BONUS EPISODE Creating Music with Jarrett Sleeper and David Bashwiner

The promised follow up bonus episode to our biomusicology episode with theoretical, neuro- and biomusicologist Dr David Bashwiner. This one is guest hosted by Podmother Jarrett Sleeper and we steer the discussion more toward the process of creating music, where creativity comes from, the relationship between theory, technique, and creativity, how to unleash or access one’s own creativity, synthesizers, whether new sounds are possible, emulation vs simulation, music as it exists in nature, whether or not animals use instruments, and perhaps a bit about the effects of drugs on mixing? Visit Dr. Bashwiner’s website and follow him on Google Scholar A donation went to Gaza Hand of Salvation Initiative You can find Jarrett on Instagram and Bandcamp More episode sources and links Other episodes you may enjoy: Genocidology (CRIMES OF ATROCITY), Mnemonology (MEMORY), Eudemonology (HAPPINESS), Molecular Neurobiology (BRAIN CHEMICALS), Salugenology (WHY HUMANS REQUIRE HOBBIES), Ornithology (BIRDS), Mantodeology (PRAYING MANTISES), Primatology (APES & MONKEYS), Misophonology (DISTRACTING SOUND & NOISE RAGE), Attention-Deficit Neuropsychology (ADHD), Funology (YES, FUN) 400+ Ologies episodes sorted by topic Smologies (short, classroom-safe) episodes Sponsors of Ologies Transcripts and bleeped episodes Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, hoodies, totes! Follow Ologies on Instagram and Bluesky Follow Alie Ward on Instagram and TikTok Editing by Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio Productions and Jake Chaffee Managing Director: Susan Hale Scheduling Producer: Noel Dilworth Transcripts by Aveline Malek Website by Kelly R. Dwyer Theme song by Nick Thorburn

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alie Ward?

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• 0:44Alie Ward?

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• 1:09Speaker 01

  Oh, hey. It's your neighbor who's doing throwing knives in the backyard in the middle of the day again. What's his deal, anyway? I think his wife has a podcast or something? Jarrett Sleeper here. That's right, it's your Podmother. And I'm here with a bonus episode. It's like a little DVD extra, a special feature, a companion piece to the biomusicology episode that went up earlier this week. And yeah, did we say it would go up Friday? And now it's Saturday night? Sure, but who's really keeping track of stuff like that? Ally invited me to sit in and ask some more questions of the incredible guest, Dr. David Bashwiner. She said it's because I make music sometimes, and she thought it might be interesting to have someone who sometimes does that

• 1:53Speaker 01

  ask some questions. And I thought, well, I'm so honored that you asked me to do that. Sure, I'd love to.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Also, you know what's so crazy? After the interview, Dr. Bashwiner and I realized I went to a whole bunch of grade school with his little brother. Isn't that so weird? Isn't the world so small and weird? Spooky stuff. And that's just one of the sorts of things we talk about, spooky stuff, on this very bonus episode, which means it's more raw than usual and doesn't have any asides or patron questions or anything like that. But hopefully you will enjoy it anyway and come along with us as we talk about a whole bunch more biomusicology stuff like the weird experience of creation, the weird spooky experience of creation, where creativity may come from, whether or not animals use instruments, whether or not the 12-note

• 2:40Speaker 01

  scale exists in nature amongst the animals, synthesizers, why we instinctively know the difference between purring and growling, and more with biomusicologist Dr. David Bashwiner.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  I'm very excited. I'm very honored to be allowed to do this. This is fun. I have a lot of...

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Me too. I can't believe I got to meet both of you in a single day.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Well, this is so funny, because this happened a little bit when I do get to tag along in Ally's interviews. I always feel like I get to be like in the Ask Not Smart Questions thing. I get to ask the really dumb ones, you know? I really go into the conspiracy realm with the nuclear physicists and stuff. And I ask like, did the aliens teach us this? Tell me the truth, you know, whatever. But so I'm really excited about this. Okay, I'm gonna try to keep it to that realm of creation of music, because I find that process very mysterious and mystical. Okay, one, here, I'll start with this one. My experience of creation, at least when I think it is good, is that it comes from somewhere else rather

• 4:02Speaker 01

  than from myself, that there's a channeling feeling that happens. And sometimes when I'm trying to make it from myself or so, it's very frustrating. It like doesn't happen, it doesn't come. So I'm curious if there is any kind of, I loved what you said at the end of the interview about this unifying feeling, this like meta being that is created by music. So is there anything in your field of study? That speaks to this experience of inspiration or it coming from elsewhere, the way music sometimes flows and sometimes won't come at all.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  I mean, yes. Yeah. One of the first papers I did in neuroscience was like, it ended up being about the default mode network, which you guys have talked about sometimes because like that somehow associated with creativity. And so like the way it's defined is like in the 90s, it's Reichel. I can't remember Reichel's first name, but he has the first paper, I think, on the default mode network. And maybe that was 2001. But leading up to that, you know, he and other researchers would be like, it's weird. We give someone a task and we, you know, we see certain things light up. And then we tell them to just look at the cross at the center of the screen when there's no task. And it's not like every, the brain's just going to sleep or doing less stuff. It's like doing something totally different. So there's certain regions

• 5:18Speaker 02

  that are more active when you're not doing anything than when you're doing the thing. For some reason, like default mode network gets like, I don't know. I just like, it's gotten like a little warped about what it means in like popular sense. So once researchers like my, my colleague Rex Young has done a lot of work on this. And, and when you get people in the scanner who are being creative, who are doing divergent thinking, for instance, like tell me all the things you could do with a cactus. When you're thinking of those things or people who do that better than others, there seems to be a little bit more activity in the default mode network. And the default mode network is connected with like your memory,

• 6:02Speaker 02

  but it's complex because sometimes it's about like generating completely new thoughts that are not memory based, but sometimes it might be, maybe you can't do that without your memory in some way. So.

