Music and the Human Brain

While there has been a lot of research on the nature of the human brain in recent years–primarily due to MRI and other new methods of getting images from within the body–I haven’t seen much on how music affects us. There was something about heartbeat and drums – which has been well known for a very long time although not ‘scientifically proven”. Science also is saying that music affects all parts of the brain in contrast to most human activities that tend to affect specialized areas. They also believe that some music can aid infant development and can help students learn.

“Music researchers are finding correlations between music making and some of the deepest workings of the human brain. Research has linked active music making with increased language discrimination and development, math ability, improved school grades, better-adjusted social behavior, and improvements in “spatial-temporal reasoning,” – a cornerstone for problem solving.” http://www.amc-music.com/musicmaking/thebrain.htm

What I’m not finding is any papers on effects on brain, nervous system and emotions – preferably divided between pre- and early-teens, later teens and adults as well as males and females. I have the strong impression that music affects men and women differently. Thinking back over a lifetime of listening to music chosen by a male and conversation about music with males, it seems to me that they have a more intellectual approach to it, that the words are very important to them and that moving to the music is less important (essential) to them then it is to women.

It’s clear when following the Beatles music that while they began addressing young teens their music developed in a way that began to really catch the attention of older teens, young adult and even the occasional unprejudiced grownup. It’s also clear that girls do react differently then boys of comparable ages to being present at a Beatles performance. I am NOT saying that the boys are less enthusiastic, film clips in Anthology make it clear that there are a lot of males (and grown-ups) present and that they are thoroughly enjoying it, just differently.

We’ll have to wait for more research into the questions I’ve raised here and in my last post. I’ve sort of tacked on my thoughts about music, age and gender, but it’s not going to fit anywhere else. I’m sure that some of my readers will disagree and I’d like to encourage them to comment. While wiring people up to fancy machinery and sticking their heads into a MRI (or other) scanner provides a lot of solid information; I’m personally rather fond of personal accounts and other such informal data even though science doesn’t like to trust folks to have accurate perceptions about themselves.

Music and Magic

Singing harmony can be very straightforward. Handel’s Messiah – which I’m sure you could hear any night around Christmas week in every small city in the US, is so popular simply because it’s great fun to sing and it isn’t difficult to get a hundred or so reasonably experienced church choir members together for a couple practices and a performance or two. The vocal harmonies in the Messiah and in most church music are very easy to sing and very regular. Almost anyone who sings at all can easily do them right. Other types of musical harmonies, much old folk music for instance, are not as easy to sing and require more practice and more experienced singers. On a standard keyboard if you strike 3 keys, leaving 2 black or white keys between, you will get a pleasant minor harmony.  If you strike 3 keys, leaving 3 black or white keys between, you will get a pleasant major harmony.  By striking 2 keys side-by-side you will get a dissonance, a sound that is less pleasant to the ear.

There are a great many chords and therefore vocal harmonies. Actually there are more vocal harmonies as the human voice can hit notes between the keys. (Most stringed instruments, some brass, some wind are also able to do this although some would have to be specially tuned. Even pianos and other keyboard instruments can, with some trouble, be adapted to do this.  An agreement on a specific scale allows quite different instruments to play together and makes written music possible.) Keys are divided into Major, which are most easily recognized as those used in hymns, marches and the like, and Minor, which are found in folk music and sad songs. Chords are further divided into a number of “sets” that go well together such as C Major or B Flat Minor. Most songs are based on one of these sets of chords. One last word, accidentals are notes that vary from the standard ones for a certain chord. [For more detailed information on these subjects I suggest you start with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Musical_terminology. ]

Why am I putting you through all this weird technical stuff? Because the Beatles frequently do some odd things with their vocal harmony. Their harmonies, particularly in the first two years of their fame, were based on those of the Everly Brothers who were born in the mountains of East Tennessee and whose harmonies were based on songs that had originally been sung to a different scale from that common today. Of course, to play their songs on modern instruments they had to be brought into our scale and this tends to put them into a Minor key. In addition to the Everly’s cross-over pop-from-Country, the Beatles loved the harmonies used by the “girl groups” recording primarily for Motown.

I don’t have a music library that would allow me to listen to several of the girl groups or even the Everly’s but my memory is that for the most part the harmonies for both were kept pretty much within the usual chord structure. The Beatles couldn’t resist giving their own harmonies a bit of a tweak. Listen closely to the harmony in Love Me Do, hear the chord at “please” (love me do) because one of the three voices is not only singing an accidental but a note that is a dissonance. Dissonance is not particularly rare in music but it certainly was rare in the sort of rock/pop the Beatles were singing at that time. This dissonance gives a signature sound of the Beatles at that time and is repeated in many of the songs. It acts like highlighting text to emphasize the word and the note.

Now that I’ve covered music I need to talk about magic for a paragraph or two. Magic is one of those words that doesn’t define easily and I really only used it for shock value. Part of the religious lore, and healing lore as well, of India is a symbolic construct called the Chakra system.* It identifies various energy “nodes” in the human body reaching from the top of the head to the crotch. Each node handles energy of a particular sort that affects emotion, health, and energy flow in the body in general.

I attended a weekend workshop some years ago led by professional musicians in which we studied, among other musical things, the effect of music on the charkas and therefore one of the ways music can affect our thoughts and emotions. We also worked individually with a musician to identify the note that seemed to resonate each chakra for us personally. Unsurprisingly, deep, bass notes tend to resonate with the base chakra at the groin and as the Chakra node points move up the body, the tones resonating with each tend to be higher in pitch.

One of these is called the throat chakra; “related to communication and creativity. Here we experience the world symbolically through vibration, such as the vibration of sound representing language.” I’m certainly not a young girl but I must say that the note sung at that point in the song definitely can be felt in my throat and the dissonance may well help release the particular scream you hear in their early appearances. I suspect that if I heard it live even at my age I’d have the urge to vocalize, i.e. scream.

Once the screaming started, well, the screaming started. With the assiduous help from the newspapers, within days every girl knew that she was SUPPOSED to scream at a Beatles performance. In another post I will write about Beatlemania that manifested more widely then just at concerts and deserves separate coverage.

* For more information on chakras, I suggest you begin at http://www.sacredcenters.com/chakras.html partly because that’s the particular interpretation we used in the workshop.