Short Wave - A year in music science: wonder, volume and animals that groove

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

As 2023 comes to a close, Short Wave teamed up with our friends at All Things Considered to round up some of our favorite stories of the year — this time, about the science behind music. First, science correspondent Rob Stein talks to researchers (and Phish's Mike Gordon) about what happens to our brains on music. Then, All Things Considered host Juana Summers and investigations correspondent Sacha Pfeiffer share a study about why lead singers, like Jeff Beck, have gotten quieter over the years. And finally, All Things Considered hosts Ailsa Chang and Ari Shapiro explore research that says some animals might be able to perceive melody and rhythm, too.Have other questions about the science behind music? What have you observed about how your favorite songs make you feel? Email us at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Hey, Shorewavers, Regina Barber here. And this time I've brought a very special guest, All Things Considered, host extraordinaire, Elsa Chang. Hey, Elsa. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Oh, you're welcome.

You're welcome anytime. We're a few days away from the end of the year. Like, 2024 is upon us. I mean, and thank God, because I am so glad to have 2023 in my rear view mirror. Yeah, you know what? Me too. But it hasn't actually all been bad. As the year winds down, we've been taking a look back at our favorite stories that aired on all things considered this year, right? Yeah. And actually, we noticed that we did quite a few stories about the science behind music, which I am now rapping with a bow and gifting to you. You're welcome, Gina. Oh, thank you so much. These are two of my favorite topics, so I can't wait to hear them.

Today on the show, Elsa brings us three stories. That's right. About music. Music and wonder why lead vocalists have actually become quieter and how animals respond to music too. You're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. All right, Elsa, where does this first story take place? Okay, Canada. So, let's start with an international trip. I love Canada.

Good. Because NPR's Rob Stein visited the Montreal International Jazz Festival, and it got him wondering, why does music? Move us. So he called up an expert. Music does evoke a sense of wonder and awe for lots of people. Daniel Levitin is a neuroscientist at McGill University. He scans the brains of people while they listen to tunes. Some of it is still mysterious to us.

But what we can talk about are some neural circuits or networks. Those are involved in the experience of pleasure and reward. If you're thirsty and you get a drink, if you're feeling Randy and you have sex if you're listening to music that you really like. This pleasure center comes online. Triggering the production of brain chemicals that are involved in feelings like pleasure. It modulates levels of dopamine as well as opioids in the brain. Your brain makes opioids.

Naurons in the brain even actually fire with the beat of the music, which helps people feel connected to one another by literally synchronizing their brainwaves when they listen to the same song. What we used to say in the 60s is, hey, I'm on the same wavelength as you, man. But it's literally true. Your brain waves are synchronized listening to music. Which is why music plays such a powerful role in many religions, spirituality, and rituals. All this made me wonder, do musicians feel this way, too? Yeah, I definitely experience wonder while playing music on a regular basis.

Mike Gordon is the bass player for the band Fish. It's almost like these neural pathways are opening. And it's almost like the air around me crystallizes where everything around me is more itself. The notes, a couple hits of the snare drum, I developed this sort of hyper sensitivity where it's now electrified. And he suddenly, vividly remembers dreams and doesn't want to be anywhere else. Like when he's playing this song, No Man's Land. So I think I'm going to crank up some of my favorite. tunes and wonder at the wonder music brings us.

I mean, I listen to music all the time. Totally. Explains why I just cannot help but dance when I hear so much music. Yeah. Okay, so we know that hearing our favorite songs can make us feel a certain way, but those songs themselves have been changing quite a bit through the decades. Our co-host, Juana Summers, as well as Sasha Fifer, took us back to the 1950s. On Elvis Presley's 1957 hit All Shook Up, you can hear his voice floating above the rollicking sound of the band.

