The Art of Manliness - Why You Like the Music You Do

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:11.100 what albums and songs are getting a lot of play on your spotify or itunes app currently

00:00:15.620 my guests would say that the music you put in heavy rotation comes down to your unique

00:00:20.520 listener profile her name is susan rogers and she's a music producer turned neuroscientist

00:00:25.720 as well as the co-author of this is what it sounds like what the music you love says about you

00:00:30.660 today on the show susan unpacks the seven dimensions of music and how they show up along

00:00:35.300 a varying spectrum in every song she explains how everyone has an individualized taste for the

00:00:40.140 configuration of these dimensions and that how closely a particular song aligns with this pattern

00:00:44.660 of sweet spots accounts for whether you like it or not along the way we discuss artists that

00:00:49.600 exemplify these dimensions how frank sinatra injected virility into his music how part of

00:00:54.640 your musical taste has to do with the way you prefer to move your body and much more

00:00:58.500 after the show's over check out our show notes at a wimp.is slash music

00:01:02.760 all right susan rogers welcome to the show hi brett thanks for having me on i'm looking forward

00:01:23.700 to our conversation so you're a professor of cognitive neuroscience and you got a new book

00:01:28.080 out called this is what it sounds like and what you do is you take readers through the seven key

00:01:33.520 dimensions of any song and how the different ways people you know respond to those dimensions make up

00:01:39.640 what you call a person's listener profile and what's interesting about you is that before you were

00:01:44.860 a cognitive neuroscientist you were a successful music producer and the story of how you became a music

00:01:50.880 producer is really fascinating so how did a led zeppelin concert lay the stepping stone for you

00:01:57.600 to become a music producer and then eventually a cognitive neuroscientist thanks it's a good question

00:02:04.160 i'll try to be brief but i got married when i was 17 years old i just kind of had to because of a sort

00:02:12.240 of a tumultuous home life with a long illness from my mother and passing away young getting married was a

00:02:17.700 good option when i was 17 unfortunately the person i was married to was really jealous and possessive

00:02:23.680 of my love of music so we didn't go to concerts and it was hard to uh it was hard to engage with music

00:02:30.380 anyway he when i was around 21 years old i got permission from him to go with my friends to a led zeppelin

00:02:37.840 concert which just happened to be the song remains the same tour at the forum in los angeles and

00:02:42.900 i was under strict orders to be home by 10 30 which i thought i could do because the ticket said they go

00:02:49.120 on at i don't know eight o'clock or whatever it was but they didn't even take the stage until after

00:02:53.340 nine so for the sake of peace at home i had to leave that concert early which was just devastating but

00:02:58.980 i was at the forum in la and i made my little silent vow looking up to the rafters and pledging

00:03:05.060 to those rafters that i'd be back there someday and i would mix live sound for an amazing band and

00:03:10.560 no one was going to tell me to leave and through quite a lot of gumption and determination to get

00:03:18.500 out of that bad marriage and start my career ultimately eight years later i sort of kind of made it come

00:03:25.180 true because i started my career in hollywood shortly after that led zeppelin concert as an audio

00:03:32.060 technician working self-taught in electronics and things like that but working to repair consoles and

00:03:38.020 tape machines that led to my being hired by my favorite artist in the whole world who's prince

00:03:44.340 1983 he was looking for a technician to help him with purple rain the movie and the album

00:03:49.400 so i joined his crew in 83 and in 84 we were on the purple rain tour and we set a record for seven

00:03:59.140 sold-out nights at the forum the record was broken but at that time we had the record seven nights at the

00:04:05.500 forum and i wasn't mixing front of house but i was in a mobile recording truck at the back of the

00:04:11.800 stage my job was to record that show for posterity so i kind of made my my dream come true and then you

00:04:19.460 went on to actually produce prince was like how about you do some producing as well that's different

00:04:23.460 from being a technician correct yeah it is different but what prince did was transition me into the

00:04:29.340 engineering chair because he produced his own records he was unlike michael jackson or virtually every

00:04:34.920 other artist in the world who works with a producer prince produced his own music but he did need an

00:04:40.260 engineer just you know to route the signal and to make sure that everything got correctly to the

00:04:45.420 tape machine and back from the tape machine and all that technical stuff so i did that for him but

