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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind somehow stuff Works

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Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. And

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Speaker 1: since this is the Halloween season and we're talking about creepy, uncanny, scary,

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Speaker 1: frightening sonic experiences, let's kick this episode off with just

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Speaker 1: a little bit of the uncanny from the Weirding Module. Oh,

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Speaker 1: we should talk about this weird module. Yes, yeah, just yeah,

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Speaker 1: real quick, this is the Weirding Module. This is a

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Speaker 1: solo project from musician Christopher Gladwin. Uh some of you

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Speaker 1: may name him. Is one half of Team do Yobi

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Speaker 1: and very accomplished musician has hands in into a number

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Speaker 1: of different projects, but this one is all about the uncanny,

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Speaker 1: about times, the frightening, the unsettling. This particular track was

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Speaker 1: titled Chapter one, Abysmal Cathedrals Arise from mel flurious I

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Speaker 1: Corps from some less Regions. And right there, that gives

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Speaker 1: you a clue. Yeah, it gives you a clue. And

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Speaker 1: uh and if you recognize the tune, and that's because

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Speaker 1: he's utilizing Symphony Fantastic from Hector Berlioz. And you may

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Speaker 1: also recognize it because Wendy Carlos used it in the

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Speaker 1: theme to The Shining. So what we are introducing to

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Speaker 1: you guys today is this idea that a scary movie

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Speaker 1: could perhaps be less scary or not even scary without

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Speaker 1: the sort of soundtrack that goes along with it, really

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Speaker 1: amping up our experiences while we're watching something on the screen.

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Speaker 1: And when you listen to something like the Weirding Module,

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Speaker 1: you can already start just sense that dis ease, that

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Speaker 1: that sort of decentering that that music makes you feel

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Speaker 1: with some of the chords and some of the ways

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Speaker 1: that it's arranged. Yeah, So it it raises the question,

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Speaker 1: and this is the question we're gonna explore in this

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Speaker 1: episode to what extent is there something just innately creepy, uncanny, scary,

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Speaker 1: frightening about music like this or is it all cultural?

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Speaker 1: Is it all contextual? So we're gonna unravel that. But

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Speaker 1: but first, just to to to rehash, we did an

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Speaker 1: episode of a while back called music on the Brain

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Speaker 1: where we talked about the various ways that didn't music

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Speaker 1: Uh speaks to us on a conscious and subconscious level. Uh,

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Speaker 1: And we have to think about music and stuff. What

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Speaker 1: is music? You know, it's obviously it's a deep part

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Speaker 1: of our cognitive architecture. It changes our mood, it heightens

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Speaker 1: our emotions. Uh, and we'd have to find a culture

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Speaker 1: that didn't or doesn't have it. And some evidence even

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Speaker 1: suggests that the Neanderthals, in absence of language, may have

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Speaker 1: used music as a means of communication. Um. Indeed, there

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Speaker 1: are also parts of the brain that respond to music.

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Speaker 1: They don't respond to language. Separate parts of the brain

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Speaker 1: that respond to the melody of language differ from the

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Speaker 1: parts that respond to the melody of music. So music

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Speaker 1: is really kind of this uncanny thing in and of itself. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I like to bring up cognitive psychologists and ling with

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Speaker 1: Stephen Pinker because he's the guy who he's probably pretty

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Speaker 1: brilliant guy, But he did say music is just auditory cheesecake,

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Speaker 1: an accident of evolution. But when we look at music

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Speaker 1: a little bit deeper than we really begin to see

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Speaker 1: that the case that was made in the documentary The

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Speaker 1: Music Instinct with Bobby McPherrin, that music actually maybe a

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Speaker 1: precursor to language. As you had said, Um, is there

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Speaker 1: because you think about music and there's no one music

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Speaker 1: center in our brains and as you had said, their

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Speaker 1: music uses certain parts of our brain that language doesn't um.

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Speaker 1: One of the parts that music recruits, and I think

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Speaker 1: this is so interesting is the visual cortext And it's

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Speaker 1: thought that the visual cortex actually maps a visual of

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Speaker 1: how the pitch and tone are changing, and in turn,

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Speaker 1: music moves us, literally moves us. We danced to it

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Speaker 1: because we envision the movement in it. So keep that

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Speaker 1: in mind as we continue to talk a little bit

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Speaker 1: more about music and how it manipulates us um and

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Speaker 1: particularly spooky music, how that might motivate us. The manipulation

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Speaker 1: is key here because when when music psychologists talk about

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Speaker 1: music and emotion, they often distinguished between emotion perception, which

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Speaker 1: refers to the perception of emotions expressed by the music.