• 6:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's actually kind of does a little question I had about instruments and just sounds and, and how they relate to the development of music and new sounds. That like what you were just saying, can you make something new that's not iterating off memory? Maybe, probably not. But like, okay. So something I've been fascinated about thinking about modern music is in some ways it feels like this cool thing happened for a long time. With every development of technology, like electricity, we get this electric guitar sound. The synthesizer invent is invented. Sampling is a thing that becomes possible with like computers and and how those will be come repurposed into a new instrument. And that sometimes now it feels like we figured all of the sounds out we could make and now there's iterations and remixing happening with like,

• 6:57Speaker 01

  I'm gonna take this sound of like sixties doo-wop and then I'm gonna mix in, you know, this weird sampling thing from scratch or something like that. So I'm wondering,

• 7:08Speaker 01

  do you think, can we make new sounds? Like, are there gonna be new instruments? Or like, how does that impact the creation of music? Are new things under the sun possible or are we just reiterating things that have existed since we were banging on rocks?

• 7:25Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, I think synthesis like synthesis is totally new. And everything that comes from it.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Really? What do you mean? Like, in what sense? Cause synthesis, when we say synthesis on a synthesizer, it's literally, isn't it literally like creating a vibration, a Hertz, a sequence from scratch? And that's basically mimicking what we're doing with instruments.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  It ends up being really useful to have a keyboard that has patches already there that can mimic instruments because we like to hear those things. So it's like you, if you're making a piece with synths, you need to have like your pads all in one place and your mono synths in one place and your bass sounds in one place and your drum sounds in one place. Like, you need to label them that way because that's how our minds create things. But that's very practical if you just think about like the the fact that a synth, like you could start with a sign tone. And then if you just add one more sign tone and do the binaural beats thing I was talking about before, you can just move the number of Hertz it's at a tiny bit and you can just create a rhythm out of it.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  If you add in one other thing and that kind of doesn't really exist, just like in nature, it's certainly not imitating anything. And if you add just one more thing to that, let's say you just add a third oscillator, that's maybe, maybe that third oscillator is doing a different rhythm. You now all of a sudden have something that is infinitely complex. Even though it might still be really simple, but it's just three things, like you can't predict what's gonna happen. And it doesn't have anything to do with anything that you've heard before.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Well, that's actually so. Okay, one thing I always think about is our tendency to separate things into parts. Like, one thing I think about, like, in working out, you're like, I'm doing cardio, or I'm doing stretching, or I'm doing strength. But when a tiger runs and climbs a tree, it's not thinking about the different things. And like, something you just said is like, if I make a sine wave, I'm creating a tone, but then if I adjust something in there, now it's a rhythm. It's a rhythm and a tone. And that in nature, there's really no difference between rhythm, section, and bass, or, you know, it's just animals make it.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  But there is it our body, if you think about like, like, if you go back to the, the reason I like to pay attention to like, the various rhythms that are available in the body, is because the fact that delta aligns so perfectly with the tempos that we use suggests like, oh, you know, if you take a piece and you speed it up and you do it faster than delta, faster than four times a second, it's not like you can't hear it anymore. It's just like, it does no longer functions as a beat. It's just like, if you're doing this, you start hearing this as the beat. Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  That's like engines. Like, you know, you can hear, you sometimes can hear like a musicality and like engines of cars, like a little bit like sputtering, and then it starts to go.

• 10:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Like some synthesizers, they make that, and they're one of my favorite little catnip to my ears sounds. Using the beats, I interrupt you on the beats.

• 10:27Speaker 02

  Synthesizers, I think, are like, the thing is like, anything can be synthesized, just like with a 3D printer in that sense. It's like, it's fundamentally new synthesizers. And then synthesis, all the things that you've mentioned, I think, like, come off of the fact that synthesizers can do what they do. Even if it's sampling, they're still, I don't know, they don't, maybe not necessarily doing it with synthesizers, but at least. I don't know, we could say that those things are related. Yeah. But I personally have a big issue, like in my role in academia. I don't know, when I went to college, it was like they told us that anything that we'd heard before was stupid. The music we already liked.

• 11:08Speaker 02

  I have a question about this. Yeah, okay. Yeah, and then they're like, you have to, you should write the new music. And then, right, this is more like an academic thing. But in academia, it was just like, I just didn't learn anything in college that was actually useful. I just learned how to, I studied, you know, I wrote like new music for 10 years. And at the end, I was, I knew enough about it to be like, oh yeah, they were wrong. They were lying to me. But then I'd wasted 10 years and also not learned anything about composition. So like a goal in my life is to try to make it so that kids can learn stuff that I think is actually valuable in college about music. And I feel like the focus on the new, it's somehow inseparable from what I see as a problem.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  Like, okay, so Patricia Bowden, I think it's, I think her name is Patricia. But someone Bowden from, has a cognitive scientist that has this distinction between P creativity and H creativity. P is personal. And H is historical. So if you have a kid that's doing a drawing and then they say, look, it's a car. And then you say, that has already been done.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Okay. It's not very good. Try again. Like, that's a horrible thing to say to a kid, right? You're like, and it doesn't make any sense because you're applying H creativity idea to them. What you really need to do for a kid, for, it's obvious for a kid, you need to be like, whoa, that is so much better than anything you've ever done before. Or you don't even have to say that, you just like, anytime they're making something, you're like, that's great. So if you're thinking about yourself as an adult now and you're picking up the guitar for the first time. So Ali, you're gonna do this, or maybe ukulele, and you write your first song. Like objectively, your first song, that's actually probably is gonna be pretty interesting. But like, you're not even allowed to think about that. You just need to go and write your first song.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  And then that is gonna be momentous, right? It's really important that we all, like all of us are thinking. In the P creativity sense, like, that is the first song that you wrote. So like, you should not compare it to someone else's song.

