Why does music provoke emotion?

new one tomorrow finally. Congratulations, Thank god? Are you getting it after we record? Yeah? So two more episodes will feature hill Billy Chuck. It's been along, it's been like over six or seven months now. I just look back at Christmas photos and I had not too. I didn't realize it was like last year and it almost all against hill Billy. That's really derogatory, you realize, No, I love Hillbillies. Okay, Chuck, uh I, I have a revelation

for you. All right, let's hear it. So. Um. You know, when you hear music and you look at art, if you don't hate art, and you look at it, ah, and you you start to feel an emotion, or maybe a memory is released, or or just just something happens

to you, a change kind of comes over you. What you're doing is experiencing an emotion that was I guess created and encapsulated in a work of art, whether it's music or something visual or and it was put in there by the artist for you to come along and unlock and then bam, you're feeling some sort of emotion or whatever. That is possibly the most astounding thing that humanity has ever figured out how to do. Agreed, Like,

think about it. It's like when when you're interacting with art, you are, in a way interacting with the artist, and the art is the intermediary. But if you so, you kind of understand it on that level. But imagine if you're you're an alien, an emotionless alien that came down and observed this just kind of off to the side. It doesn't it makes zero sense whatsoever. This painting is just the work on canvas, its color and brushstrokes, and yeah,

but it's it is. If you look at it on a on a much more important level, it is a capsule of emotion and memory. Agreed, And I agree that that's like astounding when you think about musical notes, like there's a code inside them almost that taps into these emotions. And I'm already upset because we don't quite know why and like why it differs from person to person, and it's like I don't think we'll ever know. Yes, you know, some people can hear something and I think something sounds

like garbage. Someone else might hear and it might make them weep. Okay, I think we do know. I think I know, well you should written this article. Well, now think about this. I think that we have um certain processes. I did write this article smarty pan well one of them. Yes, So I do think. I think that there's um certain processes that our brains are capable of carrying out and their emotion based, right, yeah, because think about what our emotions Chuck. Uh, that's that's one of those hard to

define things there, like what what is the definition? Well, it's like it's it's it's some sort of No, Okay, what's the let me rephrase because that was define is, Chuck? What what is the value of an emotion? What's the purpose that it serves? Well, I mean some people think it from early on it was a means to help us survive, like fear of the tiger, or contentment with the sun on our faces, right, or like around a campfire.

So okay, I need to stay warm. So you don't even have to think that emotion is like your body thinking for itself in order to survive or achieve its goals. Right. Yeah, So our brains are capable of carrying out certain processes and using things like art and music. It's almost like exercise for those emotional processes. And when we do this exercise, they kind of bulk up, but they bulk up differently

for different people because we have different experiences. They're all along the same lines where you're feeling like things that make you happier, things that make you sad, or things that make you scared. Um, but they're different subjective experiences. That's what I think is going on. I agree, especially when you throw memory in there, which we'll get you. Uh, well, let's go ahead and hit this one study then, um Germans,

the gentleman's conducted. Uh they found uh, the MafA tribes people in Cameroon who had not heard Western music before, not a second of it, and they thought, well, this is perfect let's play some Western music and see if they can match, uh, this music to like an emotion like happy or sad. And they did, right, And by

Western music we mean pancho music. I'll bancho. Um. There was another part of that study I thought was even more interesting, which is they played altered versions of music for them as well, with like threw it out of rhythm or made dissonant harmonies. And these people that had never heard Western music like didn't appreciate that sound very much.

It in hately triggered like when they heard bad harmonies or off rhythm beat, They're like, no, right, So if there's whatever their word for knowing, if there's not something universal going on, then um, then they shouldn't have noticed. Then I'll be a monkey's uncle exactly. So that means two things that that emotion encoded in music is universal, and the ability to distinguish like what's right and what's wrong in music is universal too. Then that's what it

would suggest. Yeah to a certain degree, though, But then you hear people that like don't understand when they're singing off key, and I'm like, how can you not hear that? Remember the tone deafness? One good overlooked episode anyway, I thought, I think it's all very interesting. So okay, so we've got this idea that this this is all universal. Um, there's that still doesn't explain what's going on, and there's

there's different schools of thought. Like anytime there's just something really big out there that's not explained, a lot of people have some competing ideas. And one of the people with the competing idea who you're apparently mad at, is Stephen Pinker, who's a good guy, good, great guy. He knows how to like he's a linguist, and yet he can rise above the fray of like the sniping that is so characteristic of that field. Yeah, he's got a mullet, really Yeah, he's got kind of a curly per mullet

a little bit. He's a good guy. Okay, you'd like him, But I don't like what he says about music. He famously said music is auditory cheesecake. Um. His his contention is basically, music is hollow compared to the language that it's based on, right or hearing or hearing, And I just I just couldn't disagree more. Well, I think he's also saying there's different ways of interpreting what he was saying, Um, there's it was an accident and evolutionary accident. Um or

it's designed. It's something that's designed to exploit an existing sense. So like cheesecake, our sense of taste. It's like, we don't really need cheesecake, and but when you're eating it, you're like, this is really good, and it's designed to be like I'm gonna take your sense of taste and I'm gonna blow the back of your head out. I think people need music and art though okay, well pinker

would probably contend that's not necessarily the case. That's that's the explanation is that is that he's saying if if that's if if music is just designed to assault the sense of hearing. Um, it triggers emotions because it's specifically targeted to do that. Yeah, simple as that. All right, So the other guy or there is another guy, Mark

chang Zi uh cognitive scientists. He thinks that music, Uh, we associate it with movement, and we can pick up on movement and empathy, or we express and pick up on empathy and emotion through visual cues of movement from other people. Like if somebody's kind of trudging along. You're like, oh, that person is sad. Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense because um and this was I thought kind of neat.

