Ologies with Alie Ward - BONUS EPISODE Creating Music with Jarrett Sleeper and David Bashwiner

Episode Date: June 28, 2026

The promised follow up bonus episode to our biomusicology episode with theoretical, neuro- and biomusicologist Dr David Bashwiner. This one is guest hosted by Podmother Jarrett Sleeper and we steer the discussion more toward the process of creating music, where creativity comes from, the relationship between theory, technique, and creativity, how to unleash or access one’s own creativity, synthesizers, whether new sounds are possible, emulation vs simulation, music as it exists in nature, whether or not animals use instruments, why we know the instinctively the difference between purring and growling, and perhaps a bit about the effects of drugs on mixing? Visit Dr. Bashwiner’s website and follow him on Google Scholar You can find Jarrett on Instagram and Bandcamp A donation went to Gaza Hand of Salvation Initiative More episode sources and links Other episodes you may enjoy: Genocidology (CRIMES OF ATROCITY), Mnemonology (MEMORY), Eudemonology (HAPPINESS), Molecular Neurobiology (BRAIN CHEMICALS), Salugenology (WHY HUMANS REQUIRE HOBBIES), Ornithology (BIRDS), Mantodeology (PRAYING MANTISES), Primatology (APES & MONKEYS), Misophonology (DISTRACTING SOUND & NOISE RAGE), Attention-Deficit Neuropsychology (ADHD), Funology (YES, FUN) 400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topic Smologies (short, classroom-safe) episodes Sponsors of Ologies Transcripts and bleeped episodes Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes! Follow Ologies on Instagram and Bluesky Follow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTok Editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake Chaffee Managing Director: Susan Hale Scheduling Producer: Noel Dilworth Transcripts by Aveline Malek  Website by Kelly R. Dwyer Theme song by Nick Thorburn Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Oh, hey, it's your neighbor who's doing throwing knives in the backyard in the middle of the day again. What's his deal anyway? I think his wife has a podcast or something. Jared's Sleeper here. That's right. It's your pod mother. And I'm here with a bonus episode. It's like a little DVD extra, a special feature, a companion piece to the bio-musicology episode that went up earlier this weekend.

Yeah, did we say it would go up Friday and now it's Saturday night? Sure. But who's really keeping track of stuff like that? Allie invited me to sit in and ask some more questions of the incredible guest, Dr. David Bashwinner. She said it's because I make music sometimes, and she thought it might be interesting to have someone who sometimes does that ask some questions. And I thought, well, I'm so honored that you asked me to do that. Sure, I'd love to. Also, you know what's so crazy after the interview, Dr. Bashwinter and I realized I went to a whole bunch of grade school with his little brother.

Isn't that so weird? Isn't the world so small and weird? Spooky stuff. And that's just one of the sorts of things we talk about, spooky stuff, on this very bonus episode, which means it's more raw than usual and doesn't have any asides or patron questions or anything like that. But hopefully you will enjoy it anyway and come along with us as we talk about a whole bunch more bio-musicology stuff like the weird experience of creation, the weird spooky experience

of creation, where creativity may come from. from whether or not animals use instruments, whether or not the 12-note scale exists in nature amongst the animals, synthesizers. Why we instinctively know the difference between purring and growling and more with biomusicologist Dr. David Bashwinner. I'm very excited.

I'm very honored to be allowed to do this. This is fun. I have a lot of because I can't believe I got to meet both of you in a single day. Well, this is so funny because this is so funny Because this happened a little bit, when I do get to tag along in Ali's interviews, I always feel like I get to be, like, in the ask not smart questions thing, I get to ask the really dumb ones, you know? I really go into the conspiracy realm with the nuclear physicist and stuff. And I ask, like, did the aliens teach us this? Tell me the truth.

You know, whatever. But so I'm really excited about this. Okay, I'm going to try to keep it to that realm of creation of music because I find that process very mysterious. and mystical. Okay, one, here, I'll start with this one. My experience of creation, at least when I think it is good, is that it comes from somewhere else rather than from myself. That is a channeling feeling that happens.

And sometimes when I'm trying to make it from myself or so, it's very frustrating. It doesn't happen. It doesn't come. So I'm curious if there is any kind of, I loved what you said at the end of the interview about this unifying feeling, this like meta being that is created by music.

So is there anything in your field of study that speaks to this experience of inspiration or it coming from elsewhere, the way music sometimes flows and sometimes won't come at all? I mean, yes. Yeah, one of the first papers I did in neuroscience was like, it ended up being about the default mode network,

which you guys have talked about sometimes. Because like that somehow associated with creativity and so like the way it's defined is like in the, 90s, it's Reichel. I can't remember Reichel's first name, but he has the first paper, I think, on the default mode network, and maybe that was 2001. But leading up to that, you know, he and other researchers would be like, it's weird. We give someone a task, and we, you know, we see certain things light up, and then we tell them to just look at the cross at the center of the screen when there's no task. And it's not like every, the brain's just going to sleep or doing less stuff. It's like

