As a matter of habit, since finishing up my time in wedding land, I’ve started writing essays more often. Part of me wants to spend time training the muscle of communicating my ideas. The other part just has a lot to say. In any event, when I sat down to write this essay, my goal was to write about the stickiness of music. When I finished, I ended up somewhere slightly different.
I think a lot about sentence structure. My cardinal sin as a writer is run-on sentences. They happen because I have a lot to say, and want to say it all. But I can’t. At least, I can’t if I want to have musical writing. And to make music, my words need to flow.
It's not immediately obvious why making music is a worthwhile goal. On the face of it, making music seems hard. That's partly why it interests me. I'm interested in the secret sauce behind it all. The thing that makes music get stuck in your head. I want my words to do that. The same way ba-da-ba-ba-ba does.
To do that, I often have to rewrite my sentences.
Here’s an example of one from the first draft of this very essay:
As humans who have evolved over many years, what is it about music and particular types of music that make them so susceptible to the parts of our brain associated with memory and recall?
What a mouthful. :/
I cringe even looking at it. I’m trying to say so much, with too much. But buried in that mini monologue is a coherent thought. I wanted to ask, in plain terms, why does music get stuck in our heads anyway?
Why is it easier to remember a short jingle instead of a 400-word essay?
The answer is somewhat complicated.
You can tell a question is interesting if people disagree about what the answer should be. It doesn’t make for a good story if I tell you it only has one conclusion. So, like with anything, I’ll say it’s nuanced.
We can start with the psychology of it all.
Music has an emotional aspect to it. It makes us “feel” things. That part is obvious. What we feel and why often depends on the cultural context in which we grew up. In Western music, we regularly associate major chords with feelings of joy, happiness, and triumph, while minor chords get the unfortunate burden of sadness, gloom, and melancholy.
But these alone don't fully explain what's happening. For starters, the choice of which chords to make happy and sad is arbitrary. Each grouping of people formulates their own interpretations and then passes those interpretations down to their kids. Think things like folk music, tradition, and the like. It seems fair to say that liking a particular piece of music has more to do with what you’ve heard rather than some innate characteristic of who you are.
But the psychological experience of music only tells us that its impact will be felt. It doesn’t explain why it will stick around.
To do that, we have to look at the neurological factors as well.
Our brains are natural pattern recognition machines. In fact, the reason chess grandmasters are so adept at recalling chess positions over novices is because they’re capable of chunking together pieces of information that are otherwise disparate to beginners. If the board is a physical puzzle, they only need 4 pieces to put it together, while others need hundreds.
So it makes sense that music is just another example of a naturally occurring pattern that our brain latches onto. Music helps to thread the needle that makes the complex, simple. No other tool on the planet has such raw power. Most importantly, music creates shared language.
It’s simple. Humans are social beings, and music makes us social.
With music, you can transform the nature of any relationship. You can make strangers, friends. You can also make friends, enemies.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the groups that figure out how to work together the best are most likely to survive, and if a chant, a jingle, or an outright song can aid in that process even a little, the humans that make it out are likely to have a bit more rhythm.
So why does any of this matter?
Because we can and should use this information to make more music in the world.
We can’t leave the important work of unifying ourselves to people who decide to call themselves musicians. For starters, no one man (or person) should have all that power. But more importantly, it’s one of the few permissionless responsibilities we have. Anyone can be a musician, and everyone should.
Each of us has a role to play in making the kind of music that helps strengthen our social bonds with one another.
My wife and I joke about creating our own toy language so we can encrypt messages to each other in public insecure channels, but maybe we should be making music.
When we realize that music making is a social obligation, we have an opportunity to help bridge at least some of the divisions that our country and world face.
It won’t save everything, but we have to learn to use what we’ve got to get what we want. In a world where community is shrinking and loneliness is on the rise, music might be our best chance at healing some of that gap. So make some music. Not just for yourself, but for those around you, and if we all can, then that’s music to my ears.