Module Three Lesson One: How Music Creates Emotion: An Essential Guide For Singers
Go Deeper/Links:
Video:
The Music Instinct: Science and Song with Bobby McFerrin and Daniel Levitin
How Music Works:
Jacob Collier Lesson on Harmony
Transcription
What was your number one answer for the quiz? Was it emotion?
If it was, you’re not alone. In one study, several hundred young men and women were asked why they felt music was important in their lives. 70% of them said it was because music makes them feel something.
So yes. Music creates emotion. It moves us. But how?
One place we can find some answers is in the human brain. If you hadn’t already noticed, I’m a little bit of a neuroscience geek, so you’ll have to excuse me if I go this route. But I think you’ll find that it’s fascinating to take a look at music through this lens.
Have you ever listened to a piece of music and instantly been brought to tears? That’s your limbic system in action.
The Limbic System
Music can bring us to tears not because we think it’s sad, but because we feel that it’s sad. The music we listen to bypasses our cerebral cortex (our thinking brain) and heads straight to the emotional processing of the limbic system.
The limbic system also helps us form memories. Musical memories are incredibly durable and powerful. Hearing music from your formative years, in particular, can take you right back to the time and place where you first experienced them.
Music Moves Us
Music doesn’t just move us emotionally. It also moves us physically by activating the cerebellum and motor cortex.
Do you know what an fMRI machine is? fMRI stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. An fMRI machine measures blood flow in the brain. That blood flow appears as colored light. So when people say things like, music lights up the cerebellum and motor cortex, that’s what they’re referring to.
So back to the cerebellum and motor cortex.
Both of these areas are involved in physical movement, but they’re also involved in music. Scientists have put musicians in fMRI machines and given them a small keyboard to play. The motor cortex lights up because there’s physical movement in the fingers. But when the scientists took the keyboard away and asked the musician to imagine playing it, the same areas in the brain lit up.
You don’t even have to play an instrument or sing. Just imagining yourself doing those things lights up these areas of the brain. Fascinating, right! We’ll talk more about your imagination and how to use it for practicing in the next module of this course.
Pattern Recognition
We are pattern recognition machines. Our brains recognize patterns. They like to be rewarded when a pattern is confirmed and surprised when a pattern is varied. The prefrontal cortex is where pattern recognition takes place in our brains.
Here’s a song that was written by Antonio Carlos Jobim that’s a perfect example of a pattern being established and then varied. It’s called One Note Samba.
This is just a little samba
Built upon a single note
Other notes are bound to follow
But the root is still that note
Now this new note is the consequence
Of the one we’ve just been through
As I’m bound to be
The unavoidable consequence of you
Pattern recognition is so important in music. People feel comfortable when they recognize a pattern. But if the pattern never varies, they get too comfortable. Even bored. Variation creates interest and surprise. And keeps your audience on their toes!
Entrains Our Brain
Music also entrains our brains.
Have you ever felt like you were on the same “wavelength” as the people around you at a concert or when you play music with other musicians?
Well, you are. When we listen to or play music with each other, it entrains our brains and bodies. This form of synchronization is one of the ways that music builds connection and community between people.
Stimulates the Brain’s Reward System
Music is also a powerful motivator because it stimulates our brain’s reward system.
Music Activates…
...similar neural reward systems as those stimulated by food, sex, and drugs.
In one study, researchers had participants listen to the music of their choice in a PET scanner so they could measure their brain activity.
When listening to the music they’d chosen, they experienced a rush of dopamine near the frontal striatum, a brain region associated with anticipating rewards. This rush was followed by a flood of dopamine in the rear striatum, the brain’s pleasure center, just before they felt enjoyable chills in response to the music. This cascade of brain chemicals makes you feel like you’re craving the next note, which researchers say could be why music lovers come back for more.
The part of the brain that lights up for music, sex, drugs, and food, also lights up when people experience a spiritual feeling. So, let’s add that to the list of things that music activates.
How Does Music Move Us?
So how does music move us?
Music is medicine, and the prescription is different for everyone. Think back to the songs you listed on your musical values sheet. Why do those songs make you feel the way you do when you listen to them? How do you use them to change your mood? To motivate you when you feel tired? Or help you process grief or sadness?
Author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin, has done some fascinating research around how music moves us. In this next video, he shares what he’s discovered. Watching it will give you some insights into how you communicate emotion through the songs you sing.
Before you watch the video, let me introduce you to Daniel Levitin.
I met Daniel when I was creating a show called Brain Chemistry For Lovers — a combination concert, cabaret, and science lecture, that used music, film, and the latest discoveries in neuroscience to explore one of the most universal of all human emotions — Romantic Love.
While researching the show, a friend introduced me to Daniel, and we had dinner before he gave a lecture on music and the brain. Talking with him was fascinating, and his lecture sent me down a whole new rabbit-hole of discovery.
I highly recommend Daniel’s books, This Is Your Brain On Music and The World in Six Songs, and will leave links to them in the notes for this lesson.
Levitin’s connected to music through more than neuroscience. Before his academic career, he worked as a producer and sound designer on albums by Blue Öyster Cult, Chris Isaak, and Joe Satriani. He was also a consultant to Steely Dan and Stevie Wonder and worked as a recording engineer for Santana and The Grateful Dead.
He knows his stuff!
So here’s the video:
It’s All In The Timing Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJMwWX8WX3o&feature=youtu.be
Fascinating, right?
Students ask, what makes a musical performance go from good to great? I think Daniel Levitin’s research points to one of the answers. The nuance in your performance — how you get into and out of notes, your phrasing, and dynamics — all create measurable feeling.
It can seem complicated. But not when you take it apart and look at each piece of the puzzle.
So, let’s do that now.
The Anatomy of Music or How Music Works
Music has three elements: Rhythm, Melody, and Harmony.
Rhythm
When you want to slow down - for instance, to do some yoga - you listen to slow music. When you want to clean the house, and you’re flagging, you play something to rev your engines.
Melody
Melody is like the pitch in speech. We hear the vowels and consonants, but its the intonation - the rising and falling of the pitch in a sentence that gives the words emotional meaning.
If I just talk in one pitch like this — I sound like a robot. I can say I love you, and you won’t believe me because there’s no detectable emotion in how I’m saying these words.
But when I say, I love you, or I love you, or I love you! Each sentence takes on different shades of meaning because of the tone and emphasis I’m using on each word.
Harmony
Harmony is the psychology behind the melody. It provides context. Change the context - change the emotion. Here’s an example of a song whose emotional content changes dramatically when it’s reharmonized.
MUSIC EXAMPLE: Get Happy - Judy Garland
MUSIC EXAMPLE: Get Happy Tierney Sutton
Crazy how different those two interpretations are! Change the tempo and chords, and the song communicates a totally different feeling.
In this lesson, you’ve learned how music moves us - both literally and figuratively. But a song is more than just music. Add lyrics to the mix, and you get a powerful vehicle for communicating.
In the next lesson, we’ll take a look at the anatomy of a song, and you’ll learn how to use lyrics to create an emotional mood.
