia that you just talked about,
Speaker 1: which is also a reason why you you see all
Speaker 1: these these white noise create generators, right for for young
Speaker 1: children generally a more static ambient environment for them to
Speaker 1: sleep in. But it's still in a sense ambient noise
Speaker 1: music nonetheless, and he says that this plays perfectly into
Speaker 1: this kind of womb soundscaping, because he says that it's
Speaker 1: a perfect nue for that wound simulation. He says, ambient
Speaker 1: in experimental electronic music regularly incorporates sounds like running water, hums, drones, buzzes, noise,
Speaker 1: tibetan throat singing, and other low frequency towns, all of
Speaker 1: which value electro acoustic space is similar in rhythm and
Speaker 1: overtone to the prenatal environment. Yeah, and I mean it's
Speaker 1: great for us adults too. I mean it works. But
Speaker 1: all um, I subscribe to the Hearts of Space podcast.
Speaker 1: It's not really a podcast on radio show however you
Speaker 1: want to look at it, but music from Hearts of Space.
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of NPR listeners are canna
Speaker 1: be familiar with that Bay Area artist. All of it
Speaker 1: ambient in nature, ranging from sort of ambient classical music
Speaker 1: to like space guitars to to you know, electronic German
Speaker 1: space music. Etcetera. And I'll almost always put a little
Speaker 1: of that on in the evening to sort of drift
Speaker 1: off into a peaceful sweep. Do you listen to it
Speaker 1: during your research as well? It depends on their research. Uh,
Speaker 1: sometimes times I go to a very ambient I always
Speaker 1: I'm almost always playing music quan researching. And if it's
Speaker 1: something that's requires a little more thought or as maybe
Speaker 1: a little spacey in and of itself, and it maybe
Speaker 1: it was something more ambient spacey. But if it's something
Speaker 1: just like if I'm just you know, cutting some images
Speaker 1: for the website and stuff that doesn't requires much brain power,
Speaker 1: then I'm more inclined to listen to something that is
Speaker 1: more more noisy and more um more high energy. Now
Speaker 1: this isn't to say that all electronic music is evocative
Speaker 1: of a gestational sound environment, only that it really lends
Speaker 1: itself well to this. And um Gabriel had given an
Speaker 1: example Brian Eno. He said Brian ENO's original idea of
Speaker 1: ambient music as quote wallpaper and Eric Citise referral of
Speaker 1: his proto ambient pieces as furniture music another quote indicate
Speaker 1: a tendency in the sound itself to provide a means
Speaker 1: for shelter for the listener. That's interesting, shelter for the
Speaker 1: listener to produce a home using oral space. It's not
Speaker 1: for nothing that you Know's own discreet music was allegedly
Speaker 1: administered in hospitals as a maternal aid to facilitate labor.
Speaker 1: It's comforting tones, providing assistance for breathing exercises during the
Speaker 1: stressful period leading up to delivery. Its sound as security. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Brian Eno, I think is a tremendous example of this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. As like one example of the specifically
Speaker 1: becomes to mind would be music for airports, which of
Speaker 1: course he wrote with the the idea here being this
Speaker 1: is the kind of music you could play in an airport,
Speaker 1: a place of stress and uh and transition and make
Speaker 1: it a little more peaceful for the humans that are
Speaker 1: having to navigate it. And it is a very soothing
Speaker 1: uh drift e piece. And you find that in a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of ENO's music. Um, for my
Speaker 1: own part, I also see a little bit of that
Speaker 1: in the works of Steve rich Terry Riley, H. Peter
Speaker 1: Gabriel's Last Tempation of Christ soundtrack, Cigareto's Boards of Canada.
Speaker 1: Some of a f X twins more ambient to works
Speaker 1: and Mark van Hone. So the question Gabriel brings up
Speaker 1: and I thought was really interesting, is that is noise
Speaker 1: music or noisy music just a regression or infantilization And
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's fair. It's like, are we going
Speaker 1: towards electronic music in these instances because we are needing
Speaker 1: that comfort. I mean, he throws me off a little
Speaker 1: bit when he uses the word infantilization because you don't
Speaker 1: want to feel like a big baby with past fires.
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. But at the end of the day, that's
Speaker 1: a very comforting place to be with your music too.
Speaker 1: I mean music, I think, you know, music should challenge
Speaker 1: you at times, music should revue up at times. But
Speaker 1: there's nothing like a piece of music that returns you
Speaker 1: to the womb or puts you in a very uh,
Speaker 1: you know, drift e spacey womb like environment. Should we
Speaker 1: listen to a little sample of what this might sound like. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: here's an example that I think fit's pretty perfectly with
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here. This is Horizon Glow by
Speaker 1: Australian artist Option Command and Off. The two thousand and
Speaker 1: eleven Horizon glow EP released on King Deluxe Records. You
Speaker 1: can find out more about about King Deluxe and this
Speaker 1: is a particular artist at King Deluxe dot c A.
Speaker 1: So let's listen to this track and uh and see
Speaker 1: where it takes us. What I like about that particular
Speaker 1: track and when I when I think it's a good example,
Speaker 1: is that there is this drifting nous to it, this uh,
Speaker 1: this ambient, disembodied feeling. But there is also a little
Speaker 1: bit of noise, a little bit of glitchiness that that's
Speaker 1: lost in there, which you can easily imagine as being
Speaker 1: the the muffled chaos of the outside world. I was
Speaker 1: just thinking, even the tidal horizon, Clow has this idea
Speaker 1: of looking at this light from beyond that just sort
Speaker 1: of seems infinite and sort of you know, receding and
Speaker 1: melting outward and yeah, kind of motion to it. Well,
Speaker 1: there you have it. Lullabies the science of lullabyes, a
Speaker 1: little bit of the culture of lullabyes. This uh, the
Speaker 1: song that the mother sings to the child born or
Speaker 1: unborn that is at once soothing, it is also full
Speaker 1: of ideas, some positive ideas about what parenting is and
Speaker 1: what what having a child is as well as a
Speaker 1: way to perhaps event some of the the more negative
Speaker 1: and realistic ideas about what it means to bring this
Speaker 1: fragile creature into the world. Indeed, I like that idea
Speaker 1: of advice columns for babies. Yeah, if you guys have
Speaker 1: any thoughts on lullabies, and we certainly want to hear them, Yes,
Speaker 1: you can reach us in all the usual places. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com is the mothership. That's
Speaker 1: where you'll find all the podcast episodes, all the videos,
Speaker 1: the blog post, et cetera. You can find us on Tumbler,
Speaker 1: on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube where we are mind
Speaker 1: Stuff Show. And Uh, I'm reminded now that a number
Speaker 1: of listeners have written in over the years and mentioned
Speaker 1: that they listened to this podcast as in the evening
Speaker 1: as they're drifting off to sleep. So in a sense
Speaker 1: we are a lullaby uh, full of inspiring and cautionary
Speaker 1: information and and perhaps our voices are soothing as well
Speaker 1: device columns for your subconscious. Yeah, so it's probably fitting
Speaker 1: that that as we spiral everything out here, we should
Speaker 1: also close with a little bit of that Uh that
Speaker 1: that track horizon Glow by option command and Julie is
Speaker 1: there means that the the waking listener can get in
Speaker 1: touch with this. Indeed, in fact, it just occurred to
Speaker 1: me that if you have a strong idea about a lullaby,
Speaker 1: one that you really like or one that you think
Speaker 1: is just terrible or just so dark, that you want
Speaker 1: to share it with us, let us know. You can
Speaker 1: email us at Blue of Mind at how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. M HM