doing something totally different. So there's certain regions that are more active when you, you're not doing anything, then when you're doing the thing. For some reason, like, default mode network gets, like, I don't know. It just, like, has gotten, like, a little warped about what it means in, like, popular sense. So once researchers, like my colleague Rex Young has done a lot of work on this, and when you get people in the scanner who are being creative, who are doing divergent thinking, for instance, like, tell me all the things you could do with a cactus. When you're thinking of those things or people who do that better than others,

there seems to be a little bit more activity in the default mode network. The default mode network is connected with your memory, but it's complex, because sometimes it's about like generating completely new thoughts that are not memory-based, but sometimes it might be, maybe you can't do that without your memory in some way. Yeah, that actually kind of does this little question I had about instruments and just sounds and how they relate to the development of music, and new sounds that like what you were just saying can you make something new that's not iterating off memory maybe probably not but like okay so something i've been fascinated about thinking about modern

music is in some ways it feels like this cool thing happened for a long time like with every development of technology is like electricity you get this electric guitar sound the synthesizer is invented sampling is a thing that becomes possible with like computers and and how those will become repurposed into a new instrument and that sometimes now, it feels like we figured all the sounds out we could make. And now there's iterations and remixing happening with like, I'm going to take this sound of like 60s do-wop and then I'm going to mix in, you know, this weird sampling thing from scratcher or something like that. So I'm wondering, do you think can we make new sounds? Like, are there going to be new instruments? Or like, how

does that impact the creation of music? Are new things under the sun possible or are, are we just reiterating things that have existed since we were banging on rocks? Oh. Okay. I think synthesis, like synthesis is totally new and everything that comes from it. Really? What do you mean? Like in what sense?

Because synthesis, when we say synthesis on a synthesizer, it's literally like creating a vibration, a hurts, a sequence from scratch. And that's basically mimicking what we're doing with instruments. It ends up being really useful to have a keyboard that has. patches already there that can mimic instruments because we like to hear those things. So it's like if you're making a piece with synths, you need to have like your pads all in one place and your monosynths in one place and your bass sounds in one place and your drum sounds in one place.

Like you need to label them that way because that's how our minds create things. But that's very practical. If you just think about like the fact that a synth, like you could start with a sign tone, and then if you just add one more sign tone and do the binaural beats thing I was talking about before, you can just move the number of hertz it's at a tiny bit, and you can just create a rhythm out of it.

If you add in one other thing, and that kind of doesn't really exist just like in nature, certainly not imitating anything. And if you add just one more thing to that, let's say you just add a third oscillator. That's maybe that third oscillator is doing a different rhythm, you now all of a sudden have something that is infinitely complex, even though it might still be really simple,

but it's just three things. Like you can't predict what's going to happen. And it doesn't have anything to do with anything that you've heard before. Well, that's actually so, okay, one thing I always think about is our tendency to separate things into parts. Like one thing I think about like in working out, you're like, I'm doing cardio or I'm doing stretching or I'm doing strength. But when a tiger runs and climbs a tree, it's not thinking about the different things.

And like something you just said is like if I make a sine wave, I'm creating a tone, but then if I adjust something in there, now it's a rhythm. It's a rhythm and a tone. And that in nature, there's really no difference between rhythm section and bass or, you know, it's just animals make it. But there is it our body. If you think about like, like if you go back to the, the reason I like to pay attention to like the various rhythms that are available in the body is because the fact that Delta aligns so perfectly with the tempos that we use suggest like, oh, you know, if you take a piece and you speed it up and you do it faster than Delta, faster than four times a second, uh, da, da, da, da, da, da.

It's not like you can't hear it anymore. It's just like it does no longer functions as a beat. It's just like if you're doing this. Right. You start hearing this as the beat. Yeah. That's like engines. Like, you know, you can hear, you sometimes you can hear like a musicality in like engines of cars.

Like it'll be like sputtering, blah, blah, blah, and then it starts like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like some synthesizers, they make that. They're one of my favorite little catnip to my ears sounds. Using the beats, I interrupt you on the beats. Synthesers, I think, are like, the thing is like anything can be synthesized. Just like with a 3D printer in that sense.

It's like it's fundamentally new synthesizers. And then synthesizers, all the things that you mentioned, I think, like, come off of the fact that synthesizers can do what they do. even if it's sampling, they're still kind of, I don't know, maybe not necessarily doing it with synthesizers,

but at least, I don't know, we can say that those things are related. Yeah. But I personally have a big issue, like in my role in academia, I don't know, when I went to college,

like they, was like, they told us that anything that we'd heard before was stupid. The music we already liked. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And then they're like, you have to, you should write the new music. And then, right, this is more like an academic thing. But in academia, it was just like I just didn't learn anything in college that was actually useful. I just learned how to, I studied, you know, I wrote like new music for 10 years. And at the end, I knew enough about it to be like, oh, yeah, they were wrong.

