Why do we like a song? When do we decide that we like a song? Why is one person’s favourite music another person’s hell and vice versa?
These are simple questions with very complicated answers. They are complicated because their roots lie in complex problems of neuroscience, and we are just beginning to uncover some of the mysteries. A great book on this topic is This is What It Sounds Like by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas. Susan Rogers is a professor in Music Production and Engineering (MP&E) department at the Berklee College of Music. Ogi Ogas is a computational neuroscientist and writer.
Prof. Rogers is too modest about her accomplishments that are described in a few pages and yet they are as interesting as the main topic of the book. Let me elaborate.
The book starts with a Led Zeppelin concert at the Los Angeles Forum. (Is there a better way of starting a book on music?) Prof. Rogers says, “I can identify the exact moment when my journey to becoming a professional music listener began.” Young Susan, 20, is enjoying the concert with her friends. Concert approaches halfway mark and the band still has not performed Kashmir and Stairway to Heaven but Susan has to leave. Susan’s mother died when she was 14. She dropped out of high school at 17 and married an older boyfriend in the hope of gaining security. Her husband had imposed an arbitrary curfew of ten-thirty p.m. because he hated her love of music. As Susan leaves the arena, with Jimmy Page launching into the acoustic arpeggios that open “Bron-Y-Aur Stomp”, she vows to herself,
One day I will return to the Forum and mix live sound for an amazing band.
Susan was a worker stitching heart valves on a biomedical assembly line at the time. She had no background in sound engineering. Yet, true to her vow, she divorced her husband, moved to Hollywood and started working on her dream. Fast forward a decade, Susan is mixing sound at the same venue and the album is Purple Rain by Prince. Later, she also worked as record producer with Barenaked Ladies and David Byrne among others.
If you think this story is fantastic, there’s more. After making successful records as a producer, Susan began to wonder if neuroscience could enhance her understanding of music and answer the question as to why music has meant so much to her all her life. So in her mid-forties, she enrolled as a college freshman at the University of Minnesota. She graduated with a dual major in experimental psychology and neuroscience. Later, she earned her PhD at McGill University under Daniel Levitin (author of This Is Your Brain on Music) and world-renowned psychoacoustician Stephen McAdams.
On my wish list is a memoir by Prof. Rogers of her remarkable life, the challenges she faced and how she overcame them. And then I want a movie based on the book. Obvious choice for the lead role would be Cate Blanchett.
Now a detour and apologies for it. There was a time, a couple of years back, when I wrote a book review of 1000 words, precise and to the point, like a good student turning in a book report for his homework assignment. A good example is here. I cannot do it anymore. All sorts of connections, off-shoots, turnings, and roundabouts come in, along with silly jokes. I have completely gone over to the dark side.
For the same reason, I cannot write on a predetermined topic; if I try, the article is uninteresting. I don’t know how writers produce amazing text by staring at the blank screen.
As a kid I was thrilled when I received a fully loaded camera to shoot anything I liked. I finished the role in our garden, shooting insects and butterflies and my love for photography began. Then one day I saw a photo of a film director in a magazine, looking through a frame made by his hands in front of his face. I finally understood what that gesture meant and I wanted to be a film director. As I grew older, I realised that the job involved much more than just looking through the frame and I could never do it.
In fact, it is one of the most difficult jobs where you have to worry about everything – from script, locations, and actors to actual shooting and post-production and yet make great art while doing it. That’s why I have the greatest respect for film directors.
That did not stop me from daydreaming. So whenever I read a novel, I cast suitable actors in lead roles and then I hear the dialogues in their voices in my head as I read further. It happens automatically.
Here’s the opening scene of the biopic of Susan Rogers that I play in my head.
Camera zooms on an office door showing name plate of Prof. Susan Rogers. Door opens and Susan (Cate Blanchett) walks out. Camera follows. Outside, it’s evening with the sun just about to set. Susan goes to car park, gets her car out and drives home. Next shot is Susan’s close up, with the sun on her face. She turns on the radio and a Led Zeppelin song comes along. Camera closes in on her face that shows many emotions – nostalgia, tinge of sadness mixed with a hint of accomplishment.
CUT to Led Zeppelin concert. Camera pans over Robert Plant and Jimmy Page singing “Going to California.” Crowd is going berserk. Camera pans over the audience a bit, and finally settles on young Susan, dancing with her friends.
Very clichéd, I know, but I can’t help it. As soon as I finished reading the book, the image of Cate Blanchett driving home with the sun on her face came to my mind and I cannot seem to erase it.
I realise that people may assume that I am demented if I start answering everyday questions truthfully. (Spoiler alert: some of them already think so).
“What are you reading?”
“It’s an amazing book on neuroscience of music.”
“Cool.”
“And I was thinking of casting Cate Blanchett for the biopic…”
“WHAT??”
“Except that she may not be keen to do another music related movie after Tár..”
“You know you sound completely mental, right?”
*shrugs*
“Why can’t you just read the book like a normal person?”
*shrugs again*
Fortunately, daydreaming has its adavantages and it’s closely related to music listening, as the authors explain in detail. About a decade ago, scientists uncovered a previously unidentified brain network that the authors call the mind-wandering network. So when a student is thinking about yesterday’s cricket match instead of focusing on the maths class, his mind-wandering network is active. Previously, scientists thought that this network switches on and off as we focus on a task and stop daydreaming. This is only partially true. The network is also active when we are trying to come up with creative ideas.
Now here’s the kicker. The brain treats listening to music as a special form of daydreaming. When you are listening to your favourite record, your mind-wandering network lights up like it’s Diwali. Now since you daydream about your deepest desires and dreams, your favourite music is in turn connected with those dreams. So when you’re listening to your favourite song, you activate that part of your mind that fuels the deepest currents of your identity.