00:04:51.020 after i left prince i came back to los angeles and worked for some clients i was a recording engineer

00:04:57.340 for others i was a mixer on their albums and then for others i i was an engineer and producer

00:05:03.980 and that included bare naked ladies i enjoyed all three of those roles but i had a huge commercial hit

00:05:10.500 album with bare naked ladies in 98 thanks to that big financial success before the age of

00:05:17.960 napster and file sharing i was able to take that money and start a whole new life entering academia as

00:05:25.160 a freshman when i was 44 years old well let's talk about your book so what you've done is like i said

00:05:30.160 you take readers through the dimensions of music that make up our listener profile and you combine

00:05:36.160 your experience as an engineer producer and also your research in cognitive neuroscience to help

00:05:41.640 people understand like why it is some music really calls to them and some music you know you could just

00:05:46.940 you could do without it so we're going to talk about these factors or dimensions of our listener

00:05:51.620 profile but before we do like how how do we even develop this musical profile like what goes on is it

00:05:57.560 biology is it genetic is it social how does our genetic makeup and our social makeup influence

00:06:03.840 our taste in music yeah it's such a wonderful mystery so exciting to think about of all the art

00:06:11.620 forms music is the most immediate the quickest and the easiest to consume and that means it's the

00:06:18.220 quickest to make up our minds about takes a couple of hours to watch a movie takes a long time to read a

00:06:24.040 book you have to actually invest some time and energy into going to an art gallery to see visual art but

00:06:30.720 music it's all around us and we can easily pick and choose and curate our own musical library if we want

00:06:38.340 so as with our taste in food and fashion our taste in music starts developing when we're really young

00:06:46.300 based on what we hear in our environment and based on what happens when we decide to either approach

00:06:55.120 or retreat from a stimulus so certain foods you eat you really hate it and you never want to taste

00:07:02.340 it again and and other foods you love and it kind of becomes your go-to thing and that's the same thing

00:07:07.180 with music and it's the same thing with fashion you make those fashion blunders that you're really

00:07:11.700 embarrassed about later and you start developing your set of this works for me and this will not

00:07:17.900 work for me and you might admire the folks who are really adventurous and willing to take risks but

00:07:23.220 perhaps you're a bit more timid when it comes to making choices in that one modality so you might be

00:07:30.960 brave in one thing timid in another but anyway our tastes in music tend to form when we have positive and

00:07:39.160 negative experiences the positive experience for example might be let's say you're three or four

00:07:45.580 years old and you're in the seat of the car with your family and you're on your way to a vacation or

00:07:51.620 just something special and the radio is on and you feel great you feel safe and happy and you're excited

00:07:59.720 looking forward to whatever it is you're going to do and there's a song on the radio that just so happens

00:08:05.020 to match your emotions right now in your little three-year-old or four-year-old brain you're going

00:08:10.660 to associate that pattern of neural activity that's going on in your auditory brain with those feel-good

00:08:17.540 neurotransmitters so everything is influencing us when we get a little bit older especially in our teens

00:08:24.580 now we've got a more complex brain and we can start to identify musical styles with lifestyles

00:08:33.000 and we can start to say to others i like this kind of music and i don't like that kind of music

00:08:39.640 what we're doing at that stage is broadcasting our self-identity you want the other kids to think of

00:08:45.840 you as this person but heaven forbid they should think of you as that kind of person so again you're

00:08:51.720 picking and choosing you'll change your mind a little bit but usually by the time we're college age

00:08:56.700 that's when our tastes start to really solidify and we've got a pretty well established listener

00:09:03.180 profile okay so our listener profile biology plays a role our experience growing up plays a role in

00:09:09.160 shaping what we're drawn to and then as we get older in those teenage years we start even shaping our

00:09:15.580 musical profile our listener profile to create an identity for ourselves so let's talk about these

00:09:20.640 seven dimensions you've you've homed in on in your work as a producer engineer and neuroscientist

00:09:26.300 three are aesthetic four are musical the aesthetic dimensions are authenticity realism and novelty

00:09:32.560 so talk about authenticity what do you mean by authenticity in music well it's an interesting thing and i

00:09:39.100 chose authenticity to discuss first because of these seven authenticity is the one i learned more about

