Comusication: Towards a new general theory of music

02/20/2005 05:08PM

In order to build a general theory about music, a social scientific approach must be accepted, based on evidence collected from individual and collective experiences all over the world and from history. First, music has historically not been a means in the struggle for survival, but rather a “language” to establish better emotional communication within human communities. This cohesive role is crucial in order to have a new insight into the real meaning of music. Although it is based on a specific sense, it is different from other functions of hearing, such as understanding words or as a tool for completing a representation of the real world. And one of its most distinctive features is its connection to emotion. That is not the case with words, which can have an objective meaning, like “chair”, which can become an object represented invariantly in our minds.

The same melody can have a totally different meaning in different emotional contexts: the French national anthem has a completely different emotional impact on a native of France than on someone born in Argentina; and it will surely have a different “meaning” when it is sung at the beginning of the school day or in a homage to soldiers fallen in combat. The same can be truth on a smaller scale. In the context of a music school, the interval of a perfect fifth (as between C and the G immediately above it) may sound as an abstract sequence or superposition of notes, without any particular emotional connotations, but in another context it can transmit a supernatural, magical feeling.

This connection between music and emotion could be the external translation of some kind of physical wiring between the cells of different parts of our brains: those located in organs related to our emotions (“the reptilian brain”) and those in the neuronal regions of the cortex devoted to higher functions. As far as we know, there are no scientific experiments in this specific direction, but there is strong indirect evidence of this link in its external expression: behavior. We can find evidence of this influence in the results of music therapy, in the powerful effect and emotional impact of film music, in how often a simple song can awaken memories of past emotions of sorrow, joy or faith, etc.

Are there any common elements to every kind of music? Why is this type of human expression so widespread throughout history and cultures all over the planet? We will try to get an objective answer by considering the facts most common to all humanity, like gestation and social behavior.

About 20 weeks into gestation, the first sense that the human fetus develops is hearing, a long time before it has any input from the real world through vision, touch or other senses. From this point on, the human fetus is subject to a genetically determined educational program based on the acquisition of the primary concept of regularity. This program coincides with the stage of synaptic growth and consolidation between the neurons of the fetus’ brain. This simple program is based on an association of the concept of regularity with the gratifying and pleasant sensations of its mother’s heartbeat. On the other hand, the changes of this beat’s regularity are associated with a discharge of adrenaline right to the fetus’ blood stream through the umbilical cord. The fetus reinforces the cortical synapses connected with the concept of regularity during the following weeks and months, broadening the capacity for discernment with the inclusion of a category for noise, which every irregular beat event will fall into. This category, associated with an unpleasant self-somatic sensation, will at first encompass all sorts of uncomprehended sound signals, like the kinds of sounds arriving from the world outside its mother’s placenta. Also, the fetus begins to perceive these outer sounds (especially its mother’s voice, transmitted through the vertebrae closest to her womb) filtered by the aqueous medium of the amniotic liquid where it grows. Liquid media transmit sound more quickly than air, but they filter high frequencies, softening the timbre (or “color”) of the sounds, something that will soon be categorized as a pleasant sensation (as anyone can experience simply by submerging his/her ears in a bathtub).

These experiences are common to all human beings and other mammals too, but only humans develop such broad neural activity during this period, creating new neurons and synapses, especially in a specific part of the brain called the neo-cortex, a part more developed and connected to higher mental functions than in any other species. This categorization happens prior to birth and to any functional differentiation of the sense of hearing between music and other kinds of sounds.

First hearing patterns

The prenatal educational program lays the foundation for further sensorial experiences. First, it consolidates the primary model or representation of regularity that will later on accommodate further subcategories of regular sounds. One of the most important also takes place at a very primary level: sounds with a regular pitch, what we commonly know as musical sounds. This kind of input requires a very low level of interpretational effort necessary to understand the sound inputs of hearing. The same can be said about a regular, simple beat progression, that may be translated into a binary division of the beat into two sub-beats that the newborn tries to imitate by regularly shaking noisemakers like rattles.