They were lying to be. But then I'd wasted 10 years and also not learn anything about composition. So, like, a goal in my life is to try to make it so that kids can learn stuff that I think is actually valuable in college about music. And I feel like the focus on the new, it's somehow inseparable from what I see as a problem. Like, okay, so Patricia Bowden, I think it's, I think her name is Patricia. But someone Bowden has a cognitive scientist that has this distinction between P creativity and H creativity. Okay. Okay.

is personal and H is historical. So if you have a kid that's doing a drawing and then they say, look, it's a car, and then you say, that has already been done. Okay. It's not very good. Try again. Like, that's a horrible thing to say to a kid, right? You're like, and it doesn't make any sense

because you're applying H creativity idea to them. What you really need to do for a kid, It's obvious for a kid, you need to be like, whoa, that is so much better than anything you've ever done before. Or you don't even have to say that. You just like, any time they're making something, you're like, that's great. So if you're thinking about yourself as an adult now and you're picking up the guitar for the first time, so, Allie, you're going to do this or maybe ukulele and you write your first song. Like, objectively, your first song, actually probably is going to be pretty interesting.

But, like, you're not even allowed to think about that. you just need to go and write your first song. And then that is going to be momentous, right? It's really important that we all, like all of us are thinking in the P creativity sense, like that is the first song that you wrote. So like you should not compare it to someone else's song. So in college, yeah,

there's this thing of applying always the H creativity thing. You know, it's like, I think it's like logically wrong to, say you should not learn to compose like anyone who's ever composed before, like Beethoven or Bach or Miles Davis or someone like that because it's already been done, that is confusing, like, educational process, which really like needs you to focus on peak creativity, confuses that with age creativity. And there's this idea like you can train people to make each creative things.

But those aren't going to be any good. that's very validating because okay i have this theory i try to i say i just think true art cannot be bad accessing what that truth is maybe more or less difficult for different people but i was going to actually ask you about this because something i see an insecurity from my end is lack of technical ability goes this isn't good enough this isn't new enough this is like so derivative. Even if it feels earnest to me, this sucks. And on the other side, I have some very close friends

who are genius technicians. They have so much knowledge. And they have difficulty. And I always say to them fucking, if I had your ability, I'd be so annoying. I'm already putting my shit online all the time. Why can't you get to your voice?

And so, what advice do you have, what thoughts do you have, or what has worked to I'm going to start on the people who already know shit side first, because I think that's a tougher problem, it seems like, is breaking yourself out of the age creative problem, breaking yourself out of this is how things are supposed to sound, this is the context I'm already in, like getting rid of that and accessing that weird channely personal creativity. How do you do that? Also, are drugs involved?

Yes, and if drugs are involved. Like, they used to have budgets in the 70s for cocaine. no that's the whole what did they say the fader or something the fader operator they had a budget in the line I think it was

the line item yeah yeah but really that was just their coke budget yeah they would hide it also also a drugs impact apparently apocryfully maybe they say

the mixes in the 80s was a coke mix that's why it's so like the higher frequencies are always pushed I think about okay the album presence by Zeppelin

that's like that album is so like I think think they named it that because it's so high frequency. And it's weird to listen to. And Jimmy, that's when Jimmy Page was like really, really, really going through like very serious like opioid, you know, like heroin addiction. And Robert Plann, I think it just injured himself too.

So he wasn't as well. But I'm just guessing that whatever drug was dominant for Jimmy Page at the time, he would be in the studio and then the mixing engineer would be doing stuff. And Jimmy Page would be like, no, no, no, we need more presence. Like more super high frequency. Wow. And then the guy would be like, what are you talking about? You know, like this is way too trebly already.

And Jamie Page would be like, turn up the presence. I want bomb. You know, like I think that's how I got that name. And also that could happen from hearing damage. But I think the way drugs work, like drugs are going to modulate all different aspects of both what you, how you hear and also what you like about how you hear. So, yeah. the story of, I just think it would be super fascinating to go through, let's say, 20th century different artists and if you can track, like, which drugs they're on at different

phases of their career because I think it's, like, so music making is a feedback loop, right? Like, by definition almost, like, when I talk, my brain tunes out my voice. If I sing, huh, my brain is allowing the sound of my voice to interact with the sound. sound I'm making so that I can tune the sound I'm making to the sound of my own voice, which comes a little bit later. If we talk, we have to tune that out. But if we sing, you're like holding a note long enough that you can tune it to itself. And then, you know, when you play with others, you're always like tuning what you're doing to what they're doing. So it's always a feedback loop of motor behavior out, then taking in the sensory consequences of that. And then tuning,

your ongoing motor behavior relative to those things. So drugs of all different sorts are going to, in some sense, either change your hearing or change your motor behavior or change something about like how efficient, right, the timing is of that sensory feedback feeding into your motor apparatus. And it's going to also presumably change what you like. So even if it didn't change the sensory consequences and the motor behavior, it would change your dopamine and endogenous opioid response to whatever you're hearing. So you're going to like different things. You're going to like different ways of responding to other musicians. Yeah. Okay, well, that ties in back to the first question about how to access your creativity. I think maybe part of that even is like, how do you gain confidence

