Honors 380 Exam 1

Why is Small using the word “musicking,” a verb?

Small is using the work “musicking” as a verb because musicking in not just a thing but something people do.

·       What is “musicking”?

• To take part in any capacity in a musical performance, whether by performing, listening, rehearsing or practicing, by providing material for performance or by dancing

·       What can the rituals and processes of a musical performance reveal about the society where it’s taking place?

• cultural identity, values, power structures, and social norms

·       Small called the works of the standard symphony repertory “bedtime stories told to adults.” What do you think he might have meant by this?

• He could have meant that now music has been softened, and it no longer feels dangerous or inspires change

·       Why do you relate to certain artists more than others? Give examples.

• You relate to certain artists more than others because of how their work connects with your personal experiences, emotions, values, or worldview.

• For example: I listen to music based on my mood, if I am feeling happy, I would not want to play sad music. Another example is if I have shared a similar situation that an artist sung about, I would be more likely to want to listen to the song.

·       What is experiential fusion? When have you experienced it?

• The state of being so absorbed that your consciousness itself becomes fused with what you are experiencing.

• I have experienced it while playing sports, only focusing on the game in front of me and nothing anything around me

·       Levitin posits that someday soon, customized, personalized playlists will be curated for us automatically, as medicine. Why must playlists be personalized to be therapeutically effective?

• They must be personalized so that they play what it thinks you need at the time.

·       What did Oliver Sacks’ brain activity seem to reveal about his musical preferences?

• Oliver Sack’s brain activity revealed he loves Bach and Beethoven not as much, his amygdala, vital to processing emotions, was activated when listening to Back

·       How do we define music, for purposes of this class?

• Humanly organized sound; a form of expressive culture

·       What are the four categories of musical instruments, in the Sachs-Hornbostel system of classification?

• Aerophones

• Chordophones

• Membranophones

• Idiophones

·       What are some examples of multimodal activities? Why do they appear to be “neuroprotective and curative”?

• Hiking in nature, dancing

• Large brain networks that span different regions of the brain are unified and work harmoniously together toward a common goal

·       If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

• No because sound is a psychological concept, a product of brains, it would disturb molecules, but if no one hears it, it has not made a sound

·       How do we hear sounds? What are the roles of the eardrum, the ossicles, the cochlea, and the auditory nerve?

• The eardrum shakes when sound waves hit it, and the ossicles (anvil, stirrup, and hammer) make those shakes stronger. The cochlea, which is shaped like a snail, has fluid and tiny hairs that turn the shakes into signals. Finally, the auditory nerve carries those signals to the brain, and that’s how we hear.

·       Why has hearing mattered to us, as a species, over time?

• Perception of things that we cannot see, evolutionary advantage, predation, track something you want to eat or avoid being eaten

·       Where does music happen in the brain?

• the auditory cortex (for pitch and tone), the cerebellum and motor cortex (for rhythm and movement), the hippocampus (for memory), and the amygdala and reward systems (for emotional response)

·       How does musicking (whether playing OR listening) change our brains?

• Musical experience changes brain structure & wiring.

·       Why do we like the music we like—what are some of the factors?

• Personal variables – age, gender, personality

• Contextual variables – location when listening, what you’re doing, alone or with other

·       What information is contained in the geophony, the biophony, and the anthrophony?

• Geophony- nonbiological sounds that occur in any given habitat

  • Wind in the trees

  • Water flowing in the river

• Biophony  - All of the sound that is generated by organisms in a given habitat at one time and in one place

• Anthrophony – all of the sound that humans create

  • Music or theater but usually chaotic “noise”

·       Why do different animals use different frequency ranges?

• Animals use different frequency ranges because ecosystems function like orchestras, where each species adapts its calls to avoid overlap, maximize communication, and survive in its unique environment.

·       What’s an acoustic niche?

• “Sound space” that each animal (or sound source) takes up so they can be heard without getting lost in the noise.

·       What can we learn from listening to a soundscape?

• Reveals information about an environment's ecological health, human activity, and cultural significance

·       Why do you think Ella Fitzgerald chose to perform “Mack the Knife” in Germany?

• Because of the songs popularity and the song has german origin

• First women to perform it

·       In that performance, how did she respond to her own memory lapse?

• highest priority was that the show must go on, and she ignored everything nonessential

·       While memory involves a distributed network of neurons, what part of the brain governs memory?

• Hippocampus

  • Seahorse structure, both halves of the brain

·       What things do we tend to remember well?

• The things that carry the biggest emotional wallop

·       Why does music help us remember things?

• Easier to remember information when there is some sort of organization scheme inherent in the material

• Structure itself can help to scaffold one’s memories

·       What part of the brain orchestrates movement?

• Cerebellum

·       What can cue a memory?

• Sensory, emotional, autobiographical, factual, geographic, associational, a lyric, basically anything

·       What is “chunking”? Why do our brains employ this procedure?

• Chunking is remembering the patterns in an aggregate form, chunks

• Reduces memory load by transforming a collection of parts into a cohesive entity

·       What is the lyric/rhyme pattern for a stanza of 12-bar blues?