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Speaker 1: Like oh, um, the sprint of the Boss is singing

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Speaker 1: about some sort of sad working class story and run

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Speaker 1: in with the law. That's a sad story. The song

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Speaker 1: is sad. I'm interpreting the sadness of it. Can you

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Speaker 1: say the boss you're talking about? Of course, of course

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Speaker 1: he's still the boss. I don't. I don't think he's

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Speaker 1: that that position has has not been vacated yet. Uh

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Speaker 1: And then there, But then there's emotion induction and this

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Speaker 1: refers to the list there's effective response to the music.

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Speaker 1: But I think it's interesting about this. It's not just

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Speaker 1: the emotional arousal, it's that we actually will show a

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Speaker 1: physical demonstration of that emotion. And there's a two thousand

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Speaker 1: and nine study of twenty six people who it turns out,

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Speaker 1: for a strong correlation between subjective emotional response and objective

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Speaker 1: physical response to music. The paper is called the Rewarding

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Speaker 1: Aspects of Music listening are related to a degree of

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Speaker 1: emotional arousal and details the chills that someone can feel

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Speaker 1: when they're listening to something flesh, whatever you want to

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Speaker 1: call it. And have you you yourself experienced this when

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Speaker 1: you listen to any music. Um, I think the one

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Speaker 1: that comes to mind is um Centerman by Nana Simone,

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Speaker 1: and I'm talking about the live version. It's like a

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Speaker 1: ten minute long song. It is also actually you don't

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Speaker 1: want me to do that, because I would do that

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Speaker 1: for ten minutes gonna be insane. But if you listen

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Speaker 1: to that piece of music, it's a all looking right

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Speaker 1: of emotions and the piano just gets crazy at some points,

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Speaker 1: and it's a it's a very emotional song and there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of syncopated rhythm with the clapping, which is

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Speaker 1: a stand in for the percussion in it. Very nice. Well,

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Speaker 1: I was trying to think of songs that have the

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Speaker 1: similar effect on me and for my own part, Radioheads

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Speaker 1: Everything in its right place. Every time I listened to that,

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Speaker 1: particularly just the first few seconds of it, when with

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Speaker 1: this kind of cascade of notes, sort of finding synchronicity

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Speaker 1: like that always gives me chill bumps. Again, I think

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Speaker 1: you stay cascading and there's that movement. Yeah, it's definitely

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Speaker 1: the movement of the music, and and my body moves

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Speaker 1: with it. I just get get the chills every time.

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Speaker 1: These twenty six people who underwent this experiment, well machines

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Speaker 1: measured their heart rate, respiration rate, body temperature, and galvanic

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Speaker 1: skin response. This is how much basically they were sweating

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Speaker 1: in response to the music and their blood volume pulse

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Speaker 1: and uh. They were asked to clear a button every

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Speaker 1: time that they felt really aroused, and so number four,

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Speaker 1: they're the four clicking button was a button that correlated

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Speaker 1: with chills, and so they found that the chills occurred

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Speaker 1: at the highest moment of pleasure reported. I think that's

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Speaker 1: interesting that it's a pleasurable response and yet chills is

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Speaker 1: the expression of a body. Yeah, you're you're intensely satisfied

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Speaker 1: by the music, but it's giving giving you chills. Um.

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Speaker 1: And there was another study we looked at here from ne'

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Speaker 1: allis Jack pack Sip of Bowling Green State University. This

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Speaker 1: one's interesting because he found that people listening to music

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Speaker 1: often experienced goose bumps because of sad feelings more so

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Speaker 1: than happy or excited emotions. But a lot of this

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Speaker 1: came down to, um, melancholy associations with the past, which

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Speaker 1: which is kind of like, you know, getting into the

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Speaker 1: context issue of all of this. For instance, that song

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Speaker 1: that you listen to a hundred times in a row

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Speaker 1: during a breakup, you listen to it ten years later.

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Speaker 1: You don't care the least bit about that individual, but

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Speaker 1: that music can still stir something and there's a bit

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Speaker 1: of a nostalgian that as well. You know, it sort

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Speaker 1: of sucks you back a little bit into that emotional state.

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Speaker 1: It wasn't the idea behind that is that the listener

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Speaker 1: is filling nostalgic or sad because they and having goose

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Speaker 1: bumps as a response because they physically are missing the

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Speaker 1: warmth of that person. Yes, the researcher argues that music

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Speaker 1: and news chills are tied into the chemicals released in

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Speaker 1: our brain to deal with social loss. So the idea

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Speaker 1: is that our ancient ancestors might have experienced as if

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Speaker 1: they are separated from a family member. All right, you

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Speaker 1: you wander off, and then the cries you hear in

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Speaker 1: the air of of of lost family members, that that

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Speaker 1: will call it cause a chill inside you and cause

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Speaker 1: you to have this desire to reach out to the

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Speaker 1: warmth of others. And I thought it was interesting that

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Speaker 1: this was the response, that these chill bumps, even for

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Speaker 1: someone who would be singing or listening to the Star

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Speaker 1: Spangled Banner. And I thought, okay, that's a little bit odd.