00:09:46.440 in the recording studio than in grad school and in academic conferences and reading papers and doing

00:09:52.440 research but authenticity is studied in terms of whether or not and how good we are at interpreting

00:10:01.800 intentionality in art ellen winner from boston university looks at at that very thing in the visual

00:10:09.480 arts and she'll compare paintings side by side of a little four-year-olds you know who'll just do a just

00:10:15.880 scribbling kind of paintings and abstract artists also doing what appears to be scribbles and she tests

00:10:23.760 people to see if they can tell which one was done by a four-year-old and which one was done by an artist

00:10:31.240 a trained artist and they can look very very similar yet people can tell and in music it's kind of similar

00:10:39.400 when you're a producer or an engineer you're in the recording studio on the other side of the glass the

00:10:44.120 musicians are out there playing and what you're listening for in their performance is whether or

00:10:50.020 not they meant that is that singer singing her heart out is that drummer really driving that groove

00:10:57.720 into a listener's brain what are you saying with your hands and your feet and your lips

00:11:03.760 on those instruments we can pick up on that you don't need to be trained in order to read

00:11:11.560 intentionality in performance gestures now some of us like our authenticity our feeling to come from

00:11:19.960 below the waist or from the heart we like that gut bucket or we like that pure raw emotion other

00:11:26.880 listeners have a preference for a more cerebral or technical or virtuosic performance it's all good

00:11:34.560 among these seven dimensions i'm talking about how each listener has a unique

00:11:39.860 individualized sweet spot on each dimension collectively these seven sweet spots form your

00:11:46.700 listener profile for me personally i'll take that gut bucket i like that gut bucket i'm gonna listen for

00:11:52.580 that i'm gonna highly value it my co-author on the other hand ogi ogas can't stand that that sounds

00:11:59.440 sloppy to him he prefers a cerebral controlled performance different sweet spots yeah so it's a

00:12:06.080 spectrum with all these dimensions and a great example you give this example of a band that it's

00:12:10.960 known in the music industry probably not by the popular audiences but it's the shags and sees three

00:12:16.100 sisters 1960s they're from new hampshire and their dad had this vision or there was a prophecy from the

00:12:22.280 grandma that they're gonna be a great rock band so they started it and at first everyone like these

00:12:27.180 people these girls are not good um but then other musicians discover these girls and they're like

00:12:33.900 these girls these girls these girls got it they got some this is rock and roll and if you listen to

00:12:39.360 i think the first time i listened to it i was like oh this is jarring because it just doesn't sound

00:12:43.900 polished but then after a while i'm like this does sound punk rock these new hampshire girls sound

00:12:49.900 punk rock yeah sweet i'm glad you got that impression the shags were known in the industry

00:12:57.500 because listening to the shags gave us it rang a little rang a little alert bell and the shags serve

00:13:06.280 as a reminder that as my friend the musician tommy jordan said the wrong note played with gusto always

00:13:14.160 sounds better than the right note played timidly in other words you can be technically perfect but if

00:13:21.860 you don't imbue your music with with some heart with some soul with some intentionality with some

00:13:30.100 feeling listeners aren't going to pick up on anything in your performance so the reason the shags are

00:13:37.900 important is because singularly they are to music what a child's finger painting is to art technically

00:13:44.980 it's not good at all technically it's horrible it breaks all the rules but as you just said they're

00:13:50.420 communicating they're using their instruments to show that even though we really can't play very well

00:13:58.020 we can't sing very well but i want to tell you something i want to tell you something about my life

00:14:02.680 this is what it's like to be a teenage girl in 1965 in rural new hampshire with an oppressive

00:14:07.880 dad that's punk that's rock and roll and is there a band or maybe a group that kind of epitomizes

00:14:15.860 above the neck so people have an idea because we'll link to the shags on spotify so that people can

00:14:20.520 listen they'll they'll listen and like yeah that's often that's that's definitely gut is there a band

00:14:24.940 that maybe exemplifies above the neck yeah these are all in degrees but if we were to go back to the

00:14:31.580 1940s perfect example of just soul coupled with technical perfection would be ella fitzgerald

00:14:40.560 she was a maestro yet you can't say that ella didn't have soul but when you listen to ella

00:14:45.980 i do anyway you're thinking how is it humanly possible to be that great if you think about