• 13:25Speaker 02

  So in college, yeah, there's this thing of applying always the H creativity thing. You know, it's like, I think it's like logically wrong to say you should not learn to compose like anyone who's ever composed before, like Beethoven or Bach or Miles Davis or someone like that, because it's already been done. That is confusing, like, educational process, which really, like, needs you to focus on P creativity, confuses that with H creativity. And there's this idea, like, you can train people to make H creative things. But those aren't gonna be any good.

• 14:04Speaker 01

  That's very validating. Because, okay, I have this theory, I try to, I say, I just think true art cannot be bad. Accessing what that truth is may be more or less difficult for different people. But I was gonna actually ask you about this, because something I see, an insecurity from my end is lack of technical ability, goes, this isn't good enough, this isn't new enough, this is like so derivative. Even if it feels earnest to me, this sucks. And on the other side, I have some very close friends who are genius technicians. They're, they have so much knowledge and, and they have difficulty. And I always say to them, fucking, if I had your ability, I'd be so annoying. I'm already putting my shit online all the time.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Why, what, why can't you get to your voice? And so what advice do you have, or what thoughts do you have, or what has worked to, I'm gonna start on the people who already know shit side first, because I think that's a tougher problem, it seems like, is breaking yourself out of the H creative problem, breaking yourself out of, this is how things are supposed to sound, this is the context I'm already in, like, getting rid of that and accessing that weird channel-y personal creativity. How do you do that?

• 15:17Alie Ward?

  Also, are drugs involved?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Yes, and if drugs are involved.

• 15:21Alie Ward?

  Like, they used to have budgets in the seventies for cocaine.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  No, that's the whole, what'd they say, the, um, the fader or something? The fader operator, they had a budget in the, in the line, I think it was.

• 15:34Alie Ward?

  The line item? That's the guy that does the fader.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  But really, that was just their coke budget. Yeah, they would hide it. Also, also a drugs impact, apparently, apocryphally, maybe, they say, uh, the mixes in the eighties was a coke mix. That's why it's so like, uh, the higher frequencies are always pushed.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  I think about, okay, pred, the album Presence by Zeppelin. That's like, that album is so, like, I think they named it that because it's so high frequency. And it's like, it's weird to listen to. And Jimmy, that's when Jimmy Page was like, really, really, really going through like, very serious like opiate, you know, like heroin addiction. And Robert Plant, I think, had just injured himself too. So he wasn't as well like, but I'm just guessing that whatever drug was dominant for Jimmy Page at the time, he would be in the studio and in the mixing engineer would be doing stuff and Jimmy Page would be like, no, no, we need more presence. Like more super high frequency.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  And then the guy would be like, what are you talking about? You know, like, this is way too trebly already. And Jimmy Page would be like, turn up the presence. I want, you know, like, I think that's how it got that name. And also that could happen from hearing damage, but I'm, I think, I think the way drugs work, like drugs are going to modulate all different aspects of both what you, how you hear and also what you like about how you hear. So, yeah, the story of, I just think would be super fascinating to go through, let's say, twentieth century, different artists and if you can track like which drugs they're on at different phases of their career, because I think it's like,

• 17:12Speaker 02

  so music making is a feedback loop, right? Like by definition, almost like, when I talk, my brain tunes out my voice. If I sing, huh, my brain is allowing the sound of my voice to interact with the sound I'm making so that I can tune the sound I'm making to the sound of my own voice, which comes a little bit later. If we talk, we have to tune that out. But if we sing, you're like holding a note long enough that you can tune it to itself. And then, you know, when you play with others, you're always like tuning what you're doing to what they're doing. So it's always a feedback loop of motor behavior out,

• 17:51Speaker 02

  then taking in the sensory consequences of that and then tuning your ongoing motor behavior relative to those things. So drugs of all different sorts are gonna, in some sense, either change your hearing.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Or change your motor behavior, or change something about like the how efficient, right, the timing is of that sensory feedback feeding into your motor apparatus. And it's gonna also presumably change what you like. So even if it didn't change the sensory consequences and the motor behavior, it would change the your dopamine and endogenous opioid response to whatever you're hearing. So you're gonna like different things. You're gonna like different ways of responding to other musicians.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, well, that ties in back to the first question about how to access your creativity. I think maybe part of that even is like, how do you gain confidence in what you like? You know?