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Speaker 1: But when you and a little cheesy no, it's fine,

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Speaker 1: it's fine, it's nice. But if you peel that back

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Speaker 1: a little bit, and then you can say, okay, well

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Speaker 1: what is it to be to be moved by that song?

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Speaker 1: You feel united with your countrymen and country women. So

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Speaker 1: in a sense, there there's that community based longing. Well,

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Speaker 1: it's like with with with so many issues we've discussed.

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Speaker 1: You can find the sort of core of like ancestral

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Speaker 1: animal organism sense to what happens, but then you pile

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Speaker 1: enough layers of human complexity and human cognition and it

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Speaker 1: just turns it into a maze. Yeah. And just to

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Speaker 1: further compound that the amaze too, of course, we're going

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Speaker 1: to have to look back at the brain because I

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Speaker 1: want to look at the amgdala for a moment, in

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Speaker 1: particular when we talk about scary music, because the amingdalas

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Speaker 1: we know, processes emotion, memory, fear, and to test out

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Speaker 1: the theory that certain strains of music can ramp up

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Speaker 1: or dial down the fear response, researchers in Oxford, England

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Speaker 1: played different kinds of music for people's who who'se Amingdoala's

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Speaker 1: had been removed because of an illness or an act stents,

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Speaker 1: and then people without this part of the brain the

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Speaker 1: actually had trouble recognizing scary music, whereas people with their

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Speaker 1: amigdela is intact had a definite response when scary music

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Speaker 1: was played, as shown by the brain scanners. So again

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Speaker 1: there's an idea that there's so many different parts from

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Speaker 1: your brain that are weighing in on the notes that

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Speaker 1: you hear, now, I know what an overviewer probably wanted, well,

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Speaker 1: to what extent is it contextual? Is it cultural? Um

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Speaker 1: for instance, that the music we heard at the top

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Speaker 1: of the the program um A, it's by an act

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Speaker 1: known as the weirding module. So some of you would

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Speaker 1: if you hear that, you interpret this kind of strange

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Speaker 1: sounding name. You're bringing that into the game, or you're

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Speaker 1: recognizing the piece of music, example in the work as

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Speaker 1: as being familiar to something in the shining. We're bringing

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Speaker 1: all this context, we're bringing all this culture, and so

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Speaker 1: of course we interpret it as creepy. So if you

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Speaker 1: were to play creepy music for someone who had zero

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Speaker 1: experience with any of that, would they still find it scary.

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Speaker 1: You're talking about the study of the MafA people in

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Speaker 1: Cameroon who had never ever heard any sort of strains

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Speaker 1: of Western music, and they were introduced to three Western

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Speaker 1: musical clips. One that is typically thought to be sad,

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Speaker 1: one that's happy, and one that's spooky. All three examples.

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Speaker 1: By the way, it sounds like something that would play

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Speaker 1: during like a um an old silent film that would

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Speaker 1: be played on the piano, you know, classifying somebody to

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Speaker 1: the railroad tracks kind of a thing right in the

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Speaker 1: music speeds up. Um, all right. These Cameroonians were also

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Speaker 1: shown something called Ekman faces, and these e Men faces

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Speaker 1: are photos of standardized expressions of emotions. So in this

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Speaker 1: case they had a happy, sad, and scared face to

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Speaker 1: look at while they listened to music. And just like Westerners,

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Speaker 1: the Cameroonians correlated the music type with the same facial expressions.

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Speaker 1: So that would tell you that there's some universality to it.