After reading this, I realised why people defend their favourite music with such vehemence. It is a part of their deepest identity.
To answer the question of why we like a particular type of music, the authors propose that our listening profiles are defined by seven dimensions. Authenticity, realism, and novelty are known as aesthetic dimensions while melody, lyrics, rhythm, and timbre are known as musical dimensions. Each of us has a sweet spot along each of these dimensions and whenever a song or a composition matches one or more of these sweet spots, our brain generates dopamine as a reward.
Novelty is a relative concept. The authors give example of Indian ragas that use microtunings (musical notes that fall between the notes of adjacent black and white keys on a piano). While these may sound novel to western ears, Indians are well acquainted with them.
My own sweet spot on the novelty dimension is pretty high.
I recently discovered that Spotify has a great collection of folk songs from many parts of the world so I am listening to everything from the Polish Mazurka to Spanish folklore. Folk songs have great beats and melody and they talk about real things – the farms and the crops, the wildlife, going fishing in the sea and selling the fish in the market. In one such song, even chants and hollers of the fishmongers can be heard in background. The raw authenticity of these compositions cannot help but shine through.
In his 2007 book Music, Language, and the Brain, renowned music researcher Aniruddh Patel wrote, “Humans are the only species to spontaneously synchronise to the beat of music.” Enter Snowball, a cockatoo who loved dancing to songs, his favourite being “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” by The Backstreet Boys. Not only did Snowball correctly identify the rhythm, but his dancing was not prompted by any rewards given by a human, as is the case for cats and dogs performing tricks. Snowball’s dancing is spontaneous. Patel and colleagues did more research on Snowball and found that he adjusted his movements in keeping with the sped up or slowed down rhythm. He also developed a repertoire of fourteen distinct dance moves.
The dimension of realism has acquired particular significance in this age of digitally produced music. Musical tastes range from old recordings played on gramophone to the digitally processed music where you sometimes don’t even hear the singer breathing. Understandably, many Gen Z listeners prefer perfect music with no flaws.
I compare this to the evolution of movies. I grew up in an era where barring few exceptions special effects in movies were not spectacular. That’s why watching Jurassic Park had such a profound effect on me. A real dinosaur on screen was an out-of-the-world experience. Gen Z grew up with dinosaurs, it is impossible to convey this effect to them.
The book goes into great detail on how our brain processes sounds in general and music in particular. The sound impinging on your ear drum goes through many complex networks for processing and analysis. If you are sitting in a cafe and someone starts playing piano, it takes roughly 150 milliseconds for your brain to isolate and identify the sound and decide whether to focus on it or not.
My own experience has been similar. Imagine you are in a crowded place where you can just barely hear a song and you are trying to identify it. As soon as you identify the song, you start hearing it with much more clarity. This is because the brain is now relying on memory and retrieving the data, rather than actively listening to it.
Since the development of language was essential to the survival kit of Homo sapiens, our brain’s audio processing capabilities are very sophisticated. They are also closed linked with emotion-sensitive language circuitry. Music uses the same network and that is why as an art form music activates our mind-wandering network more easily than any other art.
A special note about reading this book. Normally, we try to keep our smartphones away if we want to concentrate on a book. For this book you will need your smartphone. The authors provide numerous examples of songs and compositions and you are supposed to listen to them while reading. All songs in the book can be collectively found at the book website.
So for the last two weeks, I have been on a musical journey like never before. I have listened to so many songs across genres, ranging from heavy metal to Brazilian classics; it’s been a blast.
One particular incidence mentioned in the book made me pause and question the whole topic of art appreciation. There was a patient called Mr. B suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. His surgeons decided that he would benefit from deep-brain stimulation of nucleus accumbens. This is the part of the brain that rewards us when we listen to our favourite music. They implanted electrodes in Mr. B’s brain and he was cured, living a normal life. However, there was a curious side effect. Before the surgery, Mr. B was a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Afterwards, he became a huge fan of Johnny Cash. When the batteries of the implant ran down, so did Mr. B’s love for Johnny Cash but as soon as they were recharged, he went back to being a die-hard Johnny Cash fan.
The authors end the book with experiences of listeners speaking about their favourite record, where they heard it first and why they like it. So I want to end this article in a similar way.
When I joined for PhD, I did not have a scholarship so I used to teach physics in a college to support myself. I bought this record from my first paycheque. (No greater feeling than earning your first paycheque!) Later on I received fellowship from the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India, for which I am deeply grateful.
The history of Indian classical music is fascinating. While the basic principles go as far back as 2nd-4th century CE, a major diversion occurred around 12th century when it got divided into southern and northern systems. This composition is in Raga Bairagi Bhairav that was first introduced by Pt. Ravi Shankar. Singer is Pt. Jasraj, one of the stalwarts of Indian classical music.
I have been listening to this record for 20+ years and it still has the same effect on me. It’s a thirty minutes record with a slow paced melodic composition for the first twenty-five minutes (vilambit) and a fast paced composition for the last five minutes (drut). There is no digital processing; it’s almost like listening to recording of a live convert.
Whenever I listen to it for 15+ minutes, it feels as if I am in a state of trance. I am still conscious of the surroundings and can act fast if there is an emergency. Also, like hypnosis, it does not happen without my consent. So if anyone else plays the composition and I need to focus elsewhere, I can. I have no words to describe this state. The closest description that I could find was the last sentence of Haruki Murakami’s magnum opus The Wind-up Bird Chronicle,
In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.
This is not a full description but it just about begins to describe it. So, since I am learning Japanese anyway, one of my side-goals is to find suitable words to describe such an experience mainly because Japanese has a great vocabulary for such hard-to-describe experiences.
I estimate that it will take me about 20 years to do that. Either way, expect a post on this topic sometime in 2043!