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Okay, so I mean, one thing is when I start off the year in music theory for my students, I say like, music theory can be dangerous. Like especially for the people who are more creative. It has the ability, if you learn too much music theory ahead of the rate at which you're exploring music and figuring stuff out, then it has the potential to shut down your exploration. So it's better like for people who like write songs and compose like I want everyone to be like that, but for someone who just wants to play the clarinet, like it isn't as dangerous for them, they might not ever actually get to the point where they're like, they're gonna figure that stuff out on their own.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  So it is very good for them to take music theory. But for people who are super creative, it's better for them to be ahead of whatever we learn in music theory class in their creative exploration. So like, I like to think of it as like, you're walking around your house at night in the dark, or just walking around anywhere with your eyes closed. You have to use all your other senses. You have to like feel things and listen in a different way to feel what you're doing. And like creativity happens when you're like at that place where you don't know what you're doing.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:09Speaker 02

  And I think that theory is really incredible, like as scaffolding to help you understand the stuff that you're already sort of doing to then open up like the next doors in all these ways. So it's like whatever your learning level is or knowledge level in say, music theory. To be creative, you always have to be on the edge, like, ahead of it, like, being like, what is out here?

• 20:38Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  But, you know, I love music theory, and it's not better to not learn theory, because if you're just trying to be creative and not learn theory, you really usually get bored of it. Like, you do some stuff for a while, and then you just lose interest.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  I also just find, I get frustrated with lack of theory, like, of some, but just, or lack of technical knowledge. And this is where some of the fun stuff happens, because I'll have a sound in my head, and I'm trying to make it, and I can't figure out where it is. And then if I go to the YouTube, or the music theory books that I have, or eventually kind of, oh, okay, and things start to unlock. And that's a very exciting experience, to have new tools, to do new things, that like, help you connect from the sounds you're hearing or feeling, and making them out in the world. Yes?

• 21:29Alie Ward?

  Is that like, is that like, writing versus editing? You know how, I mean, not, again, not to, not to focus on substances, but I think Hemingway said, like, write drunk, edit sober. But like, my editing brain is really different from my writing brain. And if I'm trying to write with my editing brain, it fucking sucks. But if I let myself be weird and bad writing, then I can edit later. Is that kind of like, I wonder, with your friends who are really good engineers and stuff, if they're editing as they're writing, are those different parts of the brain?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  So, give a slightly roundabout answer, but that's exactly the right question.

• 22:06Alie Ward?

  Okay.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  A good brilliant question. Okay, so, this is another thing about like, how I teach theory. So, there are these exercises, there's called species counterpoint. And like, I tell the students that they are like crossword puzzle exercises. So I give them a melody that's just in whole notes. Like, a common one is,

• 22:32Speaker 02

  and they have to write another melody that goes with it, a counterpoint to it. So if that's, they can start on this one, they can start on this note, those are two options.

• 22:45Speaker 02

  If they were started on this note, then they can go to,

• 22:50Speaker 02

  yeah, anyway, there's some other options. But they have to follow like these very limiting set of rules to be able to solve a problem. And that I think is like it's using your musical logic, but you're in a sense just solving a crossword puzzle. And then when you play it, it ends up sounding, you're like, oh, it's sounding beautiful. But you're using just logic to do it. And then that's like the first species and second species. You introduce one more thing that they're allowed to do, third species, fourth species, et cetera. I like teaching creativity in that way because calling it crossword puzzle logic means all they have to do is solve the problem. They're not allowed to say, oh, but I just like this one thing.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  So that forces them to use this musical logic to solve problems. And along the way, they are learning their ability to use to like the, the ability to bring music into the mind and manipulate the relationships of things like you do with grammar, like you do when you're solving a crossword puzzle. You know, like there's a clue and then you have to think of all the possible ways. Oh, you just started doing crossword puzzles. I did, yeah. I was doing them last night. Yeah, the, you have to think of all the possible meanings that a word has. You also have to think of all the different ways that letters work.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Like a T can come after an S, but it can't come after a D, that kind of thing. So if you're talking about on an instrument, your fingers can do certain things. And if you're writing just for yourself, let's say playing guitar, then if you're writing for yourself to play it, then you can only do the things that your fingers can do. If you are like imagining a piece that you don't have to play yourself, in some sense, you could imagine stuff that your fingers can't do. But everything you study with your fingers is going to help you imagining the thing that you want to do. This species counterpoint idea is almost like developing the fingers of the mind. Mm hmm.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  And like the final part of this, I think is like really, I think it's so beautiful. There's an article by Dietrich and Hyder from 2015, maybe on creativity. And they make this distinction between emulation and simulation. So the example they give is if you wanted to make a piece of music that sounded like the ocean waves. That would have to be simulation because we, our minds can't do ocean waves. But if you wanted to make a piece of music that is something like what your fingers can do on a piano, that's emulation because your motor system can do those things. So with creativity, when you're imagining something like, sometimes it's the case like,

• 25:41Speaker 02

  you might like imagine flying or imagine something that you can just envision almost like a third person sort of thing and that's simulation and we do that. But it's a different kind of creativity where, when you're working with the simulation system, the things that your motor system can do, including like your creative motor system. And so that I like to think of as like that scaffolding, like building structures