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Speaker 1: Now that's not There are other studies that say no,

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Speaker 1: the second you know, some that negate this because there

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Speaker 1: are other cultures that might hear certain notes and interpret

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Speaker 1: in different ways. Yeah, when you get in deep and

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Speaker 1: to say the differences between Eastern and Western music trends

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Speaker 1: in Middle Eastern music versus Western music, then things get

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Speaker 1: a little more complicated. Well, I was just thinking about

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Speaker 1: Chinese opera, which the tones in the Chinese opera might

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Speaker 1: sound very um, harsh or dissonant to the Western year,

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Speaker 1: but very pleasant to Eastern year. Yeah, there's a fabulous

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Speaker 1: I think in b our Peace in the past year

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Speaker 1: about western Western musician, a Western opera singer traveling to

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Speaker 1: China and engaging in Chinese opera and sort of dealing

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Speaker 1: with the the the contrast between Western opera and Chinese opera,

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Speaker 1: some of the overlap of the performers, and it's it's

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Speaker 1: interesting because they are such different animals well, and even

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Speaker 1: in language. And Alison and I had kind of talked

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Speaker 1: about this a little bit. There's a musicality tell language

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Speaker 1: and if you look at something like Vietnamese, one word

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Speaker 1: can be said in five different tones, I mean five

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Speaker 1: entirely different things. So similar thing in Mandarin. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: so it's much more nuanced and it has to be

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Speaker 1: taken into account. But Christopher Gladwin, the man behind the

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Speaker 1: Weirding module, had some very interesting thoughts on this universality. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It was exchanged some emails, uh with Chris, and he

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Speaker 1: had a lot of great in photo to share and

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Speaker 1: sadly between the two of us, we didn't have time

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Speaker 1: to do an audio interview, but I'll hopefully be sharing

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Speaker 1: some stuff on the blog from him in the weeks

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Speaker 1: they had. He said, quote, there are sounds which almost

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Speaker 1: universally caused revulsion or fight or flight responses. The sound

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Speaker 1: of vomiting came out is the most obnoxious auditory experience

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Speaker 1: in a worldwide Internet survey conducted by Professor Trevor Cox.

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Speaker 1: The reason for this UH is that we're it's hardware

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Speaker 1: tor biology. Avoid those that are disgorging the contents of

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Speaker 1: their stomachs unless you want the same to happen to you.

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Speaker 1: Other sounds that came out on top where babies crying

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Speaker 1: and nails down at blackboard. Both of these sounds have

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Speaker 1: relatively complex, high frequency tones that we are evolutionarily designed

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Speaker 1: to respond to. Having a year old daughter, I can

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Speaker 1: appreciate this. Many industrial bands have used such casual tactics

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Speaker 1: throbbing gristle and their use of recordings of dogs are

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Speaker 1: tappicking of dummy, etcetera. And he goes on to UH

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Speaker 1: to discuss this in further depth, and I will hopefully

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Speaker 1: share that with everyone later on. But but yeah, there

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Speaker 1: are certain things that just as an organism, we UH

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Speaker 1: feel this either discussed with or this aversion to or

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Speaker 1: it just sets up all our alarms. I mean the

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Speaker 1: baby crying. I I to him experiencing that one with

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Speaker 1: the toddler that time my wife and I have have

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Speaker 1: adopted and he will he'll start, you know, crying or

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Speaker 1: tuning up a little bit in the middle of the night,

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Speaker 1: and it just has this intense effect on me, uh

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Speaker 1: to where even after I put him back to sleep,

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Speaker 1: my heart is just still beating like crazy, Like it's

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Speaker 1: just it's reaching behind my brain and uh and you know,

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Speaker 1: grabbing hold of the reptilian portion there right now is

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Speaker 1: your cap biscuit mimick the cries of a newborn. Yeah, well,

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Speaker 1: you know there's that argument that that's what cats are

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Speaker 1: doing anyway, and they're they're perverse means of manipulating their humans,

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Speaker 1: And so yeah, we'll have they'll be situations where the

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Speaker 1: child is authentically crying and then the cat is also

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Speaker 1: crying and it's mock human voice, and it's it's you

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Speaker 1: know what this is like, it's frustrating. It becomes a

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Speaker 1: loud household at three am. Y yeah um. Christopher Gladwin

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Speaker 1: also mentioned there was a sound that he found difficult

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Speaker 1: to describe. Michael Geret of the Swans, he said, put

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Speaker 1: it best that sex death sound that comes from somewhere

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Speaker 1: deep inside. There are some experiences of sound that you

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Speaker 1: just get that you tried to spell out. That's the

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Speaker 1: best I can do. Feeling from and some sort of

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Speaker 1: possession occurs. I believe that this connects with some subterranean

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Speaker 1: evolutionary memory, something in our ancestral reptilian fish brain. We

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Speaker 1: still have this the sigil fish ears, you know, And

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Speaker 1: I thought, you know what that sound. Let me tell

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Speaker 1: you this, and it's I'm to give you the context.

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Speaker 1: It was not a sexual context, so you don't have

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Speaker 1: to put your hands up to your ear to say no, no,

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Speaker 1: no no. I did something called the seven minute workout.