in what you like? You know? Yeah. Okay. So, I mean, one thing is when I start off the year in music theory. For my students, I say, like, music theory can be dangerous. Like, especially for the people who are more creative, it has the ability, if you learn too much music theory ahead of the rate at which you're exploring music and figuring stuff out, then it has the potential to shut down your exploration. So it's better, like, for people who would, like, write songs and composed like I want everyone to be like that but for someone who just wants to play the clarinet like it isn't as dangerous for them they might not ever actually get to the point where they're like they're going to figure that stuff out on their own so it is very good for them to take music theory

but for people who are super creative it's better for them to be ahead of whatever we learn in music theory class in their creative exploration so like I like to think of it as like you're walking around your house at night in the dark or just walking around any with your eyes closed, you have to use all your other senses. You have to like feel things and listen in a different way to feel what you're doing. And like creativity happens when you're like at that place where you don't know what you're doing. Right. And I think that theory is really incredible like as scaffolding to help you understand the stuff that you're already sort of doing to then open up like the next doors in all these ways.

So it's like whatever your learning level is, or knowledge level in, say, music theory, to be creative, you always have to be on the edge, like ahead of it, like being like, like, what is out here? But, you know, I love music theory, and it's not better to not learn theory because if you're just trying to be creative and not learn theory, you really usually get bored of it.

Like you do some stuff for a while and then you just lose interest. I also just get frustrated with lack of theory. Like I'll have some but just or lack of technical knowledge. And this is where some of the fun stuff happens because I'll have a sound in my head and I'm trying to make it and I can't figure out where it is. And then if I go to the YouTube or the music theory books that I have

are eventually kind of, oh, okay, and things start to unlock. And that's very exciting. experience to have new tools to do new things that like help you connect from sounds your hearing or feeling and and making them out in the world. Yes. Is that like, is that like writing versus editing? You know how I mean not, again, not to not to focus on substances, but I think

Hemingway said like write drunk at it's over. But like my editing brain is really different from my writing brain. And if I'm trying to write with my editing brain, it fucking sucks. But if I let myself be weird. and bad writing than I can edit later. Is that kind of like, I wonder with your friends who are really good engineers and stuff, if they're editing as they're writing,

are those different parts of the brain? So give a slightly roundabout answer, but that's exactly the right question. Okay. It's a brilliant question. Okay, so this is another thing about, like, how I teach theory. So there are these exercises,

there's called Species Counterpoint. And like, I tell the students that they are like crossword puzzle exercises. So I give them a melody that's just in whole notes. Like a common one is, um, bum, ba, do do do dum. And they have to write another melody that goes with it, a counterpoint to it. So if that's, um, you can start on this one. They can start on this note. Those are two options.

Um, bum. If they were started on this note, then they can go to, where they can go to yeah anyway there's some other options but they have to follow like these very limiting set of rules to be able to solve a problem and that I think is like it's using your musical logic but you're in a sense just solving a crossword puzzle

and then when you play it it ends up sounding you're like oh it's something beautiful but you're using just logic to do it and then that's like the first species and second species you introduced one more thing that they're allowed to do, third species, fourth species, et cetera. I like teaching creativity in that way because calling it crossword puzzle logic means all they have to do is solve the problem. They're not allowed to say, oh, but I just like this one thing. So that forces them to use this musical logic to solve problems. And along the way, they are learning their ability to use to like the ability to bring music into the mind and

manipulate the relationships of things like you do with grammar like you do when you're solving a crossword puzzle you know like there's a clue and then you have to think of all the possible ways oh you just started doing crossword puzzles yeah uh yeah the you have to think of all the possible meanings that a word has, you also have to think of all the different ways that letters work, like a T can come after an S, but it can't come after a D, that kind of thing. So if you're talking about on an instrument, your fingers can do certain things. And if you're writing just for yourself, let's say playing guitar, then if you're writing for yourself to play it, then you can only do the things that your fingers can do. If you are like imagining a piece,

that you don't have to play yourself. In some sense, you could imagine stuff that your fingers can't do, but everything you study with your fingers is going to help you imagining the thing that you want to do. This species counterpoint idea is almost like developing the fingers of the mind.

And the final part of this, I think is like really, I think it's so beautiful. There's an article by Dietrich and Heider from 2015, maybe. on creativity, and they make this distinction between emulation and simulation. So the example they give is, if you wanted to make a piece of music that sounded like the ocean waves, that would have to be simulation because our minds can't do ocean waves. But if you wanted to make a piece of music that is something like what your fingers can do on a piano,

that's emulation because your motor system can do those things. So with creativity when you're imagining something, like sometimes it's the case like you might like imagine flying or imagine something that you can just envision almost like a third person sort of thing. And that's simulation and we do that. But it's a different kind of creativity where when you're working with the simulation system, the things that your motor system can do, including like your creative motor system.