Was this the first article yours? Yeah? When when you google uh musical now and hidden into Google images, it like almost everything you see it shows them like flowing and flying and there's movement. Yeah, there's very few, like just static shots of musical notes on a scale. And even if you looked at a musical scale, you know it has a flow and up and down and it

all is very movement based. Right. He also pointed out to that, um we use terms about movement to describe music, like a movement is a part of a smaller of a larger composition. Um, or we say like music moves us. Um. So, I think you did a good job in making the case that we associate movement in music, But I don't think that necessarily proves his point is larger point, that that's how it evokes a motion because it's a stand in for human movement. Yeah, but I definitely thought it

was worth note. You know, for sure, it's all of the things. It's like, that's kind of interesting, But what have we proven here, right, Well, there's another camp too, that that um kind of is the opposite of Pinker's assertion that um they say that no music and art or its own things. Yeah, like it it looks like this huge blur of of stuff when you put it under an m R. I but that that that process is its own thing and it's not just an offshoot of language or hearing. I think I relate to that

a little bit. I figured you would. So all right, let's let's put music on the back runner for a second. Talk about art visual art. Uh. And I'll go ahead and say up front that a painting or a photograph I can find like extremely beautiful, but it doesn't move me emotionally like music or a moving image will like a you know, a movie or a TV show or and then you put music and that moving image together, and for me, that's like the recipe. That's just when it goes to blan right, So like when at the

beginning of Bananca to start gueeping on exactly. But other people, you know, look at a painting and like, I'll find a painting gorgeous and beautiful, or a photograph, but other people look at a painting and weep. Let's say but not me. So it all varies from person to person, right. Um. The thing that that kind of gets me is that because it varies from person to person, I think that explains why we have such a wide swath of what

we consider art. You know, why there's so many genres of music, because something that might get you might not get somebody else. Yeah, like the you know, the very bare, you know, stark art of like the dot in the

center of a blank canvas. I don't get it. Well, the thing is that's that's you can't poop poo it though, because abstract art basically proves the idea that art is an encapsulation of emotion or emotion encoded for each viewer to unlock, and it may do nothing for you, but it may also trigger some of memory, like that someone's made it. Just the idea that like something beyond like people moving and talking and saying lines and they're being

music in the background, unlocking you know, your emotions. The fact that just a dot in the middle of a white canvas can unlock emotions like, that's it at its most basic essential form, you know, but it's still does the trick or performance aren't Yeah, you know, uh, So one of the theories is that visual art basically simply just taps into these learned emotional cues. And whether it's ah a conscious thing or it's subconscious, like the color red for these weird lines that I see, or a Pollock.

Maybe you know what that might evoke in different people. It just Franz Klein for some reason, and I don't know why. I don't know poll would be the go to. But I like that you went somewhere else, the lines in disarray, it's not nerving. See. One of the biggest things I have with visual art, with like a painting, is when I go see like a Pollock, I'm more knocked out by being in the presence of the original work.

Like it looks cool and I love it and it's gorgeous, But I think about Pollock in his garage, drunk as a skunk, you know, dribbling the paint everywhere, and like, if I could touch it, I would like connect with that. If you touched it, you would get tackled by security. Or anytime I see the original stuff, I think you mean, like when I see the original handwritten lyrics at the rock on All Hall of Fame, to like the Jimi

Hendrix song on a piece of notebook paper. I'm like, man, his pencil touched that paper and wrote the wind cries Mary Wham. There's that's definitely an aspect of it as well. I agree, I agree. I don't know how. I wonder how that changes things though, you know, is that does that add to it or is it distracting? Like does fame and celebrity distract us from our emotions? Oh that's

a good question. I think it enhances it for me. Yeah, yeah, because when I had like this hero worship of an artist and then I meet them or I see their like original works, that's what does it for me. But it could also be an unknown you know. Um. You know that's funny though, because I wanted up say that you would be you probably wouldn't have been into disco then if you're like all about the artist and you know, seeing that something created by you know, the individual, I

wasn't in the disco right. Um. But that also that when I was researching this and reading these articles, that made me wonder, like, is that a difference, Like there's

a difference between experiencing live music and recorded music? So does that was that a distinction between people who are into disco and people who weren't, an uncomm an unconscious difference, although I would argue that the basis in this article at least says that the live music thing is about being in the same room with people with similar likes, partially not necessarily, because you can listen to a live recording of song and it is like hearing that crowd

cheers totally different. So maybe it's evoking that. But I'm not friends with the people that I can't see on this recording, you know. Yeah, that's a good point, all right, let's get back to it. H uh yeah, the um just real quickly. It's also culturally based because you make a great point that depending on where you're from, like

even color can mean something different. Like in Japan, the color white is associated with death, so melancholy will come out, whereas black supposedly is in the Western world, something we associate with that. So like a snow covered painting like a Thomas Kincaid would maybe uh, instilled dread in a Japanese person. That's why he doesn't do very well in Japan. Really. Yeah. Um, But then one other thing, Chuck, where the the color red those lines and disarray all that those are called

cognitive antecedents, right right. And you can also make the case that a change in harmony or pitch or drumming or whatever is a cognitive antecedent too, in much the same way that the composers is changing something, is adding something that is taking something away, and that forms a cognitive antecedent. It's the thing that triggers the emotion. Awesome, So should we talk about the brain? Here's where it all comes down to science. I knew we were going

to get to there. At some point, you hear music, and well, first of all, they say, it's kind of impossible to say, like, you know, we can say we have a language center and a center for like movement and things like that, but we can't really pinpoint a dead center for music in our brain because it's sort of all over the place, right, which is kind of awesome,