It was a common feature of music back then, vocals in the foreground band behind. But acoustic scientists in Germany have found that lead singers have been getting quieter over the years in relation to their bands. We find that vocal levels are decreasing in popular music. Kai Sidenberg and his colleague analyzed hundreds of chart-topping songs from 1946 to 2020. And when they compared the loudness of singers to everything else, guitars, drums, and so on, they found that trend was particularly true for certain genres. Rock and metal have really much reduced vocal levels, especially metal. One example from the study, the 2020 track underneath by the group Code Orange.

here's guitarist and singer Reba Myers. It's a different style. It kind of treats the voice slightly more as an instrument as opposed to the lead. She says modern recording technology could be a factor. In rock music and metal music, a lot of fans are writing songs in digital workstations on the computer where you have an endless amount of tracks to use. So it's really easy to use a lot of layers that then end up competing with the vocal. Another song that exemplifies the trend is Beck's 19.

96 track Where It's At. Where it's At? Beck had several songs in this analysis, all of which have vocals about the same loudness are quieter than the instruments. And he said for him, lowering the vocals was a deliberate act. Like, I came up more in the indie rock genre, alternative music, and the ethos of that time was to really bury the vocal. You didn't want people to hear what you were saying.

The track and the rhythm has to be at the forefront if you want to move people. As soon as you put the vocal up at the forefront, the track loses its energy and it's a media seat. Not that the scientist behind the study, Kaysiedenberg, expects artists like Beck to be reading the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, where his research appeared. They should just do what they do and generate the music. Love? Even if that means the lead vocals aren't leading the way as much as they used to. And finally, my co-host Ari Shapiro and I delved into how music isn't just a human thing. Because, you know, some animals, they seem to feel the beat too. One example, Ronan, the disco dancing sea lion, who bobs her head very enthusiastically to earthwind and fire.

Seriously, watch the video. Well, and then there's Snowball the Cockatoo, who puts most... humans to shame, grove in to the backstreet boys. Well, now a new study adds more evidence to the idea that other animals can synchronize to a beat, not just through dancing, but through song. That's the sound of a white-handed gibbon, a type of small ape. We look at rhythmic patterns produced by individuals, and what we see is a strong presence of temporal regularity. So, tak, tak, tak, like an analog clock or the beating of a metronome.

Rea Ravignani is at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in the Netherlands. He and his colleagues recorded Gibbons in a reserve in Thailand and in zoos in Italy. And in addition to learning that Gibbons could keep a beat singing solo, they also found that males and females could sink up when belting out songs at the same time. And we see that they do influence each other and they overlap above chance. So they are more synchronous than notes. The work was published by the Royal Society. Raviniani says the study bolsters the idea that the building blocks of human musical and rhythmic abilities can be found in other species.

Probably there is no species with the whole Lego blocks that constitute human musicality and human rhythmicity, but each and every one of them can be at least found in other species. Hank Jan Honing is a professor of music cognition at the University of Amsterdam. He was not involved in the work and says the study is important for the field. Because it is an example within the primates that we share beat perception and synchronization with another primate. But he points out that Gibbons are not singing to entertain. This is the way they show to each other that there are a couple, and they show to the environment that it's their territory. He says studies like this could untangle the evolutionary origins of music, which after all helps humans sync up too. Elsa, that was so nice.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing this with us. You are so welcome. I love being here. And I hope to see you really soon, Gina. Yeah, me too. Before we head out, the end of the year is coming up. And we're looking back a bit here at Shorewave. We've loved bringing you stories and interviews about everything from penguin microsleep,

to the life cycle of stars, to why our brains love discounts so much. And we're excited about everything we'll dig into in 2024, hopefully with your financial support. This is where we want to say a big thank you. to our Shortwave Plus supporters and anyone listening who already donates to public media. Your support ensures that everyone has free access to reliable news and podcasts, including those who can't afford to give this season. And to anyone out there who isn't a supporter yet, right now is the time to get behind the NPR network, especially with newsrooms gearing up for an important election year. Supporting public media now takes just a few minutes and makes a real

difference in what's possible moving forward. So join NPR Plus, or make a job. tax deductible donation now at donate.npr.org slash shorewave. Thank you. This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Chloe Weiner. It was edited by Christopher Taliatta and our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. The audio engineer was Patrick Murray. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shorewave from NPR.