And so that I like to think of is like, like that scaffolding, like building structures with this syntax of the motor apparatus. And then you get to jazz musicians who to improvise, you have to practice improvising. So what they're doing all day is they're practicing skills and arpeggios and practicing moving from one to the other. They're practicing the use of the, they're building these things into their motor apparatus so that, in the moment of improvisation, they have so much freedom in this emulation sense, where simulation doesn't help you at all in an improvisation scenario. So when we're getting at like, how do you teach creativity and going back to me talking about

my students and why I do the species kind of point thing, and also tying into the H creativity and P creativity, it's like, even though other people have done species kind of point before, I really think it's important to get the students to practice this motor system development of the mind and get them to be able to emulate more and more complex musical textures that gives them this freedom to generate creatively complex musical ideas. And then to reward that in the P creativity sense. And that should give them freedom to make their own. rules and to think things that haven't been thought before in the H creativity sense, but through doing stuff that is peak creativity.

It feels like it made me think of like cooking that like you can make a burger a million times, a million different ways. And as you gain technique and experience with how salt affects what you're doing, how heat, high heat, low heat, how the what you put in the pan in at what time, all those kinds of things, these will all affect how good or bad the burger is. And it's still maybe the same burger. you had when you were a kid, but that doesn't make it any less delicious or meaningful. And also will always be unique to the moment in which you made the burger.

And the time of year you got the ingredients and from where. You know what I mean? And there's nothing lesser or even it feels it's not even more historical. It remains personal despite being a recognizable thing and still very satisfying and very meaningful. Hey, cutting in real quick. because we need to have an ad break. And also because Allie said, I could pick the charity this week.

And that charity is going to be the Gaza Hand of Salvation Initiative. It's one that you may already know about if you've been following Allie in the pod for a while. It's very direct mutual aid to some people who are frankly being brutalized in Gaza. Every time I see them post about the very modest money they've received

and how they've using it to buy basic ingredients to prepare food to just feed people in their community or to replace a solar panel that's been destroyed. It makes me cry. What they're surviving is so goddamn evil. I can't describe it. People are people everywhere in the world. And it's so unbelievably unfair that just because of where we're born, some of us can just order DoorDash and watch TV. And some of us are hoping we aren't starved or bombed just for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's making me emotional as it always does. On top of it, they keep getting booted off Instagram and stuff like that, again, for the terrible crime of existing as Palestinians and talking

about it. Can't have that? Can't have the world know what's still going on over there. Anyway, in a world where it really seems like you can't do fucking anything to stop your tax dollars from funding a genocide, at least you can try to help some people there get some fucking dinner. Details about finding them on chuffed can be found in the show notes. And thank you, Mercedes, who has been the lead on keeping us in contact with them and her continued advocacy. for these people who are just like you and me. As always, if you're interested in learning more about war crimes, humanitarian law, and genocide, check out our genocideology episode with Dr. Dirk, Moses. Okay, back to the show. When you're talking about the emulation simulation, so you said,

if it sounds like the ocean, am I doing emulation or simulation if I sit down and then I go, I want it to sound like when I was sad at the ocean? Well, that, okay, that's still simulation. Okay, I'm going to fill in one little blank in here, which is like I was trying to figure out at the time, like, why is it that composers can, when you're in a dream, your mind can generate music and or like just a semi-dream-like state. A lot of composers say that songwriters, happens to me. It's like, I just know after all these years that if my mind generates something in a dream or a dream like state, then like I just need to write it down or record it, capture it, because that stuff is gold. That is the best stuff.

and if you allow yourself to think, like, in the moment, like, is this any good? Like, it's going to seem not good. You're going to be like, this is stupid. But it always is just brilliant. But it's so wacky to try and figure out how is it? If you try to figure out, like, how can my brain generate something without me? Like, it's both like a silly question, but it's also like, yeah, but how can it? Right.

Like, why can my brain generate a melody better than I can because I am my brain. There's something about this hands-off generative state. And that's this question that you were asking earlier. So the simulation idea is, oh, simulation emulation. I think what I came to from working through all these ideas is that if you go to sleep and wake up with some music in your head, like anything that's simulative, it can't do because somehow that dreaming brain that generates content is doing it through the motor system. So it's doing it.

It's the emulative system that the brain's going to use to generate content. And it's probably something about like acetylcholine levels and maybe like reduce serotonin and noraphenaphrin, something like that that allows the motor apparatus to maybe have, do more less common things. You know, like make more connections that are. less usual that the dream state chemistry allows. Yeah, it seems like there's an aspect of cultivating a trust in your body, like that my body has instincts and abilities. I don't make myself breathe or I don't make my heart beats.

And likewise, you know, you touch the stove, the nervous system of my body before it hits my brain is doing something, telling me don't touch that before I can. And it feels, I wonder if that's part of just a creative problem overall is like a lot of aspects of our society, today, a lot of experiences of whatever, I think, I would say trauma, even if it's like, you know, just emotional difficulties or, you know, the way we're educated, kind of discourages you from trusting your body when I'm hungry, when I'm tired, what my feelings actually are and disconnecting from those. So that becomes very difficult, perhaps, especially if you've layered on top of it, a whole bunch of stuff about the proper and right way to do things, which obviously

comes with a wrong way. Yeah. Then how do you go back to going like, well, I'm just going to go back to trusting my body like when I was a kid just banging on drums, you know? Yeah. I mean, that's beautiful. Like that question, dude, just in itself. Well, okay, I want to dovetail off that a little about nature and music theory stuff. Does nature,

music theory as we learn it, like 12 notes, do animals do 12 notes? Does it exist there? No, but the ratios do. So, hold this for a second. Yes. Oh, yeah, the mono. We saw your YouTube.