I think. But when you first hear a song, let's say, your frontal lobe is gonna kick in and the temporal lobe and it's gonna process things like rhythm, pitch, and melody to kind of get the ball rolling. Um. They think it happens in the right hemisphere, but they aren't quite positive that that's the only place that happens. UM. Personally, I think it probably hits the left hand right. It's

firing all over the place. UM. But it depends on a lot of things, Like you said, whether it's live or recorded, UM, probably whether or not you are a professional musician or not, or have any kind of training, Like you're gonna if you know how to read musical notes. When you hear musical note, you're probably going to visualize it. Whereas like if I hear music like I do not do that, maybe see colors or um fractals or something, depending on whether I'm listening to Pink Floyd or not.

And then whether or not music has lyrics. If it's um as lyrics and you can understand these lyrics, then you're gonna be processing language through Broca and Wernicke's areas, which we've talked about before, Two great areas. What was that in We talked a lot about linguists in the two areas. There's so many shows. No, man, I have such a hard time. It didn't come out very long ago.

I think it was in UH the one on prohibition UH, and it activates a visual cortex, because you know, when you close your eyes and listen to music, you're probably gonna visualize something. Well, that would that would lend credence to the idea that music is associated with movement. Yeah. Sure, as we check movement with our eyes. I see really high glossy music videos. When I close my eyes, I just see money for Nothing over and over and over again.

You see the the day glow in the purple leopards print. Um. And it can also trigger the motor cortex, of course, because that that's what you start tapping, the hand, tapping the feet, bob in the head like in the disco episode when he played some of that music. Even though I don't like that music, it still gets the head bob and oh it's good music, so you say, and activates your motor cort text whether you like it or not.

And the Cerebellum, I think is the last one. And that's pretty interesting because, um, that means you're like following the music and trying to figure out where it's headed based on what you've heard before. Yeah, because we love to keep our ourselves occupied. Sure, Um, that's not the last one. There's a medial prefunnal cortex. Yeah, you're right, um. And that word also is usually pronounced pre frontel um. And that one is the one where are that unlocks

our memories? Like the music goes in there as a key and goes and then all of a sudden you're like, oh, yeah, what's one of your old old ones? Uh? Hot Blooded? What does that gave you? It was I think of myself as a little three year old cowboy boots because that was like the first song I ever knew the lyrics too, so I walked around singing hot Blooded. Nice? How about that? That's pretty good. My big one is um,

how Deep is Your Love? By the Bgs. It makes me almost want to cry when I hear it because this one day when I was like in the third grade, that was a bully that was not even picking on me, but he just scared the crap out of me on the bus one day with his bullying. And I was such a little wimpy kid, you know, And I ran to my dad's office he was principal, and he wasn't there, and I was. She was just like, you can wait for him, and I was like crying, And how Deep

is Your Love? Was on the on the the Hi Fi and Uh, to this day, it just still makes me incredibly sad to hear that song. See you like this guy, Well, it makes me cry it moves you. Or like Centerfold by Jake Giles Man that always takes me to like the skating rink. Yeah immediately, ye good. Um. So if you want to talk about memory, you should go look up. Um have you seen the video on YouTube I posted about the guy in the nursing home. I don't follow you on Facebook, jerk. Uh, it's pretty amazing.

Just go to YouTube and put in man and nursing home reacts to music. And there was this this old timer in a nursing home who it showed him before he listened to anything, and he, you know, it's kinda shaky, had a hard time stringing together sentences. And then they put these headphones on and played like Cab Calloway and stuff, and all of a sudden his speech is fluid. Oh dude,

it's like remarkable and just gut wrenching to see this. Well, they were saying that the medial prefrontal cortex is whe of the last areas to go with alzheimer exactly, So you may have trouble with just about everything else, but music can still unlock memories. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's awesome. It's cognitive vanta stin is uh. And then there was

another study with UM. They studied this woman who had damaged to her temporal lobe and she couldn't distinguish between like melodies and things, but she still had the UH in the in the m r I machine had the emotional reactions lighting up that you would anticipate with like quote happy music or sad music. Yeah, pretty amazing. Um. Again it's like the MafA tribes people. Yeah, so we have a pretty good idea that this this that our

brains are being activated these certain regions are right. We've seen it in the mr iye that's full of listening to music in MR eyes while scientists of studying them they love that kind of stuff. Um. And so from that and like that Alzheimer's revelation, we started to realize like, okay, well maybe we can like artists, um, create music or art too, um to get you in with the emotions. UM, maybe we can kind of use this as like a prescription. And hence music therapy has been born and it's actually

been proven as um what was the UM noun for efficacy? Efficatic? Effective? No, way, that's a an effect. It's effective. Okay, thanks Chuck, Sure go ahead, man, something bad just happened to me. Okay. Well yeah, so music therapy has been born and it's effective. It's been shown effective, effic had of exactly like uh for instance, Well, they think it grows as we grow like this, this tie to music and emotion intensifies this