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Speaker 1: Do you know about this? It's awful. It is like

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Speaker 1: this ramped up, high density crazy workout you do for

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Speaker 1: seven minutes, just the best and highest rate that you can. Okay,

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Speaker 1: And I heard these noises coming out of myself that

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Speaker 1: I was a little bit ashamed of. I felt a

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Speaker 1: little bit like freaked out that they were actually coming out.

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Speaker 1: But I understand what he's saying. There's like guttural like,

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Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm dying inside noise that I had

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Speaker 1: never heard come out of myself before. And so there

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Speaker 1: is something too that this evolutionary like, oh there's something wrong. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: An example of that, I was driving my child around

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Speaker 1: in the middle of the night trying to get him

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Speaker 1: to sleep. Immediately after returning home, and he was super

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Speaker 1: jet lagged down his jet lag And so I was

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Speaker 1: listening to Radio lab catching up in some Radio Lavish episodes,

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Speaker 1: and there's an excellent one they did recently on rabies.

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Speaker 1: And in that episode they play some audio of humans

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Speaker 1: who have rabies and are experiencing that rage and that

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Speaker 1: just you know, the mindless rage that is associated with

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Speaker 1: the later stages of rabies. And it was extremely unsettling

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Speaker 1: to hear those sounds like and it's and I wonder

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Speaker 1: to what extent that's going to cross over, that this

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Speaker 1: this idea, that that that is on some level human,

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Speaker 1: but it must be bodily possessioned by some outside force

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Speaker 1: that is making that kind of noise. And you're right,

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Speaker 1: that bodily possession, as if you are outside of yourself

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Speaker 1: or something was outside of itself. All right, we should

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Speaker 1: probably take a quick break, and when we get back,

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Speaker 1: we you and I, Robert Lamb, are going to actually

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Speaker 1: sing some of the strains of music classics, not because

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Speaker 1: we necessarily want to do that to your ears, but

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Speaker 1: because we have no budget. Correct, right, So stand by,

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Speaker 1: all right, we're back, Robert. Did you know that in

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Speaker 1: the original cut of Psycho that Hitchcock did not want

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Speaker 1: those high pitched violin screams to accompany the shower scene

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Speaker 1: famous iconomy. Sorry about that again, we have no budgets,

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Speaker 1: so that's what you guys are getting. Um. It was

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Speaker 1: actually his wife, Alma Revel, who was a script writer

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Speaker 1: and actually a director of her own right and an

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Speaker 1: editor who said, no, no, no, you need to check

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Speaker 1: out Bernard Herman's score that he's created for this. It's amazing.

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Speaker 1: It's going to do its thing. And they actually tested

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Speaker 1: two versions, one with the with the violins and one without,

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Speaker 1: and apparently when they showed the audience when without they

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Speaker 1: were a little like, okay, so that this one is

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Speaker 1: getting hacked to death in a shower. But when they

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Speaker 1: accompanied the violence strains of Bernard Herman, people freaked out.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting to think of having not glops in the

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Speaker 1: scene without the music, and it's hard to imagine because

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Speaker 1: it's such an iconic scene and you go together so well,

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Speaker 1: and when I imagine the scene in my mind and

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Speaker 1: I think that's a really horrific scene, you know, even

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Speaker 1: even though it it doesn't show as much um in

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Speaker 1: way in the way of nudity or bloodshed that you

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Speaker 1: might you know that, I'm sure you can get away

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Speaker 1: with today. Uh. It's so effective and so disturbing, and

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Speaker 1: yet the music is what seems to make it so effective,

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Speaker 1: like in in a sense we can't feel or even

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Speaker 1: imagine what those the stabs feel like physically, because most

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Speaker 1: of us have not been brutally stabbed with a butcher

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Speaker 1: knife before, but the music kind of fills that place.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting that you say that it's it's not that

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Speaker 1: much nudity and it's not that much violence, because they

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Speaker 1: mean what you saw it. Because a lot of people

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Speaker 1: when they when they ask people, you know, about that scene,

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Speaker 1: they tend to envision much more violence and nudity than

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Speaker 1: there actually is because of that heightened emotionality there. I think. Um,

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Speaker 1: and of course it's that high pitch sound and we'll

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Speaker 1: get a little bit more into that in terms of

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Speaker 1: the animal world, but I wanted to mention that in

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Speaker 1: terms of pitch. Daniel Blumstein Uh he scrutinized one and

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Speaker 1: two films and found that horror films had a higher

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Speaker 1: than expected number of abrupt shifts up and down and pitch,

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Speaker 1: which he reported in The Royal Society Journal Biology Letters,

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Speaker 1: So already you can see that there are very different

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Speaker 1: ways that UM, that filmmaker