Oh, yeah, it's good, right? My dog, Banana. Do you catch the end? She's good. All right. So this is like an instrument that, like, supposedly Pythagoras invented. And I've been doing tons of reading about, like, what we actually know about Pythagoras. But, oh, yeah.

There's a story where he's walking through the woods. He hears the consonances. He hears like, he hears those sounds. And he's like, what is that? And he goes and he follows them. And he ends up at a blacksmith's workshop. And it's people like hammering things. And it turns out there's a tone for each hammer.

So it's like this one is coming from one of the hammers. There's four different hammers. There's like a big guy with a big hammer and a little guy with a little hammer. He switches hands. He switches and the little guy with the big hammer. Anyway, it goes with the hammer, not with the guy. So it's not how they're hitting it. It's the hammer itself.

He weighs the hammers. This part is not scientifically accurate, but this is how the story goes. He weighs them. He figures out they are in the ratio of six. 8 to 9 to 12. The two, so those numbers might not make that much sense right now, but the lowest one

and the highest one are in the 6 to 12 ratio. And he's like, oh, that's an octave, and it's a 6 to 12 ends up being 1 to 2 ratio. So it's like maybe an octave is a 1 to 2 ratio. That's just I guess at this point. But he takes these two

and this is a 6 to 9 and this is a perfect fifth. like you could sing twinkle, twinkle to it so that makes a fifth this guy 8 and 12

also a perfect fifth do da da da da da da da da twinkle twinkle right you can do it there too and that those are both a 2 to 3 ratio so he's like

aha maybe a 2 to 3 ratio is a 5th and you get the same thing with the 4th 2 so 6 to 8 ends up being 3 to 4 ratio and that's a fourth and nine to 12. So that's a story that was used.

It was probably used for like many hundreds of years in oral tradition from the time of Pythagoras, 500 BC to when it was first written down in 200 AD. And then it's like at the beginning of every music theory treat us up to the end of the 1500s. It gets at this idea that when we hear it. two tones, I played these two tones for Allie before. And I was like, this one is going to be half the frequency of this one. And that's weird because long before we could compute frequency, we heard that as consonants. So Pythagoras supposedly invented this instrument to demonstrate these principles. The instrument is just like one long string. So it's called a monocord.

you put a movable bridge in the center and right now it's I have the you know I've measured it's 36 inches wide and so I have the bridge at 18 inches I play one side of the string and then I play the other one it's very quiet but they're unison that's not surprising because the two strings

are the same exact length brilliant idea okay now I'm going to to move the bridge. I've divided the string into three parts. So it's 36 inches, so it's 12 and 24. The 24 side is longer, so it's going to be a lower tone. And the side that is one-third of that.

Anyway. So this ratio of three to two gives a perfect fifth. That's the same numbers that we were talking about before. If you do it, here I have one side of the string is the length of four things to three things. So a four, four to three is a perfect fourth. And if I kept going, I get four to five. Sorry, that sounds. Major third.

If I kept going, five to six as a minor third. So those intervals, let's go back to the animal question. It's like, this recently, in the last 10 years, someone reported that those ratios really are found in some animal songs. It's not as common in animals as it is in human music, but it's not as common in human speech as it is in human music. And the most important thing is, this might take me a second, but, any I'm not doing like I'm using my mouth to filter to mute certain frequencies to make other ones louder but every time I sing the note this one then there are other sounds that go simultaneously those are just present in that sound and the reason why this is b flat is I don't know maybe about a hundred and this is 110 so we'll call this 120 so if this is 120 then that means you get vibrations at 120, 240, 360, 480, etc.

And those give you these notes. 120, 240, 360, 480, etc. So it means every time you hear a pitch with a voice, not just a human voice, but any animal voice, you're getting a collection of tones that are always in those ratios. So when we hear two tones simultaneously, we judge them based on this measure, this ruler-like thing, which is the harmonic series. Like we can hear like, we have names for them, but we hear like, oh, that's an octave, that's a fifth.

And a lot of people want to say that's because we learn it from focalizations. But that almost certainly is not the case because even fish process sound in this way. all vertebrates, if you use vocal cords and you generate a periodicity through it in the tube of the throat and then you shape it with your face, which is what all, at least all tetrapod vertebrates do, you're always getting a harmonic series with every tone you sing. So the way it turns out, what turns out is like the auditory system in vertebrates has evolved with the most important thing is to pay attention to voices. Like other sounds matter, but voices matter the most,

and other sounds don't have redundancy in this way, whereas voices are always structured in this way. So the auditory system has developed to take all tones that it's hearing, try to make sense of them according to, you know, this mathematical relationship, and then allow those specific sounds, which are voices, to drive the brain the most.

