Why do People Like Music? - VoiceTube: Learn English through videos!

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- So as the most successful musician of all time,
- (laughs) Yeah, yeah.
- could you tell me, why do people like music?
(guitar music)
(laughs)
- I mean, it's kind of like,
I don't know, why do people like eating food?
Or why do people like puppies and sunshine?
- [Craig] That's YouTuber and musician extraordinaire,
Rob Scallon.
He does things like play Slayer on banjo,
(intense banjo music)
create real life delay,
(guitar music)
the largest pedalboard,
and he makes pretty, pretty music,
which is why I asked him,
"Why do you like music?"
- Well, I mean, what was your answer?
- I don't have it, I'm looking for the answer!
Rob's reaction was pretty common among the people I asked.
Why do people like music?
(laughs)
Answer me this simple question.
Why do people like music?
- Um, it's kind of a weird question.
(laughs)
- [Craig] Yes, it is.
Sam and Nate are members of the quintessential rock band,
Driftless Pony Club.
I also talked to two other members,
Matt and Craig.
I'm really nervous about this interview
because you are a member of
one of my all-time favorite bands.
I know.
So, "Why do people like music," is a weird question
because music seems so innate in us.
Not Nate in us, innate.
But what is music?
I think in one of my interviews, Craig said it best.
Allow me to quote the 20th century French-born composer,
Edgard Varese.
"What is music but organized noise?"
Thanks, Craig, but I already knew that,
I'm a big Varese-head.
That music just gets me moving.
(snaps fingers) (discordant music)
So the reason I'm asking this question is because
I find it interesting that organized noise
is something that we like.
Like most ridiculous questions I ask
that I don't expect to find an answer to,
I just kind of want to ask it to learn about stuff.
Reasons why people like music, one.
- Music is the most efficient way
to communicate emotion.
- [Craig] Like, why do you, personally, like music?
- I think because of the expression of it.
I'm expressing myself and communicating.
I think that applies whether you're making music
or listening to it.
- Can you figure out what it is that makes a song
a good song?
- I think a good song puts together a feeling
that you know what it is,
but you never actually, like, put your finger on it before.
It helps crystallize maybe something you know,
but you don't know how to express.
- Music probably arose before we actually could speak.
- Oh, you think so?
- Because you can see music in the animal kingdom
all over the place.
Birds sing, (birds chirping)
whales sing. (whale groaning)
- [Craig Voiceover] Because I like nothing more
than proving Matt wrong, I did a bit of research
and I came to a very satisfying answer to the question,
"Did music predate language?"
Answer,
(singing fanfare)
no one knows for sure.
There is a 50,000 year old Slovenian bone flute,
my nickname in high school,
made from an extinct bear
thought to be the world's oldest known instrument,
which means music probably predated that by a lot.
But, there's debate as to whether it's actually
an instrument at all, also,
we don't even know when language began, so...
On the other hand, language probably started
with a series of grunts, and hums, and whistles.
That's just a theory of mine, (grunting and whistling)
or an excuse to just use this B-roll.
And since music is organized noise,
then music came before language.
And actually, by that definition,
language is music.
We use notes to convey different ideas, am I right?
Am I right?
I'm right.
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♪ Can you feel ♪ (discordant piano playing)
♪ The love tonight ♪
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I'm a self-taught guitar player,
so I don't really know sheet music either.
I've always messed around with piano,
I can do this little ditty.
(playing ""Heart and Soul"")
Not very well, obviously.
My sister taught me this one.
♪ Doe, a deer, a female deer ♪
♪ Ray, a drop of golden sun ♪
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(discordant piano playing)
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(discordant piano playing)
So music, other than spoken language,
may be an older and simpler, yet more fundamental
form of language that's better at expressing emotions
than words can.
Or it just may communicate emotions quicker.
Like, have you ever heard of the devil's tritone?
(clears throat loudly)
(plays dissonant chord)
Lovely, isn't it? (plays dissonant chord)
It's called a tritone because it's two notes
that are three whole steps apart.
It communicates tension, something unresolved.
It wants you to play this chord.
(plays chord)
Or maybe...
(plays chords)
And then it sounds complete.
And you probably feel that tension, don't you?
Which leads to number two.
Two, it affects moods.
(foghorn blowing)
If you were listening to the devil's tritone all day,
I don't think I'd want to be around you.
Luckily, there are other chords.
- Like major seventh chords, oh my God.
I love them so much.
I could live in a major seventh chord
for the rest of my life.
- Why is that?
- A perfect major chord is like,
(plays major chord)
"Look at this beautiful sunset!"
Look at this, like, impossibly perfect thing.
- Like my beard, right?