we grow even though they've seen it in little babies. Babies, Yeah, it starts early, right, Yeah, but like you know, fast tempos and a major key will tend to make someone happy and it just you kind of take it for granted, but like there's stuff going on there to make this happen. And like minor keys, D minor the saddest of all

keys slow tempo. Is that the Devil's key that's from spinal tap, but it is it's a very sad key and minor keys when you hear it, especially as a musician, you you know, it just lends itself to like darkness. I wonder if that's the Devil's key. There's something called like I think the Devil's key. Yeah, I can't remember what it is it's worth, like, maybe we'll do it

smarter in sixty seconds on it, I would love to. Okay, Um, but as far as uh study these go with medical benefits, they have found that UM at cal State University that hospitalized kids, we're happier during music therapy when they could play something along with like a teacher on guitar, let's say. Then even getting like toys and puzzles like they they valued, and we're happier during music time than playtime right there. Uh, like just playing doing their own plaything just stunk compared

to playing a triangle. Yeah, I was always like putting a bad mood when I was given a triangle or a recorder? Do you remember recorder lessons? Mandatory recorder left? Why was that the one? Probably kids is easy? Yeah? What did I guess? The recorder lobby was much stronger when we were kids than it is today because you don't see those any longer. Yeah, well there was no read on it, like it's just any kid could pick

up a recorder and play. You don't have to hit it just right with like the flute or and then what were those ones dicks? They were like ribbed sticks that you just like zip along one another because there wouldn't corduroy. Yeah, this is a percussive instrument. I don't know the name of it though it was boring. Uh, the augmented fourth, my friend, it's the Devil's Key. We'll have to check that out. Maybe our guests can play it. Oh yeah, um, which is coming up soon by the way. Uh,

breakup songs. I was a little bit I couldn't quite figure out if they've proven that a breakup song. It seemed like all anecdotal, like you know, of course I will survive, is gonna pump you up if you're gonna show him, or you know, she's always a woman to me, will make you weep. If you love Billy Joel and your girlfriend love Billy Joel and you just broke up, well it feels good to pear those songs and to cry it out because your medial prefrontal cortexes is crying

out for that. I guess, yeah, because I mean, like you have a memory formed in relation to a song, right, But no, I think the point that Congress is trying to make is that there's not a study out there that showed that breakup songs have a certain effect. No one's done that yet, but she did lay out like a pretty good case for how it would work. Why people were walking around knowing that like, yeah, this, this works,

this has its effect. Right, Well, she's saying, like there's this um this Rutgers University anthropologists named Helen Fisher, who studies the effects of breakups, and basically she is the one who came up with the concept of the breakup as a going cold turkey on an addiction, like you

can compare it to cocaine. And the reason why is because when you're in love with somebody, your limbic system is stimulated, and then when that's taken away, all of a sudden, this stimulation that you used to have is not there any longer, your olympics system, it gets kind of irritated. What Congress saying is that it makes sense that music, which has been shown to stimulate the limbic system, probably does some sort of number on it to kind of wean you off that cold turkey person. You just

oh okay, you just yeah, got you. That makes more sense, now, that's yeah, But there wasn't an actual study, You're right, okay. But she also pointed out that music um has been shown to be a pain reliever. Yeah. This one study in from two thousand eleven found that cancer patients undergoing mastectomies had lower blood pressure and lower anxiety when they played music prep during the operation, even in post op

and um. And not not an enormous amount. It's not like a shot of morphine or anything like that, as like point five, uh half a point on a ten point scale, you know, the pain scale, the line drawing of the person. Just like, I never know what to say. They're always think I need to say a lot so I'll get a better pain pill. Well, they ask you like one to ten. I know, that's why I always say ten, okay, but I never I mean, it's hard to qualify. If you want to get the good pain pills,

you have to stay eleven. They think that's hilarious. Have you said that this one goes to eleven. That's the second spinal tap reference. Um. Yeah, and that's actual physical pain. It shows to ease a little bit. But where it really comes in handy is as like an anxiety reducer and as an emotional woob. Yeah. They found that people who suffer from anxiety, they actually responded to music as

an analgesic more than a pharmaceutical. It is, and it's not just them like you you mentioned, like blood pressure lowering. Other studies have been conducted that showed that pregnant women um were less stressed out than when they listen to music. UM people uh with cardiac patients, their blood pressure lowered, um immune systems were boosted in post surgery patient's like, there's it has this really great effect on us. It's pretty pretty obvious why it's. It's the Olympic system has

a calming effect. I had that happened to me once, actually to my detriment. I was uh so living in New Jersey at the time. I was going to the bank and like really stressed out about getting to the bank before it closed, and this song came on about that I've never heard before. Like halfway there, I get to the bank, it's like literally like a minute and a half for this bank closes, and I could not get out of the car. I couldn't quit listening to

this song. Well, its song was that I can't remember now, but I literally remember watching the dude come up and locked the door in front of me and sitting there in my car and thinking, you know what, this is worth it because this is amazing and I'm not stressed anymore. And who cares about the bank? That is? That is quite a song, Yeah, and I think it probably pounce some checks because of it. But who did you go back and listen to the song after you're looking at

I wish I could remember what it was. This is a long time ago. That's really made them like a classical thing because I broke down at Carnegie holland cried one time. Yeah, Beethoven's like I did, uh, Beethoven's ninth Oh to Joy with like the full choir. That thing pumped in joy man, oh to joy? Yeah, oh joy. Uh that's right, that's like those are the lyrics. I just activated your were Nikki's area. Now you activated another area? What else you got? Nothing? Man, I've had plenty of

those A lot of times. It's live music that gets me because of the shared experience. Um, but it can happen on just you know, in a movie or a television show. Yeah. Like I said, you married the moving picture and music together for me, and it's like it's all over. It's like chocolate and peanut butter. You got

any good breakup songs, any good sad songs are you like? No, but only like I think who doesn't do that, you know when they go through a breakup, to sit around and listen to like the most Morrow's stuff you can find, like put on the Smiths and the Smith's the Cure. One of my all time favorites was a Secret Machine song called the Loan Jealous and Stone good Audio kill you.