So then is music theory similar to other physics or math or wherever it's us identifying patterns and communicate them to ourselves so we can, not to say this is exactly what reality is, but this is the best way we have of understanding reality in a way we can recognize this pattern and this happening of vibration and sound. In a sense, one more thing about Pythagoras

is like the way what he's mostly known for is for saying there's a macrocosm out there there's a microcosm inside and the interface between the two is like music we don't know exactly that he felt exactly like but that's at least like the main idea and so some of the examples i gave like with the moons of jupiter like those follow this the one to two to two to four ratio, those are harmonic ratios. If you look at the, out in the hall, I have a picture of the asteroids of the solar system as they coordinate with Jupiter and Saturn and they fall along, you know, there's musical ratios. Those ratios I just showed you, like they are stable in all kinds of dynamical systems. Anytime you get oscillators interacting with one another,

there are stabilities that happen in those systems and the stabilities happen. relative to the simple ratios. So you see music like things in the external world. The nervous system is also a collection of oscillators. So nervous systems, even if we weren't making auditory sounds or music, would still have some sort of harmonic relationships within them. The way we walk has within it harmonic ratios, like one to two ratios of like legs to trunk movements and stuff like that.

And then the fact that voices come from a vibrator that generates harmonics and go through a tube that shapes it, that fact, and that's been going on through all vertebrates, like going back 500, maybe 300 million years at least, the auditory system takes advantage of that to be able to maximize its ability to detect voice. and our voices feedback. This is a principle by Michael Ryan, who he studies at Tungara Frog. But his principle is called the sensory exploitation hypothesis,

which is it isn't just that our ears have evolved to detect voices. Yeah, it's that our voices evolved to maximally drive the auditory apparatus of our listeners. Cool. Yeah, and like one of the best things about this from the perspective of like what we do in music and why is we tend to think of like the composers or the instrumentalists as being the ones who are like in charge but it's the listener and it's more complex the listener's

brain and the listener's emotional responses to things is way more complex and way more interesting and has a way more of effect and effect on what kind of music gets made than just the mere makers. That's really good. I kind of want to end on that. I'm going to end on that. Are there any animals that use instruments? Well, spiders can use their web.

Oh, mole crickets. Mole crickets. Mole crickets build like a trumpet-like or like, yeah, like a tuba-like apparatus that they sing inside of. And it's definitely, it, like, comes out like a horn or pairs of horn, maybe just, yeah, maybe two horns. And then they definitely tune it to give the, right resonance for the sound that they're creating. So that may be your best example, mold crickets.

That's awesome. On the same thing, related to the Pan-Hoot display, how come we all get a sense that purring means good, but growling means bad, when they're like sort of similar things. Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, one thing is like if the purr didn't function as soothing and attractive, then, you know, it wouldn't be used that way. So, like, that feedback loop is necessary, but then you can look at, you can look at, like, I mean, growling behaviors across animals are rough, they're loud, they have, like, unpredictable frequencies, like they're,

it's, like, non-stable. It's not like you're not singing a pure tone. It's not predictable. That's harsher upper resonances. That is something that is common for aggressive. vocalizations across animals and purring purring is like

unique to cats but even even not specific cat like like this dog my brother's husky has like a kind of a purring thing that's very close to the growling sometimes where you're like is he growling but it's something like he's

likes that he's getting pet yeah yeah yeah yeah I don't know that's cool yeah but I think what you said is really interesting it sounds right about like that there's something to when they're purring that cyclical, it is a consistent, it's repeating and calming in a way. It's also muted. It's not got the high frequencies. It's, you know that, like, it's almost like you could say the cat is conveying to you that its body is not stiff. It's not, like,

everything that's an aggressive vocalization, either that or fear, is always very rapid in loud versus quiet. Like, it might just be all loud, but fear is like, uh-huh. Oh, yeah. Right, It's the suddenness. Yeah. Thank you. And so if I'm purring, you actually know, like, the status of my, like, almost like my trunk muscles, my breathing muscles. Yes. Right?

Your state of tension. Yeah. So the one thing I would say is, like, you know, our tendency is to interpret that as, like, oh, the cat's giving a signal. But it's much more interesting when you get into that. The feedback thing of, like, the cat in a relaxed state will start making certain types of sounds. and if they're the wrong types of sounds, they won't function as soothing and like wanting to get, you know, attract someone.

So then the things, the sounds that we make that convey the state that we're in or that make the other person feel comfortable in the way that we want them to, regardless of meaning, are the things that end up taking on meanings. Like we can look at cats and say like, oh, that's what the permitting.

means, but it's actually the meaning is something we add on. Yeah, it's later. I love that. I hear this sound. And then there's a million calculations and interpretations going on my brain that are like extrapolating the diaphragm has to be relaxed here to do this. The cat's probably got to be relaxed to do this. And that means the cat's probably relaxed. And then it feels very much like the thing you said that I want to really end on. That feels really tied into how do we access her creativity and all that. And what you said at the end of Allie asking questions, which is we are sort of automatically becoming this meta being just by listening. And then I start instinctively interpreting and even feeling what the sound creator is feeling.