• 26:13Speaker 02

  with this syntax of the motor apparatus. And then you get to jazz musicians who, to improvise, you have to practice improvising. So what they're doing all day is they're practicing scales and arpeggios and practicing moving from one to the other. They're practicing the use of the, they're building these things into their motor apparatus so that in the moment of improvisation, they have so much freedom in this emulation sense where simulation doesn't help you at all in improvisation scenario. So when we're getting at like, how do you teach creativity? And going back to me talking about my students and why I do the species kind of point thing.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  And also tying into the H creativity and P creativity. It's like, even though other people have done species kind of before, I really think it's important to get the students to practice this motor system development of the mind and get them to be able to emulate more and more complex musical textures that gives them this freedom to generate creatively complex musical ideas.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  And then to, you know, like reward that in the P creativity sense. And that should give them freedom to make their own rules and to think things that haven't been thought before in the H creativity sense, but through doing stuff that is P creativity.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  It's kind, it feels like, uh, it made me think of like cooking, that like, you can make a burger a million times, a million different ways. And as you gain technique and experience with how salt affects what you're doing, how heat, high heat, low heat, how the, what you, oil you put in the pan and at what time, all those kinds of things. These will all affect how good or bad the burger is. And it's still maybe the same burger you had when you were a kid, but that doesn't make it any less delicious or meaningful. And also will always be unique to the moment in which you made the burger and the time of year you got the ingredients and from where, you know what I mean? Like, and there's nothing lesser, or even it feels it's not even more historical, it remains personal despite being

• 28:28Speaker 01

  a recognizable thing and still very satisfying and very meaningful.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Hey, cutting in real quick here because we need to have an ad break and also because Ally said I could pick the charity this week and that charity is going to be the Gaza Hand of Salvation Initiative. It's one that you may already know about if you've been following Ally in the pod for a while. It's very direct mutual aid to some people who are frankly being brutalized in Gaza. Every time I see them post about the very modest money they've received and how they using it to buy basic ingredients to prepare food, to just feed people in their community or to replace a solar panel that's been destroyed. It makes me cry. What they're surviving is so goddamn evil. I can't describe it. People are people

• 29:15Speaker 01

  everywhere in the world and it's so unbelievably unfair that just because of where we're born, some of us can just order DoorDash and watch TV and some of us are hoping we aren't starved or bombed just for existing in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's making me emotional as it always does. On top of it, they keep getting booted off Instagram and stuff like that. Again, for the terrible crime of existing as Palestinians and talking about it. Can't have that. Can't have the world know what's still going on over there. Anyway, in a world where it really seems like you can't do fucking anything to stop your tax dollars from funding a genocide, at least you can try to help some people there get some fucking dinner. Details about finding them on Chuffed can be found in the show notes. And thank you Mercedes,

• 30:00Speaker 01

  who has been the lead on keeping us in contact with them and her continued advocacy for these people who are just like you and me. As always, if you're interested in learning more about war crimes, humanitarian law, and genocide, check out our Genesiology episode with Dr. Dirk Moses.

• 30:16Alie Ward?

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• 33:19Speaker 01

  Okay, back to the show. When you were talking about the emulation simulation, so you said if it sounds like the ocean, am I doing emulation or simulation if I sit down and I go, I want it to sound like when I was sad at the ocean?

• 33:32Speaker 02

  Well, that, okay, that's still simulation.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I'm gonna fill in one little blank in here, which is like, I was trying to figure out at the time, like, why is it that composers can, when you're in a dream, your mind can generate music? And/or like just a semi-dreamlike state? A lot of composers say that, songwriters. Happens to me. It's like, I just know after all these years that if my mind generates something in a dream or a dreamlike state, then like, I just need to write it down or record it, capture it, because that stuff is gold. That is the best stuff. And if you allow yourself to think, like, in the moment, like, is this any good? Like, it's gonna seem not good. You're gonna be like, this is stupid. But it always is just brilliant.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  But it's so wacky to try and figure out, how is it? It's, if you try to figure out, like, how can my brain generate something without me? Like, it's both like a silly question, but it's also like, yeah, but how can it? Right? Like, why can my brain generate a melody better than I can? Because I am my brain. There's something about this.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Hands-off generative

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 02

  State. And that's the, this question that you were asking earlier. So the simulation idea is, oh, simulation emulation. I think what I came to from working through all these ideas is that if you go to sleep and wake up with some music in your head, like anything that's simulative, it can't do because somehow that dreaming brain that generates content is doing it through the motor system.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 35:10Speaker 02

  So it's doing it, it's the emulative system that the brain's going to use to generate content. And it's probably something about like acetylcholine levels and maybe like reduce serotonin and norepinephrine, something like that, that allows the motor apparatus to maybe have, do more, less common things, you know, like make more connections that are less usual that the dream state chemistry allows.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like there's an aspect of cultivating a trust in your body. Like that my body has instincts and abilities. I don't make myself breathe or I don't make my heart beats. And likewise, you know, you touch the stove, the nervous system in my body before it hits my brain is doing something, telling me, don't touch that before I can. And it feels, I, I wonder if that's part of just a creative problem overall, is like a lot of aspects of our society today, a lot of experiences of whatever, I think I would say trauma, even if it's like, you know, just emotional difficulties or, you know, the way we're educated, kind of discourages you from trusting your body. When I'm hungry, when I'm tired, if I, what my feelings actually are and disconnecting from those. So then it becomes very difficult, perhaps, especially if you've layered on top of it,

• 36:25Speaker 01

  a whole bunch of stuff about the proper and right way to do things,

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 36:28Speaker 01

  which obviously comes with a wrong way.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  Then how do you go back to going like, well, I'm just gonna go back to trusting my body like when I was a kid, just banging on drums, you know?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, that's beautiful. Like that, that question, dude, just in itself.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Well, okay, I want to dovetail off that a little about nature and music theory stuff.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Does nature, music theory as we learn it, like 12 notes? Do animals do 12 notes? Does, does it exist there?