M Yeah. Strangely, Genesis Ripples is really yeah, that's a great one to me, Like, but that one is so magnificent because it depending on my mood, it's either sad or very reflective. It's not it's not ever like happy, like yeah, I feel like I'm gonna go take on the world. It's not that kind of song. But it's not necessarily like sad. It's just contemplative in a lot of ways too. And there's a range too, you know.

I think with the breakup, like at first, you do want to just keep being bummed out and so you've gotten it all out of your system, and then that's when you want to put on you know, I had the Tiger Well. Also, Molly pointed out she wrote the second article, I think she points out that. Um, if if we are hitting our um limbic system with music and we are, it's like a drug, we become addicted to it, then there's a really good case for unplugging

and not listening to music for a while. I don't know about that, which kind of points out something that I've known for a very long time. Good listen to stuff you should know is very refreshing. That's true. Yeah, we have a special treat here, Chuck. Okay. So um, we've been talking about the idea of experiencing music like unpacking it and experiencing music and art. We should probably talk to somebody who packs that a great way to say it. Thank you, Um we have you might remember

him from the Mountaintop Removal mining episode. Mr Ben so Lee is joining us again. That's right, and we're gonna get his insights on a music and emotion as an artist and then as a special treat. Just like last time, he's going to play for us. So our second musical guest is the same as our person. All right. Uh so let's just get been in here. It's like magic then soil he is in the studio. Wow, that was Ben, Thank you for coming. Oh it's my pleasure. Hello. Thanks,

it's good to be here. It's good to be here. So we did things out of order and Ben actually just played although through the magic of editing, you will hear that song in or songs afterwards. Okay, do you have to give away all our secrets? I know, but I just wanted to say that I was supercharged after doing this podcast on music and emotion to experience that with you in a room with just a few other people. Well,

I can't wait to hear what you've been talking about. That. Well, that leads me and I see, by the way, into my first question, which we talked a lot about in the podcast about um music and emotion and how it depends on whether or not it's live. Like there's a difference emotionally whether or not it's live music or like on a CD. And as an artist, I mean we've got scientist perspective. As an artist, what has been your experience with playing live and with how fans receive it

live as opposed to on a CD. Well, you know, there's on recordings, there's kind of the there's a lot of room for the listener to um place their own images and their own ideas into the music and everything, and it's there's certainly room for that in the live show as well, but they're also visually seeing what your body is doing when you say these words, and of course physical body language is a huge part of of how we manipulate the meanings of things, and I think

that has a huge amount of input, Um, But I also think that sometimes it can confuse things. You know, sometimes people can be seeing you and kind of be so overwhelmed with what was happening and how it's happening visually on stage that it doesn't necessarily they don't get to focus on what might impact them as much musically. So I think I do think there's two music affects people differently in live and then recorded settings. That's pretty much what I said. I think he kind of just

confirmed what you said to me. Um. We talked about there's a theory that one of the ways music moves us is because we it's it's a stand in for human movement. So that would make a lot of sense that if you're also seeing movement while you're listening to music, you're just have your mind blown. It's a stand in for movement. Huh. That's what what was his name, Mark

Changzi something like that. Yeah, that's his theory. That's why our emotions are unlocked through music is because we we um visualized movement and we can feel empathy towards human movement. So the music just reminds us of that movement. It's

a theory. I think he's working on it still. I think there's I think be interesting to see how it gets to that part of the brain and what path it goes through, whether you know, because music kind of exists through this kind of backdoor in the brain, maybe the place where speech began and then got its own apartment later on in life. We we talked all about that.

You're gonna love this podcast. I've got a question, Okay, So one of the things we talked about Ben was, um, how when you're observing art or when you're listening to music, it's like you are unpacking, um, what the artists put in there emotionally, or the artist is using some sort

of cues to trigger your own emotions. As an artist, on say the packing side of this whole equation, do you ever just go like this note is gonna make everybody just weep on cue or this one's really gonna get them, Like, do you ever do you think like that or is it more when you're creating something that you're you're end of putting yourself in there and it's open for interpretation. I think there's there's generally two ways I go about it, and both of them have their

own dangers and pitfalls. When you think when you try to think of a musical device that's going that can and will affect people in a certain way, especially if you're talking about anything with words and music, Um, there's a danger of kind of watering, watering the emotion down to something that can be to affect people in a broad way. Um, not something on Broadway, just people being affected in kind of like a like for pop music.

