Humans are musical animals 4 million years in the making, explained by music expert Michael Spitzer.
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The oldest record of notated music, the Hurrian “Hymn to Nikkal,” is more than 3,000 years old. But in a sense, our relationship with music is far more ancient than that.
As Michael Spitzer, a professor of music at the University of Liverpool, told Big Think, humans have been making and learning to recognize music from the moment our species learned to walk on two legs, creating a predictable beat.
Music affects the brain in profound ways. It eases stress by lowering cortisol. It floods the brain with pleasurable neurotransmitters like dopamine. And it serves as a conduit through which we can process emotions that otherwise might not be describable in words.
Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/explain-it-like-im-smart/your-brain-on-music
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About Michael Spitzer:
Michael Spitzer is the author of The Musical Human and professor of music at the University of Liverpool, where he leads the department’s work on classical music. A music theorist and musicologist, he is an authority on Beethoven, with interests in aesthetics and critical theory, cognitive metaphor, and music and affect. He organized the International Conferences on Music and Emotion and the International Conference on Analyzing Popular Music and currently chairs the editorial board of Music Analysis Journal.
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Read more of our stories on music:
10 of the greatest classical composers alive today
► https://bigthink.com/high-culture/best-living-classical-composers/
Here’s what your music preferences reveal about your personality
► https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/music-personality/
10 of the greatest classical composers of all time
► https://bigthink.com/high-culture/classical-music-composer-ranking/
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This guy talks so matter-of-factly, and yet what he saying is so theoretical that it might as well be imagination
Christopher Lee said that he likes Heavy Metal because it's a very powerful form of music.
Now I can see why.
Thank you very much for explaining this phenomenon.
This is awesome! Before we even walked we heard the rhythm of our mothers heart beat in the womb. Natalie Angier’s book Woman has some lovely passages on how that experience informs the way we relate to music
The music of the universe is life.
1:34, 4:08 "Words are meaningless and forgettable."
How about your brain on drugs?
Music is spiritual
That’s why it is in some religions very big no and I understand why it is truly demonic.
put on spotify would be great👍
When we listen to a music, we travel back to the unrestricted instict inside our mind as he say might this be right?
Loved this. I’m 39 years old and for just the past year, I’ve been discovering the joy and raw emotion of playing an instrument for the first time in my life. There’s nothing like it.
40,000 years of music explained in 8 minutes by Michael Spitzer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Am18ZxKgi_g
Awful songs started appearing after the 90's. The songs in kiddie and cartoon shows from 1960s to 90s sound way more pleasant than the songs being composed and played these days. That's how bad music has become.
I want to be able to "go in" to a song. Turn it into a complete audio visual experience. Imagine a rollercoaster where you can literally ride the sound waves of a song.
Thought this was a Tool music video…
dont listen to this crap. music influences and deludes you. it is black magic. be aware.
Music and pyschedylics is what got us here.
Music can be written down and stored as data, but it only really exists when its felt. Music is pure emotion given auditory form.
4.4 million years ago!!!!! Really????? And we know this for a fact how? Please explain. Unless a detailed, factual explanation can be given, based upon empirical data, what is being said here is pure baloney, tantamount to a fairytale. A thumb suck at best. Any scientist worthy of his/her credibility would know that none of this can be said for sure so why propagate information that is not based on fact. It's a false narrative. It's misleading, unbecoming an educated person and it's not scientific! He should have just started the video with what we know about the brain and music's effect. Not all this 4.4 million year ago evolution gibberish!
Music certainly helps me to forget my current circumstances, helps achieve a flow state in work and puts me in a different state of mind. Certainly makes me happier.
This vid is 90% speculative word salad
Liked, sub'd, thankyou and $0.02 from Tasmania.
I more closely associate the rhythm of music to the heart beat, but an association to movement and steps also makes sense. It kinda reminds me of the perspective Dune takes when it comes to movement.
it's incrdible how when I listen back to a song I've heard in the past, I relive the same emotions from the past whether they are bad or good
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😐
Thank you big think
I hate how you say “music” when he should say Sounds. Or at least define music…
I just finished my master's dissertation on the use of gestures to compose and edit melodies/sound effects through MIDI, and this video does a really good job of summing up a good chunk of my literature review! Great insight into the relationship between music and the human character.
At first, I was suggested by the doctor to walk. I then started enjoying it when I paired it with music, and walk 4 kms a day which is way more than I even walked before.
It was at this time, when I started realising the relationship between music and walking. Also, you can enter a beautiful flow step if you music beats match your foot steps.
The slap in genres like Synth pop or deep house music suit my walking. Something like hip hop can help with a nice confident strut.
music is a form of love
music doesnt looks like walking its your heartbeat right ?
Really appreciated this Man's work.
Thank you.
I have a dance each night before bed.
I have wondered if war could be stopped by music.
No idea how the technologies would make it to the battle field,
There seems to be nothing so pure and healthy as music.
Thank you, again.
Music is honestly not that complex. It is as simple as the sound of the wind and the crackle of a fire. From the perspective of a musician, music is just another language. No one taught us as children how to speak, we just started doing it. Music is part of us in this very same way.
Surely, The videos are of great thinking!
Wow
Beautiful!
U can chain me ,hold me down
Music gives me the feeling of freedom
If you want to experience the hair standing on end with goosebumps listen to the song hi-ren by Ren. In my 52 years on this planet and an extremely ecclectic music lover, I have never had such a deep emotional and physiological reaction to any song like I had with this one. I wasn't able to talk for a few moments after…..I felt all haywire for a bit after and then I settled into being in complete awe. Have a listen, it is worth it.
Alhamdullilah for Islam
Music is the most influential tool in the universe. Be careful what you listen to. 😝
He started with so many assumptions I lost trust 😅
This was a fantastic description of music and the role is plays within us. Wonderful video.
I didn't realize how amazing the ability to tune in on particular sounds/voices really was until I did shrooms at a party and couldn't understand anybody.
Stopped listening at "Out of Africa"
Hey what is that thumbnail??? that thing is beautiful
In other words, nobody has a fuckin clue.
Id rather have a philosopher explain music.