Science Says, "Bassists Are The Most Important Member of the Band"

[Vito Corleone]

Fake news

[Bucksstudent]

Alternative facts.

[davd_indigo]

This thread eventually triggered a memory of a documentary called "The Music Instinct". I watched it carefully about 1 1/2 years ago (I had a take home test on it for a class I took). It features musicians like Bobby McFerrin, Yo Yo Ma, and Daniel Barenboim. It also features a variety of neuroscientists and animations of brain scans of people listening to music.

 

I want to watch it again sometime soon. But my takeaway in general, (from watching it previously) is that the music we humans have come up with is baked into the physics of our world. The sing song melody that a young child sings ( melody notes - g e a g e ) when they're playing with each other, isn't just a random thing. It's baked into our brains. Also perception of rhythm. If I recall correctly, they believe that rhythm expression and perception is connected to motor function in our brains. There are animated illustrations showing different sections of the human brain that light up when stimulated by music.

 

It's almost 2 hours, but entertaining and enlightening.

 

Added later: I just dropped the cursor a couple of times on this movie. At about 1 hr 30 min , the researcher plays two short orchestral excerpts. He says that he asked research subjects if one of the excerpts sounded more English or French. The second musical excerpt was declared to be "French" - it was by Debussy. But the excerpt had a prominent melodic whole tone scale fragment. I would submit to this researcher that it has nothing to do with language in this case - it's the whole tone scale that Debussy is universally famous for innovating in his music. This is when I become very skeptical of researchers who don't know enough about music they are studying.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5pwSMDTD4M&t=5150s