• 36:54Speaker 02

  No, uh, but the ratios do, um.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  So, hold this for a second.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the mono. We saw your YouTube. We were watching.

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, it's good, right? My dog banana, did you catch the end? No, she's good. Alrighty. So this is like an instrument that like supposedly Pythagoras invented. And I've been doing tons of reading about like what we actually know about Pythagoras. But yeah, there's a story where he's walking through the woods. He hears the consonances. He hears like.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  He hears those sounds and he's like, what is that? And he goes and he follows them and he ends up at a blacksmith's workshop. And it's people like hammering things. And it turns out there's a tone for each hammer. So it's like this one is coming from one of the hammers. There's four different hammers. There's like a big guy with a big hammer and a little guy with a little hammer. He switches hands. He switches and the little guy with the big hammer. Anyway, it goes with the hammer, not with the guy. So it's not how they're hitting it. It's the hammer itself. He weighs the hammers. This part is not scientifically accurate, but this is how the story goes. He weighs them. He figures out they are in the ratio of six, eight to nine to 12. The two, so those numbers might not make that much sense right now,

• 38:16Speaker 02

  but the lowest one and the highest one are in the six to 12 ratio. And he's like, oh, that's an octave. And it's a six to 12 ends up being one to two ratio. So he's like, maybe an octave is a one to two ratio. That's just a guess at this point. But he takes these two and this is a six to nine. And this is a perfect fifth. Like you could sing twinkle, twinkle to it. So that makes a fifth. This guy, eight and 12, also a perfect fifth.

• 38:51Speaker 02

  Twinkle, twinkle, right? You could do it there too. And that, tho- those are both a two to three ratio. So he's like, aha, maybe a two to three ratio is a fifth. And you get the same thing with the fourth too. So six to eight ends up being three to four ratio. And that's a fourth and nine to 12. So that's a story that was used. It was probably used for like many hundreds of years in oral tradition. From the time of Pythagoras, 500 B.C. to when it was first written down in 200 A.D. And then it's like at the beginning of every music theory treatise up to the end of the 1500s.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  It gets at this idea that we, when we hear two tones, I played these two tones for Ally before. And I was like, this one is gonna be half the frequency of this one. And that's weird because long before we could compute frequency, we heard that as consonants. So Pythagoras supposedly invented this instrument to demonstrate these principles. The instrument is just like one long string, so it's called a monochord. You put a movable bridge in the center. And it, right now, it's, I have the, you know, I've measured it's 36 inches wide. And so I have the bridge at 18 inches. I play one side of the string.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  And then I play the other one. It's very quiet, but hmm hmm, they're unison. That's not surprising because the two strings are the same exact length. Hmm, brilliant idea. Okay, now I'm going to move the bridge. I've divided the string into three parts. So it's 36 inches, so it's 12 and 24. The 24 side is longer, so it's gonna be a lower tone. Um, and the side that is one third of that. Hmm, two, three, oh, anyway. So this ratio of three to two gives a perfect fifth.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  That's the same numbers that we were talking about before. If you do it, uh, here I have, one side of the string is, is the length of four things to three things. So four, um, um, four to three is a perfect fourth. And if I kept going, I get four to five. Hmm, sorry, I don't know sounds.

• 41:28Speaker 02

  Major third. They kept going, five to six as a minor third. So those intervals, let's go back to the animal question. It's like this recently, in the last 10 years, someone reported that those ratios really are found in some animal songs. It's not as common in animals as it is in human music, but it's not as common in human speech as it is in human music. And the most important thing is, this might take me a second, but

• 42:19Speaker 02

  any, I'm not doing, like, I'm, I'm using my mouth to filter, to mute certain frequencies to make other ones louder. But every time I sing the note, this one, then there are other sounds that go simultaneously.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Those are just present in that sound. And the reason why this is B flat is, I don't know, maybe about 110. So we'll call this 120. So if this is 120, then that means you get vibrations at 120, 240, 360, 480, et cetera. And those give you these notes. 120, 240, 360, 480, et cetera. So it means every time you hear a pitch with a voice, not just a human voice, but any animal voice, you're getting a collection of tones that are always in those ratios. So

• 43:21Speaker 02

  When we hear two tones simultaneously, we judge them based on this measure, this ruler-like thing, which is the harmonic series. Like, we can hear like, we have names for them, but we hear like, oh, that's an octave, that's a fifth. And a lot of people want to say that's because we learn it from vocalizations. But that almost certainly is not the case, because even fish process sound in this way. All vertebrates, if you use vocal cords and you generate a periodicity through it in the tube of the throat, and then you shape it with, you know, your face, which is what all, at least all tetrapod vertebrates do, you're always getting harmonic series with every tone you sing.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  So the way it turns out, what turns out is like, the auditory system in vertebrates has evolved with the, the most important thing is to pay attention to voices. Like, other sounds matter, but voices matter the most. And other sounds don't have redundancy in this way, whereas voices are always structured in this way. So the auditory system has developed to take all tones that it's hearing, try to make sense of them according to, you know, this mathematical relationship, and then allow those specific sounds, which are voices, to drive the brain the most.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  So then, is music theory similar to other physics or math or whatever, where it's us identifying patterns and communicate them to ourselves? So we can, not to say this is exactly what reality is, but this is the best way we have of understanding reality and a way we can recognize this pattern and this happening of vibration and sound, you know?