We'll just use that as an example. You know a lot of times when you're listening, you hear things and sounds and musical repetition that's used because people feel like it will be a hit or will affect a lot

of people. And uh, And of course when I'm writing songs, sometimes I could think that I'm being that I can be too personal with an idea, Like I can get something that's so personal I'm packing up that bag and I'm putting you know, undy's in and all this other stuff and like too specific, and you lose people because

they can't relate to that specific item. But if you talk about the gesture that's there and try to find that the essential human expression that's in there, um, then you have a universal idea, even if it springs from a very personal experience. So if I was going to say that another way, I think I would say that, Um, when you're packing up the bags, you have to be careful not to be too personal, um, because otherwise you

can lose people. People can almost feel like, um, not necessarily grossed out, but like they're like they're seeing something that they shouldn't see or it's too private, Yeah, exactly. And and so what you need to do is figure out how your private things relate to their private things and so create a personal experience that has some type

of universal meaning or expression to it. So when you're packing the bags, you leave out like the metaphorical leather hood with the zipper mouth, Yes, I'll leave that out. And Norton, nor do I make repetition of things that everybody knows is already there all the time. You know, like if everybody knows that the doors are closing and chatting all the time. You don't use that musical device, which is to say you don't just like, for instance,

in dubstep music, there's a very simple musical pattern that's happening. Basically, there's a big build, usually for about thirty two bars, where it's just there's no low end or anything. There's just big build, build, build, build, and then there's something called the drop where the base drops back in and it's like it's supposed to be like this quake of emotion that happens and everybody's head started just going up

and down, and um. You have to be careful because it's a pretty simple device and there's lots of different variations you can do in that on that, but if you do it too much or too similar each time, then people are just like, ah, is that just a crescendos. No, it's not a crescendo, it's a it's a it's an orchestration,

it's an arrangement thing. So a criscendos when things just kind of grow in volume, and uh, this is much more of arranging sounds, so that there's some that are absent and you know, they're going to return, but how you bring them back in and create anticipation is is the strength of your composition as a As a dub step artist, I guess good stuff. We actually have an article on that and it's on my list dub step. Robert Lamb will kill you if we record dub step? Uh?

So Ben? As an artist, do you think, like we talked a lot about the emotional kick like the drug and you know it releases dopamine and it's actual, there's science behind it going on? As an artist, do you find it more difficult to still get that kick or like, you know, when you hear a song, do you think I was like as a musician, like, oh I hear what this person is doing there? Or is it just still pure emotion going on? Or does it very um?

I think as an artist, once you start repetitively doing something, there is a tolerance that builds up, which is kind of a sad thing. Um, And people kind of find ways to convey that they're still getting that stuff when

they're really not. That makes sense, especially in a live show, like you'll see a rocker contorting themselves in all kinds of weird ways and then after the show, they act like just you can tell that they're not completely high off of off of the show, at least they're they're just kind of like, yeah, thanks, um, as opposed to someone who you've just seem to go through a pretty magical musical experience and you and you can tell that everything that they had just kind of came out of

them and they're either bouncing around or they're just completely a puddle on the floor. You know. I remember seeing Andrew Bird play a show like that once and he just gave everything to it, and you can tell he was having an overwhelming experience and stay went to talk to him afterwards and he was just he was basically a puddle. He was a human puddle at the end. He had just kind of given everything, and you know, he talks about that and in some of his songs

as well. That actually was one of my other questions as an artist on stage, like how do you night after night? How do you draw that up? And does the emotion of the audience, Um, how much do you feed off that? And can you you probably just can't whip that up, so like how does that all work? Yeah, that's something I probably have to think about how to answer just for a little bit. But like I guess the basic question is, like, what's the difference between a

good show and a bad show? Yeah? Sometimes up to me what was good and bad? Because sometimes I'll have what's sometimes when I'm playing a live show, I'll have what seems to be a fairly kind of mundane night, like nothing really special instrumentally happened. I didn't shred really much on anything, and I didn't really feel impact. And then people walk up to this show, walk up to me after the show, and they'll be kind of having

this intense emotional reaction to it, you know. Um So there's all kinds of stories and networking going on when you're playing live on stage. People are getting to know you, they've spent two hours getting to know you. Uh, They're checking all kinds of visual cues from you, and of course you're actually talking to them and telling stories. Um they're taking cues from everybody else in the audience. So

there's kind of like a tribe build up mentality. Um So, I think part of it is getting everybody to participate socially in the show, if you want to get to that in that energy place where something overwhelming happens to you and the audience UM, and that usually starts with it's very much like a combustion, like you have to ignite it in some way and you feel that coming on. Like have you been in a show where you feel like not so much as happening and all of a sudden,

all right, now it's going on. Yeah, you can definitely feel it when it turns on. There's a a sort of friction in the room, if that's a good word. There's some there's definitely some type of resistance that you can move with, if that makes sense. Like in dance, when you're doing like ballroom dance, even though the motion is very fluid, there's a lot of rigidity in it.

Like between partners. You have to you have to kind of push against your partner and they have to be rigid to be able to communicate the movement to them, because you're not gonna be okay, spending the right degrees now, dip down forty five, You're not gonna use language to them.

You're you're touching and pulling, and but you want to do it in a fluid, very connected way, and you can you have that same sort of push and pull with the audience where when you push against them you can hear them here or feel them kind of get excited, and then when you pull back, you can hear them kind of breathing more. Uh. And when I say pull back, I mean that can be volume, that can be tempo, that can be uh frequency range you're including in. There

can be a lot of things. And of course, as a chela player who did a lot of time sitting in the back of the orchestra, you I got to spend time paying attention to that from an orchestral standpoint where you're on stage with A D people playing to an audience of however many people, And so that's an even trickier thing because you got to get the A D people to create the spark before the audience can really start combusting, like you can really start feeling that energy.