• AAB

·       How do we identify songs?

• Cue validity

·       What is cue validity? What does it mean for an element of a song to have “high cue validity” vs. “low cue validity”?

• any musical element, such as a particular chord or melodic pattern, that generates an expectation in the listener. 

• High cue validity – they’re distinct and help differentiate one song from another

• Low cue validity – they’re not unique or distinct from those in other songs

• What’s more important in recognizing a song: pitch or rhythm?

• Equally important in song identification

·       What is timbre? How do overtones (the “harmonic series”) create our perceptions of different timbres?

• the unique tone color of different voices, instruments, and sounds

• They have higher pitches that are present but usually outside our conscious awareness- unique color

·       Is timbre high or low in cue validity?

• High

·       How might a neuroscientist (e.g., Karl Friston) define attention?

• Attention is a way of prioritizing and tuning sensory data.

·       According to pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim, what are two ways people tend to listen to music? Which method does Barenboim advocate for, and why?

• Music to forget

  • After a hard day

• music for your growth enjoyment, interests

  • Advocate for

  • Doesn’t think artists wrote must just to forget unpleasant things

·       What are the Brodmann Areas?

• A way of mapping the cerebral cortex and its functions

·       What is the brain’s Default Mode Network?

• A mode of brain activity that people slip into when they’re not doing goal-directed tasks

·       Why is it that love songs can especially activate the DMN?

• It almost automatically causes us to see ourselves in them and daydream 

·       Why is the DMN involved in the development of empathy?

• Vicariously seeing and hearing what others are going through and how they reach through music

·       What are the different attentional-conscious states?

• Central executive mode

  • Goal or task orientated

• Default mode

  • Mind-wandering and self-directed

• Sleep

• Attentional filters voluntary – brain lets us play a game or involuntary – waking up if summoned

• Meditation

·       Why is meditation different from the brain’s default mode?

• it reduces DMN activity by redirecting attention from mind-wandering to present-moment experience like breathing

·       What are the three main types of meditation?

• Focused attention meditation

  • Focusing on one thing

• Open Monitoring meditation

  • Staying in the present moment, allowing thought to come and pass without judgement

• Compassion mediation

  • Direct your attention to feelings of love, empathy, and goodwill towards yourself and all human beings

·       What type of brain activity is happening when a musician is improvising?

• Mindfulness Meditation

• Broca’s area

• Self-expression areas activate

• Self-censoring areas quiet

• Brain becomes more connect – real – time connectivity

·       What is the “Flow State”? Which of the attentional-conscious states does it involve?  When have you experienced Flow in your life?

• Central executive mode

• A highly focused mental state characterized by total absorption in the task

  • When I am playing sports

·       In your experience, how does music “unconsciously…school us in a different way to hold sorrow”?

• Music touches us at a level deeper than words. When we are faced with sorrow, music provides a kind of container that allows us to feel grief without being destroyed by it. It doesn’t erase sorrow, but it teaches us how to dwell with it—to experience pain in a way that is held by beauty.

·       Are there aspects of a society’s experience and sensibility that can be conveyed in music, but perhaps don’t translate readily into other languages? Why do you think this is?

• Cultural experiences can be carried in music in ways language cannot, because music communicates emotionally and universally, beyond the limits of translation

• Universal language

·       How are neurologic historians re-interpreting ancient examples of human physical anomalies?

• Giving diagnoses based on neurological and genetic disorders instead of just supernatural cases

·       What causes movement disorders?

• Genetics, incomplete brain development, disease, injury, environmental toxins

·       What is “embodied cognition”? Why does it matter in our lives?

• Learn through physical engagement with the world

• A big part of what we think of as intelligence is the result of moving about, touching things, and getting feedback from these actions

·       What are five movement disorders that are proving responsive to music therapy?

• Stuttering, Tourette syndrome, Huntington’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and Parkinson’s disease

·       There are different causes for stuttering. What are three typical forms stuttering might take?

• The storage of the sequence, the retrieval of it, or its implementation

·       Why are there musicians who might stutter when speaking, but not when singing?

• Stuttering is a language disorder, not strictly a speech disorder

• By using motor-articulatory circuits in sync with the beat of music, the pathways supporting spontaneous speech seemed to become stronger

• Stuttering decreases when a person speaks in sync with a steady beat because the predictable rhythm lets them align their syllables with each beat.

·       What is muscle memory? What are its pros and cons?  Where is it located in the body?

• The ability to do a movement without conscious thought

• Pro – Does not always have to be focused on one thing

• Con – Do not want to rely on it too heavily

• motor cortex and the cerebellum

Aerophones

• Aerophones

  • Instruments where sound is produced by a vibrating air column

  • Flute

Chordophones

• Chordophones

  • Instruments where sound is produced by vibrating strings

  • Guitar

Idiophones

• Idiophones

  • Instruments where sounds is produced by the vibration of the instrument itself

  • bells

• Membranophones

• Membranophones

  • Instruments where sound is produced by a vibrating skin/membrane

  • Drum