And I wonder if that isn't part of the key to accessing our own creativity is allowing ourselves to listen to whatever the sound that wants to be made is and just let that feedback loop keep happening. And with the tiny other thing, which is I feel like music doesn't exist. unless you're doing it with another person. So, I mean, I saw one concert once where one person performed one song where he was by himself and it was just at the audience and it was brilliant.

But every other time, like a solo performance can be a thing if you're really connecting with the audience. That one song was just this brilliant way of connecting. The song was a tool for back and forth communication between that performer and the audience. And as musicians, like,

you have to practice on your own and if you're composing something, you might have to do some work by yourself. But I think the alchemy is not there. You're putting the ingredients in the crucible, but you're not adding that extra additional anima mundi or whatever. The thing that makes it magic or the thing that makes it music isn't there until there's actually someone else there

that you're playing with and you're responding to that person. Yeah. That's pretty perfect. Thank you. Thanks for making a meta-being with us today. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for letting me do this, All right. By listeners, I enjoyed being in my being. Make music. What a delight. What a damn delight. Thank you for letting me pod, mother you. Thank you, Allison Ward for letting me fill your rather estimable shoes for a bit. This was very fun. As usual, so many people to thank. Allie Ward, of course, primarily for, you know, everything. Thanks for letting me take the car out for a spin, dad,

which is super weird actually in the ongoing metaphor, because if I'm pod mom, then why am I thanking your father for letting me take the car for a spin? Technically, the car is our car. We don't do that kind of patriarchy in this house, but I digress. Thank you to patrons who support us on patreon.com slash ologies for as little as a dollar a month. Always asking sensational questions. Thank you so much for being you. I believe, I really do believe this. I believe the extremely curiosity-affirming community, which thrives around Ologies, is genuinely making the world a better and brighter place. I want to live in a world where curiosity is really known as the virtue it is, and you all are making me believe it not only could be, but maybe even already is.

Thank you, Aaron Talbert, who admins, who admins the Ologies podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Dwyer does the website. Thank you also to scheduling producer Noel Dilworth. She also teaches ballet to children and leaves lovely little gifts for you on holidays in the most unexpected times. Susan Hale is our managing director. Also one of two totally distinct friends who told me to check out absolutely sensational action movie The Furious. And Susan, I did. I watched an afternoon show in Burbank last weekend. You were right. Best stuff since the Raid franchise. Astonishing material. Let's see. Thank you to the editing squad, Mercedes-Maitland, Jake Chafee, and me.

Also, Jake does deserve extra props again this week for his incredible musical underscoring additions he put in the Biomusicalogy episode, the main one. He's so knowledgeable and talented. It's really crazy. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And then, as is the custom, if you stay to the end, you deserve a little treat in the form of a secret. And the secret I'm going to tell you today. Well, I had one I was going to do about the relationship between IBS and the prostate, but I think that that is a little too gross, and I'm not going to do that one. What I'm going to do instead is also health-related in many ways. I've been experiencing this really strange thing where basically I'm like learning to distinguish or just asking myself the question, I guess, about whether or not I'm depressed.

or just content. And I think for so much of my life, uh, I just had to live in extremes. And it was either really depressed or like euphoric, just this kind of like really up, really creative, really manic. I'm, I'm really productive, really on all my good habits or whatever the hell. And I've been lately realizing like, it's kind of weird. It's kind of uncomfortable sometimes where I'll be like, I'm tired, but I'm just reading a book. look, but I'm not sad. I'm not, like, messed up. I just don't feel like doing stuff in an intense way. And maybe, Allie asking, like, are you okay? Are you upset? I'm like, no, I'm actually not. I feel totally fine. It's just sort of like flat in a way that's, like, peaceful. And I'm sitting there and I'm going,

she's like, are you depressed? Are things okay? Which is a good thing to ask, because I'm prone to that. And I'll just be really investigating inside and going, no, I think I'm just fine. I think I'm just, I think I'm just like content. And I think that's like weirdly not a very encouraged or explored or expressed feeling in our society. It's either like, I don't know, maybe because the only way we're out to be okay is like if you're just like on it all the time, doing all the hundred thousand good habits you're supposed to do every day to be a complete and okay person. and I'm just starting to learn that maybe you're allowed to just be fine, you know, and it feels really nice. I think it's also a little confusing too and maybe challenging for both of us because, like, it's also related to not masking as much. And so I think when I don't put on a performance of like, yeah, I'm great.

Oh, everything's go. Oh, gosh. It's like, are you mad? Are you sad? Are you weird? And I'm like, no, I'm just not performing for anyone, including myself. And so, I don't know, still navigating it. Because I'm definitely realizing now, you know, Allie would take pictures of me, I see a little video,

and I definitely have resting bitch face. And I just have to be like, no, I'm actually not feeling bitchy at all. I'm just feeling like I don't have to perform for anyone because I feel safe and comfortable and just like fine. And that's weird and new. And that's my weird secret this week. All right. Thanks, guys.

Thanks for letting me guest in here. This is really fun. and, well, make music and stuff. All right, bur-bye. Hacodermatology. Cometology. Croptozoology. Littology.

Meteorology. That went well, right? That's fine. Okay.