- Yeah, yeah, like your beard.
But this is more like
(plays major chord)
near perfect, but it's like something or someone
that you love who's not perfect,
but you love them unconditionally anyway.
It's still right, but you're loving it with its flaws.
♪ Here's the major ♪
(playing guitar)
♪ That we got ♪
♪ It's very plain ♪
♪ And now we're onto major sevens ♪
♪ And I'm not feeling the same ♪
♪ Another major seventh. ♪
♪ Oh ♪
♪ All right ♪
(laughs)
Like, I just love that sound.
- It can lift your mood if you're sad or something,
and you listen to a sad song,
I think it makes you feel like someone else is feeling that,
which is comforting.
If you're going through sort of a strange period,
you can kind of write a song about it,
help you get those emotions out.
If you write a happy song, or like,
more energizing, like we have in our band,
it's kind of amazing to be able to share that with people.
- I asked you why you like music
on the beard lover subreddit
and many of you gave great answers, like this one.
"I find music to be a form of on-demand empathy."
That's great, NukesForGary!
Someone send that guy some nukes, he deserves it.
On-demand empathy.
Needing to queue up some kind of sound
that shares in the feeling that you're having.
I think a lot of this might have to do with
not wanting to feel alone.
When you're sitting around outside hearing nature sounds,
it can be nice and pretty, but also boring and lonely.
Put on some music, and suddenly you're hearing
something intentional, created by another human.
♪ Scaramouche, scaramouche ♪
♪ Will you do the Fandango? ♪
♪ Thunder-- ♪
Does music affect your mood, Craig?
Yeah, it helps get me amped when I'm working out.
It also helps me focus when I'm writing for videos.
You make videos?
Yep.
Oh my God, same!
You're my idol.
I know.
Wow, Craig and I really bonded just then.
Which brings us to number three,
it brings people together.
- The whole direction of my life
was sort of dependent on music.
In high school, I always felt, like,
nerdy or a little bit different from other people,
but I started going to punk rock shows.
It made me feel part of a larger community.
- Why do you like live performance?
- [Sam] It creates an atmosphere
where I think everyone is enjoying
one thing at the same time.
- And there's something so awesome
and powerful about playing an amplified drum kit
in a big venue, and when you hit that kick drum,
the whole room shakes.
Everyone in the room feels it.
- Music is probably the foundation of my friendship
with these guys, Nate, Sam, and Matt.
We played shows to full and empty rooms
across this great country for,
I guess you could say decades, now.
Yeah, and Rob and I also collaborated
on WheezyWaiter songs.
- Well, we did a ton of songs together.
- Yeah, we did ""This Is A Song""
♪ This is a song ♪
♪ This is a song ♪
♪ Everybody knows the words ♪
♪ 'Cause I just said them all ♪
The Miley Cyrus "I am corn."
♪ Boy I am corn ♪
""Wrecking Bagel.""
♪ Claiming everything bagel ♪
♪ Garlic onion is just not enough ♪
- [Rob] The Halloween song was really good.
♪ Halloween ♪
♪ Everybody loves Halloween ♪
- [Craig] ""Craig With a Wig"" song.
♪ Craig ♪
♪ With a wig ♪
(sighs deeply)
(laughs)
And then there's dancing,
which literally brings people together,
and could be largely responsible
for the populating of the species.
According to the book, ""This Is Your Brain On Music,""
the archeological record shows an uninterrupted record
of music making everywhere we find humans,
and in every era.
You repeated record twice,
but music's about repetition.
He also pointed out that concert halls
actually arose only in the last several centuries.
The idea of splitting a performer and an audience
is a relatively new thing.
"Throughout most of the world and for most of human history,
"music making was as natural an activity
"as breathing and walking, and everyone participated."
When you think about it, before TVs, and radios,
and just electricity, there wasn't a whole lot else to do.
Sitting around a campfire, what could you be doing?
You could be eating, telling stories
that everyone's heard a million times,
punching each other,
maybe a game of "guess whose poop that is,"
or you could play an instrument or dance to music.
Everyone can make and enjoy the same thing,
strengthening your group identity.
Nowadays, you can also strengthen your group identity
by just sharing in what you listen to,
like juggalos, or Deadheads,
or Varese-heads. (discordant music)
It would be challenging to name them all,
which brings us to number four,
which is overcome challenges.
Transitions, oh yeah.
It's just fun to try to overcome challenges,
or watch people overcome challenges.
Playing instruments, and song writing,
and almost anything I do kind of began as
just seeing if I could do it.
I first got into making music when
one of the childhood friends got an electric guitar
and he showed me that he could play
""Come As You Are"" by Nirvana,
and then I had to learn how to play it.