And that second chair clarinetis is always just messing it up. Did you play clarinet? Okay? Um? But sometimes the audience can walk in and create something that may not have

been there otherwise. I really I felt that too, um where maybe you had a really crappy day or maybe you just you don't have any energy left after doing a bunch of media or traveling on the road, and the audience walks in and they're just they've got an idea and an expectation that is just buzzing or around the room, and suddenly you kind of get this encouragement or a feeling that you're going to fill their cups.

You're gonna you're gonna really have an emotional impact. But there's no one way that I get my self psyched up for it to generate that spark. There's not like one tool, there's no drug that I use. It's just kind of one of those things where I try to from the very beginning, it's I try to write songs that have that personal experience and in it for me

that that igniting artistic moment. Whether whether it's um, you know, a love song, or whether it's a song about something stupid that happened between politicians, or a belief in um some type of social change, or it's or a war song or something like that. It can be any sort of thing. When I write it, I tried to be really honest and genuine about something that really moves me so that whenever I play it over and over and over again. The three time I play it, I can

still look back into that song. And for me, it's very much like that. When I play a song, I'm I'm remembering and and kind of reliving a little bit of what happened in that song, but not just what happened to that song, what happened when I played that song for the first time in front of a certain group of people, or when I played that song on

Stuff you Should Know or whatever you know. It kind of a creates experiences in it, and so that keeps me getting excited about it, and I think that probably helps ignite things. Um, have you ever made a stranger weep with your music? And if so, how do you feel about that? Now? When you say stranger, you mean

like somebody who just just walking by, has no clue. No, no, no, not necessarily, just somebody you didn't know, Like somebody who came to see one of your shows, and like you look down and you saw like they were crying and it was obvious it was because your music had brought something out in them. What was that like? So it's amazing, man?

What is it like? So when I'm when I'm playing, when I'm playing a song that has a heavy emotion to me like I've got this one song called Panning for Gold, and I wrote it about my grandparents who both had dementia, and UM as they slipped further and further into that it was it's Alzheimer's and which was caused the situation of dementia. UM, they kind of forgot all the good stuff that they've done in the world.

And I used this character, this spiritual character of God forgetting all the stuff that he created, UM in the song as a as a kind of like a lyrical device to show that it's our job to remind each other of how all the beautiful things that are in the world. And UM, that was what the song meant to me. And that's when I first started explaining to people. But I quickly learned that people would weep to that

song all of their various reasons. The song had was so um sticky as an artistic idea, the idea of someone old for getting something that a young person was supposed to reconnect them with. H or maybe it was about protecting or preserving something that the audience would all fill their own minds with ideas and they would just weep, and some of them would be leaping for joy, someone would be missing somebody and it was a real, real mix and I had no control over it. That's the

that's the thing. That's how it feels. It feels like, ah, I've I've. Even though you feel like you've impacted somebody in a deep way, you don't feel like you've got any control over how it happens. So I guess that's kind of what I was asking was, do you you don't feel do you feel responsible for putting that out there and the people are crying or like that you're

just playing and they're attaching they're thing to it. I mean, usually the thing that coordinates with it is I feel like I've had a really genuine expression in the song, you know, from a performance standpo, I feel like it was a really honest performance. At the time, I'll feel good about the performance, but I don't really feel like it's something that I did. I feel like, if I'm being really honest, it can happen. It's something that I can create a situation for, but I don't feel like

it's something that I do. I feel like that's kind of like the communal choice or that person's that person's thing. Earlier in the show, we talked about each other's um. We talked about music and memory and how it's tied to memories and very evocative of You know, a lot of times songs from like your childhood will keep getting really specific with a certain memory. And you know, one of mine was the BGS and a very specific memory, Josh,

what was yours hot Blood in my Foreigner? But I think everyone wants to know what's the first thing that comes to your head when you about a song from your past, from your childhood that really evokes a very specific memory, Like when you hear it, you're just there. Yeah. Well, at this point, I've got a bunch At this point in my career, since I've written a lot of music and experienced a lot of music, I've got a huge pile of them. Um. You know, there's a couple of

this this song Wayfaring Stranger traditional Tune. When I play or sing or hear that song, I go immediately back to sitting behind my grandfather's house and um, hearing him play that on fiddle and sing. Um. There's other weird songs like two Dy Fruity is the song that I got over stage fright for for some reason. Yeah. I was in uh grade school choir and I had terrible

stage fright at the time. It was like fifth grade or whatever, and I was playing chill at the time, but I was singing in the choir and just I just couldn't get with it. I was like, I shouldn't be up there, shouldn't be up here. And at some point I was kind of food and I looked out and like there was kids on roller skates and the hula hoops and the parents were all laughing, and I was up on stage singing, and I was like, wait, this is this is affecting people. This is really fun,

this is really affecting people. I can just see myself up there. I just started shaking. It's like doing food. Oh rude. And I just I went I go straight back there whenever I hear that song. That's funny. Yah. And as a musician, like, what has been your what's been your best moment as as a fan of music when you've been in the audience and feeling you know, that spark in that fire in the room. Mm hmm. It wasn't that long ago that I saw an artist named a Neus Mitchell familiar with her at all I