The same kind of analogy regarding regular and binary subdivision of the beat could be applied to pitch. If we duplicate the frequency of a pitch, the result is a sound an octave higher than the fundamental. Hearing also perceives this simple variation as an analogy that can be categorized along with the regular pitch. This equivalence of octaves (e.g., the interval between a C on the piano and the next C up the keyboard) is a musical phenomenon common to all human cultures. One of the most obvious examples is when a male adult and a child (or a female adult) sing the same melody: actually they sing in parallel octaves because of their different voice registers. Thus, regular pitch becomes a flexible category capable of encompassing many invariant representations of analogies to a basic model of regularity that evolves over time. But this capacity does not end here. Gradually, the newborn’s mind will be capable of accommodating new and more remote analogies to regularity in his/her mental representation of the original.

But what about irregular sounds? At first, these misunderstood sound events fall into a general category of noise. But gradually, in association with the input and consequences of other senses and experiences, they can transform into distinct new categories. Some of these noises became part of a new analogy to regularity. For example, a steady noise can saturate some part of the hearing bandwidth so that we can’t really hear it. This is the case with our own blood flow, pumping through the veins close to our ears, or the very high, steady sound of the electrical activity of our nervous system. These are the sounds that the composer John Cage discovered when trying to perceive absolute silence inside an anechoic chamber, as he describes in his book “Silence”. These sound are always sounding as long as we are alive, but we do not interpret them because of their steadiness. In conclusion, we could say that exposure to a steady, regular noise is, in fact, perceived, but is not interpreted, creating a new category called “silence”.

We can see a lot of indirect evidence of this process. For example, many babies (and adults) have trouble getting to sleep in a very quiet foreign environment, because their minds associate silence with a pattern of regular noises (night birds, insects, the train passing at 11:11 p.m., a lullaby…). Silence, by this definition, is an analogy to noise associated with some kind of strong regularity. On the other hand, some noises start acquiring meaning by association with past experiences. The first is the newborn’s mother’s voice. This kind of irregular sound perceived during the late stages of pregnancy becomes the first recognizable sound object (or event) associated with pleasant sensations thanks to the self-somatic sense of nutrition, the warmth of maternal touch, and seeing her face. Therefore, after birth, hearing her voice facilitates the baby’s interpretation and understanding of sound information. In this way, the newborn initiates an intelligent, real-world sound information categorization process, reinforced by association with positive emotions. This primary process triggers a complex sound information modeling process , by which he/she will associate vocal sounds with other human beings close by (father, brothers and sisters, etc.).

Most sound information is made up of noisy events. Names, words and the sounds of objects (including animals and other manifestations of sound in nature) in the environment we grow up in get their signification (mental representation) as an abstraction derived by association with other senses. But musical information is rooted to the first sound patterns learned during gestation. As we pointed out earlier, the primary concept of regularity has been incorporated into our categorization in association with emotions, not objects. Starting from the maternal heartbeat, we learn to accommodate sound analogies like musical sound (steady pitch) and musical beat (independently of its velocity or tempo). By this means, we are ready to process further analogies like octave equivalence and binary subdivision of the beat. A step deeper into this learning process, we are able to accept and categorize other subdivisions of rhythm and pitch as musical information.

For example, we are able to recognize a subdivision of the beat into 3, 4 or more equal parts, as in compound time, where the first two sub-beats are linked together, but the third one is not. This irregular rhythmic pattern may or may not be associated with other experiences (like dragging one foot while limping, with the other one stepping properly). A completely different but likewise simple variation of the sequence of identical beats may be linking together the first two, but not the following pair, giving a pattern based on a subdivision of the beat into 4 parts. These rhythmic irregularities do not translate into noisy sound events, but rather into a new kind of “object”, not necessarily associated with other senses but instead with the primary categorization of the regularity of the beat and the related emotions .