(playing ""Come As You Are"")
Yeah, still got it.
Knowing you, you also skate, you like a challenge.
- [Rob] I do, and with instruments,
you can express yourself in a different way.
You get a sonic outcome.
If you learn a trick,
(playing guitar)
you end up with a different sound
that you can use practically in songs, or videos in my case,
that you can express yourself.
I don't know, there's no musical reason
to do a hurricane top soul.
- [Craig] You can't really write a song with skate tricks.
- No, I mean maybe.
Andrew Huang probably could.
- [Andrew Voiceover] PPAP.
(tapping and whistling)
- Number five on the list is brought up by dave475.
It stores memories.
"I can listen to music from high school
"that I haven't thought about in 10 years
"and immediately have an awesome time,
"still knowing every word or nearly every chord."
Whenever I hear an old DPC song, like this one,
I'm reminded of practices we had when we were writing it,
performances, I remember the very first moment
that Matt introduced this riff.
It's like time travel.
Yeah, it's like I can almost feel what you're feeling.
Back to that book again, Daniel Levitin,
who is a neuroscientist and a musician,
says there's a very strong connection
between memory and music.
"It would not be hyperbole to say that
"without memory, there would be no music.
"Music works because we remember the tones
"that we have just heard and are relating them
"to the ones that are just now being played.
"Music communicates to us emotionally
"through systematic violations of expectations."
Like if I just play this monotonous note,
(playing one note continuously)
Doesn't really feel like much.
But if I do this, (plays dissonant chord)
that's a stronger emotion.
But having expectations at all requires memory,
and Daniel has some stuff to say about it
involving the brain, which brings us to the next
thing.
Brain reasons!
"The amygdala, long considered the seat of emotions
"in mammals, sits adjacent to the hippocampus,
"long considered the crucial structure for memory storage.
"Every neuroimaging study that my laboratory has done
"has shown amygdala activation to music,
"but not to random collections of sounds or musical tones."
So basically, like, music makes us emotional
because of memory, or whatever, in theory.
There are many, many, many other brain reasons
why we like music that I'm not gonna go into here,
but here's a few tidbits that I didn't know were true
until I started making this video.
"Music listening, performance, and composition
"engage nearly every area of the brain
"that we have so far identified,
"and involve nearly every neural subsystem."
"Pitch is so important that the brain
"represents it directly;
"unlike almost any other musical attribute,
"we could place electrodes in the brain
"and be able to determine what pitches were being played
"to a person just by looking at the brain activity."
That's crazy, that's like we have a piano in our brain,
and I like to think that that piano
is being played by a monkey. (discordant piano playing)
Monkeys!
That brings us to the last thing on the list,
evolutionary reasons.
One reason sound causing emotions could be useful is that,
you know, you hear a lion roaring,
it's gonna cause fear, you're gonna run the other way,
you're gonna survive.
Or you hear a chicken clucking,
you're gonna run towards it to eat it.
Well, at least you would have before.
We have grocery stores now.
Or you might be vegan, the point is it helped for survival.
Some believe music doesn't have
an evolutionary purpose at all.
Psychologist Dan Sperber says that music is
an evolutionary parasite.
We just gain the ability to make
different pitches and sounds for communication,
and music just kind of happened alongside it.
Or it could be the equivalent of a giant peacock's tail,
if you're good at music, you're just gonna
attract more mates. (cartoon bouncing sound)
People could think, "Well, if this person was
"committed enough to get good at music,
"they will be committed to family."
And that's definitely true today.
Name one musician that isn't a dependable family member.
Another possibility is music's ability to
bring people together and strengthen bonds
could have helped societies work together and survive.
But I think the thing we can say for certain is that
no one knows for certain.
Regardless--
- It's a multifaceted tool.
- It really is.
Music's pretty great.
I think that's the conclusion I'll come to.
- It's pretty good!
- [Craig] Music's pretty good.
- Let's keep it going.
- There's a couple other things I want to mention
that I just couldn't fit in a list
that I just found interesting.
I found this video about how deaf people
can enjoy music just like anyone.
- My body feels like, when I dance,
it feels like an earthquake.
- And a commenter on my second channel, WheezyNews,
brought up musical anhedonia,
which involves an individual's incapacity
to enjoy listening to music.
Apparently affects 3-5% of the population,
so if you don't enjoy music,
that's fine.
And if you want to learn a lot more detail
that I just couldn't fit in this video,
you should check out the book,
""This Is Your Brain On Music,""
also ""Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain""
by Oliver Sacks, and David Byrne's book,
which Nate recommended, and many of you recommended,
""How Music Works.""
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(high piano note)