think I know that name. It's really good. She did, Um she did this kind of contemporary telling of the story of your ID. It's and Orpheus, but she did as a folk opera with like Audie d Franco and Greg Brown and um, gosh, what's the guy from bon I Just yeah, dude, Yeah, she put together all those different folks and and created this modern contemporary telling of

it and it's so beautiful. But anyhow, I saw her performing live and she's just got this way about how she she just loses herself and and and it's like she's trying to shake off these words that she just has to say. Um. Yeah, that's the that's the most recent times in the audience. I mean, she's just she's really breathtaking the way she would just flip the words out and try to Yeah, it was almost like she was trying to shake off the emotion and when she shook it off, it ended up all over you in

the audience. That's awesome. It's kind of like galli or it's very much like Gallagher. I love hearing that is that, you know, as a music fan, to know that you can still go out there as a musician and you're not jaded or cynegal and yeah you can still get lost like that, Oh, get super lost in it. I mean right now. The most overwhelming sound that I hear, of course is an orchestra, because I spent a lot

of years playing in them. And then I also think they're so um special now because we have so few of them that are playing at super high levels, because so many orchestras have closed down, and um, I think that's a really interesting thing because orchestras ask you to change your social habit at least for us young folks. When's the last time you went and saw an orchestra, either of you? Well? Mine was actually my one of

my best stories from seeing alive. I saw Beethoven's Night that Carnegie Hall and uh, the oh de joy thing, Like literally I was sitting there crying like a little baby. But I think that's probably the last one I saw that when the dudes come in. Yeah, actually I saw The Decembrist a couple of years ago with the Land Symphony Orchestra, which is pretty great. Yeah, a couple of years ago and as banded with the orchestra. What about

the orchestra? It's been a while and it so yeah, and I think it's because orchestras ask us to change our social habits so much to come see them, you know what I mean for us young folks, like we don't see shows in concert halls and pay sixty bucks to do it, and we're a time and we're a

time sitting seats. I don't have drinks, you know, like and and so even though it's one of the most um incredible sounds that we create as humans, I mean, it's it's really powerful sound when you get a full orchestra there plan as you as you know from your experience, but we still don't do it because it's so outside of our zone. And I wonder you know what that means as we become more and more visually based, like what does music mean to us? And how does it

really affect us? And and how as musicians can we uh still affect people in the same way regardless of an environment. And that's a that's the biggest challenge facing us right now because most you know, most of our music is being consumed at MP three quality through people's you know, phones, streaming or watching an MP three video or YouTube video something. So you know, as a musician, I'm looking for the best way to affect people, uh, and the best way to convey my song or art

or whatever you want to call it. And nowadays it's just it just gets consumed so many different ways, and you don't you have no idea how people are gonna resonate with it, if they're going to resonate with it. So the best shot that you got at it is writing something that's really genuine to you as an artist and then performing it in a really passionate, genuine way.

And in some ways that harkens back to how we got all started with this thing, which was a bunch of people sitting around playing music, not professional musicians, playing two audiences and um, and that's I mean, that's what people originally were willing to start paying for. Yes, that emotion, that kind of those those endorphins hit and yeah, all that stuff that that emotion, that physical effect on your body. Yeah, I've seen some of the best stuff I've seen has

been like in the subways of New York. You know, I saw Gota do uh wild Horses by the Rolling Stones, just by himself acoustically, and no one was paying attention, And it was one of the most awesome like versions of that song I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, and no one was paying attention. Help for you, I think a couple of people were, but yeah, yeah, well,

I mean that's just it is. How do you get this kind of goes back to when we just first started talking, is how do you get folks to pay attention and get them to realize that there's their stuff here to be felt and had without whatever using musical devices that water everything down where you're trying to use repetition and loudness and big crazy sounds to get their attention, and you know, you make sure not to leave any spaces in the song because Heaven forbid you lose their

attention or they not give it to you. Um you know. So that I think that's one of the challenges for us is as musicians, as we um march on into this technology technology ages, not letting the huge pool that we're swimming in from an industry standpoint where we're trying to compete for attention or CD sales, whatever you wanna call it, um affect how we actually make our music. Right, you still need to make something that is genuine to

yourself otherwise you're not gonna be happy playing it. And then if you're not happy playing you have got zero shot at affecting people emotionally. If you don't affect people emotionally, then they're not going to come to your shows. And that's really all that we got these days. If you gonna want to be in a professional musician, been solely doing things right. When's the album coming out? The new record Halfway Man's come out September sept Where it's the

best place to buy it? Um, iTunes is a great place. Um these days, you can get it pretty much anywhere, but iTunes is a fine place. And you're on tour right now. Yeah, on tour. We're on tour in our sweet tour van Tammy as well as on bicycle. All right, this will be coming out probably close to the release date of the CD, so you are going to be on tour this fall as well. Yeah. Absolutely, I'll be all over the country riding your bike two shows at times.

At times we'll be riding our bike. Most times we'll be in our tour van and we'll be hitting all the towns in this country. Ben Silly dot Com. Anything else, I'm good, Ben, Thanks for coming you were like the best interview, like literally that was that was a little bit cyclical. You know, I had to I had to work my way around some of those answers. You elevate it to my friend, but you know good. That's the great thing about this show is that you all let it,

let it comes, not try to design it's existence. We would fail. I appreciate that. But traditional wrap up. If you want to get in touch with me and Chuck and Ben Silly, we can pass things along to him. You can tweet to us at s Why SKA podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. Killing Young Today that out and feel this on the high. Don't tell me to slow down. You see I grew up this week, tee.

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