• 45:12Speaker 02

  In a sense, okay. I, one more thing about Pythagoras is like, the way, what he's mostly known for is for saying, there's a macrocosm out there. There's a microcosm inside, and the interface between the two is like music. We don't know exactly that he felt exactly like, but that's at least like the main idea. And so, some of the examples I gave, like with the moons of Jupiter, like, those follow this, the one to two to, two to four ratio, those are harmonic ratios. If you look at the, up in the hall, I have a picture of the asteroids of the solar system. As they coordinate with Jupiter and Saturn and they fall along, you know, there's musical ratios.

• 45:56Speaker 02

  Those ratios I just showed you, like, they are stable in all kinds of dynamical systems. Anytime you get oscillators interacting with one another, there are stabilities that happen in those systems, and the stabilities happen relative to the simple ratios. So you see music like things in the external world. The nervous system is also a collection of oscillators. So nervous systems, even if we weren't making auditory sounds or music, would still have some sort of harmonic relationships within them. Our, by the way, we walk has within it harmonic ratios, like one to two ratios of like legs to trunk movements and stuff like that.

• 46:39Speaker 02

  And then the fact that voices come from a vibrator that generates harmonics and go through a tube that shapes it. That fact, and that that's been going on through all vertebrates, like going back 500, maybe 300 million years at least. The auditory system takes advantage of that to be able to maximize its ability to detect voices. And our voices feed back. This is a principle by Michael Ryan, who's, he studies at Tuncker Frog. But his principle is called the sensory exploitation hypothesis,

• 47:19Speaker 02

  which is, it isn't just that our ears have evolved to detect voices. Yeah, it's that our, our voices evolved to maximally drive the auditory apparatus of our listeners.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 47:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like, one of the best things about this from the, from the perspective of like, what we do in music and why, is we tend to think of like, the composers or the instrumentalists as being the ones who are like, in charge. But it's the listener. And it's more complex. The listener's brain and the listener's emotional responses to things is way more complex and way more interesting and has a way more of effect, an effect on what kind of music gets made than just the mere makers.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  That's really good. I kind of want to end on that. I'm going to end on that.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Are there any animals that use instruments?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Well, spiders can use their web. Oh, mole crickets.

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Mole crickets.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Mole crickets build like a trumpet-like or like, yeah, like a tuba-like apparatus that they sing inside of. And it's definitely, it like comes out like a horn or pairs of horns. Maybe just, yeah, maybe two horns. And then they definitely tune it to give the right resonance for the sound that they're creating. So that may be your best example, mole crickets.

• 48:48Speaker 01

  That's awesome. On the same thing, related to the pant hoot display. How come we all get a sense that purring means good, but growling means bad? When they're like, sort of similar things.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's beautiful. Okay, one thing is like, if the purr didn't function as soothing and attractive, then, you know, it wouldn't be used that way. So like that feedback loop is necessary, but then you can look at, you can look at like, I mean, growling behaviors across animals are rough. They're loud. They have like unpredictable frequencies like they're, it's like non-stable. It's not like you're not singing a pure tone. It's not predictable. It's harsher upper resonances. That is something that is common for aggressive vocalizations across animals. And purring, purring is like, unique to cats?

• 49:47Speaker 01

  But I, even, even not specific cat, like, like, like this dog, my brother's husky, has like a kind of a purring thing that is very close to the growling. Sometimes we're like, is he growling or something?

• 49:58Speaker 02

  Oh, but you've done.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  But it's something like he's, uh, likes that he's getting pet.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  That's cool. Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  But I think what you said is really interesting. It sounds right about, uh, like that there's something to when they're purring that is cyclical. It is consistent. It's repeating and calming in a way.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  It's also muted. It's not got the high frequencies. It's, you know, that like, it's almost like you could say the cat is conveying to you that its body is not stiff. It's not, um, like everything that's an aggressive vocalization, either that or fear, is always.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Very rapid in loud versus quiet. Like, it might just be all loud, but fear is like.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  Right?

• 50:38Speaker 01

  The suddenness.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  Scare me, yeah. The sudden, yeah. Thank you. And like, so if I'm purring, you actually know like the status of my like,

• 50:47Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 50:48Speaker 02

  Almost like my trunk muscles, my breathing muscles.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:50Speaker 02

  Right?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Your state of tension.

• 50:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. So the one thing I would say is like, you know, our tendency is to interpret that as like, oh, the cat's giving a signal. But it's much more interesting when you get into that, the feedback thing of like, the cat in a relaxed state will start making certain types of sounds. And if they're the wrong types of sounds, they won't function as soothing and like wanting to get, you know, attract someone. So then the things, the sounds that we make that convey the state that we're in, or that that make the other person feel comfortable in the way that we want them to, regardless of meaning, are the things that end up taking on meanings. Like, we can look at cats and say like, oh, that's what the purr means.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  But it's actually, the meaning is something we add on.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's later. When I, I love that. I hear this sound and then there's a million calculations and interpretations going on in my brain that are like extrapolating. The diaphragm has to be relaxed here to do this. The cat's probably got to be relaxed to do this. And that means the cat's probably relaxed. And then it feels very much like the thing you said that I want to really end on. That feels really tied into how do we access our creativity and all that. And what you said at the end of Ally, uh, asking you questions, which is we are sort of automatically becoming this meta being just by listening. And then I start instinctively interpreting and even feeling what the, the, the sound creator is feeling.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  And I wonder if that isn't part of the key to accessing our own creativity is allowing ourselves to listen to whatever the sound that wants to be made is and just let that feedback loop keep happening.

