Three a week: Music

If your auditory system works properly, you’ve heard what humans like to call “music”. Three questions:

Question 1: What in the world is music?

Don’t gloss over that question. Take 5 minutes out of your day to think about such a thing. We take this oddity for granted almost 100% of the time, and yet we struggle to define it. Sound waves attacking our ears at regular intervals, is that it? Is a police siren music? Why not? Does there have to be some kind of story behind the music, some intent? It’s worth thinking about.

Question 2: Why does music affect humans so deeply?

How absurd is it that sound waves can cause a human to cry? Strings rub against strings, and that results in tears? What? What kind of an animal are we? I want to know the relationship between rationality (in the human brain) and music. It doesn’t seem like Pachelbel’s Canon makes apes deeply reflect on their lives. I doubt it is wise to immediately disregard such ridiculous novelty as an accidental by-product of evolution. Indeed, there is significant information loss when music is solely reduced to sound waves releasing chemicals in the brain.

 Question 3: Different instruments, different feelings. What?

Why in the world does a tuba sound more playful than a french horn? Why does the violin so effectively play on the heartstrings (pun intended), while trumpet fanfare arouses such different emotions? Saxophone, piano, clarinet, drums. All of these instruments have a different feel to them. What the heck does that mean? The pitch, melody, and rhythm can be the same, but the emotions aroused can be completely different, nevermind the complexity added once you add human voices to the orchestra. Indeed, Beethoven’s 5th feels quite different on a shredding electric guitar.

How silly is it that in this corner of the universe (in contrast to the exploding stars and colliding planets throughout the rest of the universe) there are little self-aware blobs of matter who walk around crying at string quartets. Talk about absurd.