In the field of pitch variation, we have seen the analogy of duplication of a fundamental frequency with the acoustic result of the sound of its octave. An analogous situation to the irregular rhythmic patterns we have just seen is the further multiplication of the fundamental frequency by other whole numbers such as 3, 4, and so on. These exact multiples are the natural upper harmonics of a sound. Each new prime number in that infinite series sets a new note whose frequency is a whole-number multiple of the first note of the series, which in turn is called the fundamental. Therefore, the note that vibrates three times as fast as the fundamental (the third upper harmonic) sets a new interval. If the fundamental were a G, that third harmonic would be the second D up from the fundamental. If we obviate this octave leap (by equivalence), the interval would be a perfect fifth, made up of 7 semitones in the Western musical tuning system. The fourth harmonic is an octave higher than the second one, and two octaves distant from the fundamental. The same note will reappear at the eighth, 16th, and 32nd places, and so on. As for the D, it will reappear at higher octaves in the sixth and 12th positions, and so on. In the prime-number positions of the series, we will find new notes that form new intervals with the fundamental: the major third in the 5th position (B), a note out of tune with the Western tuning system in the 7th position (a lowered F), etc.

This mathematical relationship can become a powerful source of analogies for the emergence of new musical sounds, which will make up the basic building blocks for melodic development. But additionally, hearing these natural intervals requires a lower interpretive effort. Thus, the use of those building blocks in melodies coinciding with a simple rhythmic pattern can soon be categorized as musical information: minor irregularities over regular repetitive patterns developed over time. In order to be categorized this way, these kinds of variations must be repeated over time, something that characterizes all basic melodies all over the world.

But as we said before, the simple identical reiteration of an irregular pattern (like those categorized as noise) may come to be interpreted as silence, so we can find a universal trend to add some small new variations or irregularities after some identical repetitions. We can appreciate this kind of process in every musical culture on the planet and in songs with basic forms like A – A – A – A’ (this last being a rhythmic-melodic variation of the original).

The reiteration of musical information over time, either identically or with minor variations, also produces a predictable musical behavior: we expect to keep hearing the same musical pattern. Sometimes it happens, but mostly it does not, since the original musical information does not disappear completely from our minds, given that we have already created a prediction about it. This is a powerful tool in the hands of musicians, who use it to create different layers of musical representations associated with related or opposite emotions, which can interact to create a new, dynamic and multi-layered interpretation. We call this kind of musical pattern that actually does not keep sounding an ellipsis. These patterns are related to musical information, in that they carry information, though not sound information. They are also related to silence, because we are not aware of that information. And they are the opposite of noise, that is perceived but not interpreted.

This interaction is shown in the following diagram, in which arrows show the transformational paths as we described them.

After birth, we gradually start developing a more sophisticated mechanism for categorizing musical events that surround us. The reiterative ones are just obviated (their information is silenced); the simplest ones begin their transformation into musical information we can deal with: their reiteration transforms them into a kind of structural memory: an ellipsis, that coexists and interacts with the perceived musical events, to create a richer, more complex mental representation. In this way, we can accommodate an ever greater number of “recognizable musical objects” due to our knowledge, understanding and memory capacities.

After birth, musical information, unlike other general sound information, remains associated to emotions due to its origin, but develops a more mental processing. These growing intelligence capacities (memory, prediction, signification) allow the incorporation of musical social habits, like a tuning system, modal and scale material, a local type of rhythmic-melodic patterns and variations, and so on. These habits are learned during one’s very first years and have a long-term impact on our musical preferences and capacities.

This paradigm will also allow us to configure a local musical language that can easily spread and be universally understood based on the same elements of emotional association and signification processing. It is a human communicational process that I have dubbed comusication.

© Jorge Luis Rozemblum Sloin. All right reserved.

World Music Central
http://www.worldmusiccentral.org/article.php/2005022017084972