• 52:33Speaker 02

  And with the tiny other thing, which is I, I feel like music doesn't exist unless you're doing it with another person. So, I mean, I saw one concert once where one person performed one song where he was by himself. And it was just at the audience and it was brilliant. But every other time, like solo, solo performance can be a thing if you're really connecting with the audience. That one song was just this brilliant way of connecting was like a, the song was a tool for back and forth communication between that performer and the audience. And as musicians, like you have to practice on your own. And if you're composing something, you might have to do some work by yourself. But I think like the alchemy is not there. You're putting the ingredients in the crucible, but like you're not adding that extra additional

• 53:18Speaker 02

  anima mundi or whatever. The thing that makes it magic or the thing that makes it music like, isn't there until there's actually someone else there that you, that like you're playing with and you're responding to that person like, yeah.

• 53:34Speaker 01

  That's pretty perfect. Thank you. Thanks for making a meta being with us today.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, thank you.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Thanks for letting me do this, Ali.

• 53:41Speaker 02

  My listeners, I enjoyed being a meta being.

• 53:44Speaker 01

  Hey, music.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  What a delight. What a damn delight. Thank you for letting me pod mother you. Thank you, Allison Ward, for letting me fill your rather estimable shoes for a bit. This was very fun. As usual, so many people to thank. Ali Ward, of course, primarily for, you know, everything. Thanks for letting me take the car out for a spin, dad, which is super weird, actually, in the ongoing metaphor, because if I'm pod mom, then why am I thanking your father for letting me take the car for a spin? Technically, the car is our car. We don't do that kind of patriarchy in this house, but I digress. Thank you to patrons who support us on patreon.com/ologies for as little as a dollar a month, always asking sensational questions. Thank you so much for being you.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  I believe, I really do believe this. I believe the extremely curiosity-affirming community which thrives around Ologies is genuinely making the world a better and brighter place. I want to live in a world where curiosity is really known as the virtue it is. And you all are making me believe it not only could be, but maybe even already is. Thank you, Erin Talbert, who admins, admins, who admins the Ologies Podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malik makes our professional transcripts. Kelly Dwyer does the website. Thank you also to scheduling producer Noelle Dilworth. She also teaches ballet to children and leaves lovely little gifts for you on holidays and the most unexpected times. Susan

• 55:12Speaker 01

  Hale is our managing director, also one of two totally distinct friends who told me to check out absolutely sensational action movie, The Furious. And Susan, I did. I watched an afternoon show in Burbank last week and you were right, best stuff since the Raid franchise. Astonishing material. Let's see. Thank you to the editing squad, Mercedes Maitland, Jake Chaffee, and me. Also Jake does deserve extra props again this week for his incredible musical underscoring additions he put in the Biomusicology episode, the main one. He's so knowledgeable and talented, it's really crazy. Nick Thorburn made the theme music. And then, as is the custom, if you stay to the end, you deserve

• 55:53Speaker 01

  a little treat in the form of a secret. And the secret I'm going to tell you today. Well, I had one I was gonna do about the relationship between IBS and the prostate, but I think that that is a little too gross and I'm not gonna do that one. What I'm gonna do instead is also health related in many ways. I've been experiencing this really strange thing where basically I'm like, learning to distinguish, or just asking myself the question, I guess, about whether or not I'm depressed or just content. And I think for

• 56:32Speaker 01

  so much of my life, I just had to live in extremes. And it was either really depressed or like euphoric, just this kind of like, really up, really creative, really manic, I'm really productive, really on all my good habits, or whatever the hell. And I've been lately realizing, like, it's kind of weird, it's kind of uncomfortable sometimes, where I'll be like, I'm tired, but I'm just reading a book, but I'm not sad, I'm not like messed up, I just don't feel like- Like doing stuff in an intense way and and maybe Allie will ask me like, are you okay? Are you upset? I'm like, no, I'm actually not. I feel totally fine. It's just sort of like flat in a way that's like peaceful.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  And I'm sitting there and I'm going, she's like, are you depressed? Are things okay? Which is a good thing to ask because I'm prone to that. And I'll just be really investigating inside and going, no, I think I'm just fine. I think I'm just like content. And I think that's like weirdly not a very encouraged or explored or expressed feeling in our society. It's either like, I don't know, maybe because the only way we're allowed to be okay is like if you're just like on it all the time, doing all the hundred thousand good habits you're supposed to do every day to be a complete and okay person.

• 57:57Speaker 01

  And I, I'm just starting to uh learn that maybe you're allowed to just be fine, you know? And it feels really nice. Um, I think it's also a little confusing too, and maybe challenging for both of us because like, it's also related to not masking as much. And so I, I think when I don't put on a performance of like, yeah, I'm great. Oh, everything's go, oh gosh. It's like, do you, are you mad? Are you sad? Are you weird? And I'm like, no, I'm just not performing for anyone, including myself. And so, I don't know, still navigating it. Cause I'm definitely realizing now, you know, Allie will take pictures of me or I'll see a little video and I definitely have resting bitch face. And I just have to be like, no, I'm actually not feeling bitchy at all.

• 58:39Speaker 01

  I'm just feeling like I don't have to perform for anyone because I feel safe and comfortable and just like fine. And that's weird and new. And that's my weird secret this week. All right. Thanks, guys. Thanks for letting me uh guest in here. This is really fun and um, well, make music and stuff. All right, bye bye.

• 59:19Speaker 01

  That went well, right? That's fine. Okay.