00:14:52.180 authenticity above the neck versus below the neck on a continuum um there aren't too many extremes

00:14:59.020 but most people are somewhere in the middle and a great example of one versus the other is the

00:15:04.540 beatles versus the rolling stones so when i was young kids would be divided you know are you a beatles

00:15:10.500 fan are you stones fan i was always the rolling stones i found out later in part because um the

00:15:17.380 stones were they developed a musical form that was built on blues on early blues on non-formally

00:15:26.540 trained music gestures so they were imitating the blues the raw blues whereas the beatles were

00:15:32.780 imitating something that was a little bit more refined and more polished so kids don't know why

00:15:38.240 they like what they like but they do know if they're in touch with their listener profile what feels best to

00:15:44.140 them when i was a kid the stones always felt better to me than the beatles and that's an aspect

00:15:50.060 on my listener profile that has not changed throughout my life okay so authenticity most

00:15:55.420 people are kind of in the middle i'm kind of in the middle let's talk about realism as a musical

00:15:59.520 dimension what is realism so ogi and i in putting together the material for this book

00:16:05.860 we're interested in what people visualize in their mind's eye when they're listening to their

00:16:11.020 favorite music in other words where does your mind go what sort of fantasies do you have

00:16:15.300 when you're enjoying music and it turned out he and i had completely opposite fantasies

00:16:20.460 mine my go-to visualization has always been i picture the musicians performing that's what i see

00:16:28.600 and ogi has always pictured anything other than human beings he pictures outer space and abstract

00:16:35.860 shapes and colors and we're both looking at each other thinking that is so weird since i was at

00:16:41.180 berkeley i began interviewing some of my colleagues and some of the students asking them what do you

00:16:46.000 see in your mind's eye when you listen to music great variety great variety so we conducted a survey

00:16:52.860 research of nearly 1700 music listeners in the united states from all 50 states to ask what do you see

00:17:00.660 when you're choosing to listen to music just for pleasure we found that the most common answer was

00:17:06.320 people see themselves really they see autobiographical memories second most common answer was a story in

00:17:13.380 the lyrics so it turns out the music that you prefer is often chosen to give you the visual daydream

00:17:23.660 or fantasy that you enjoy having i personally love records that are made with real musical instruments that

00:17:32.420 i can visualize made by real people sung in real time not pitch corrected or time corrected i i like

00:17:39.580 visualizing the real thing ogi on the other hand likes the opposite he likes artificial or abstract records

00:17:47.780 that are made in the box in the computer software instruments things that don't involve people

00:17:55.320 an easily visualized set of people all playing together as one so we tend to have a preference

00:18:02.480 also on that dimension of realism i like extreme realism in my records other people like electronic music

00:18:10.080 and techno extreme abstraction most of us like something that's somewhere on that slider

00:18:16.200 between one pole and the other yeah i think i'm drawn like i'm in the middle i love when artists are

00:18:21.860 able to combine digital with the real so you in the book you talk about the moog the keyboard

00:18:28.720 is that how you pronounce it moog or moog i think it's moog moog all right the moog and it was popular in

00:18:34.360 the late 70s 80s then it kind of went away but there's a band that i really like that i liked since high

00:18:39.600 school i still like them the rentals where they use the moog but then there's like you know violin as well

00:18:45.480 with it and it's just as i love the combo of of that it's like humanness overlaid over digital

00:18:52.620 another band i think it does as well the killers does it well i i always get chills whenever i see

00:18:58.680 them play human it starts off like there's like robot voice it's like da da da and then brandon

00:19:03.580 flowers comes in with that tenor voice of his and it just i don't know i just for some that that just

00:19:08.220 hits me so i'm i'm like right in the middle of realism and abstract yeah and tame impala when you

00:19:14.020 mentioned the killers it got me thinking of tame impala they do that as well or he does that as

00:19:18.480 well that combination of here's real familiar instruments that you know and then here's some

00:19:23.520 sound effects that are unique to us modern music today typically involves a combination of both and

00:19:30.260 today it's really hard to tell if the performance you're listening to actually happened that way in

00:19:35.720 the studio or if the record makers pitch and time corrected it i'm from the analog era where you

00:19:42.340 didn't have those tools what you heard on record was what people played but today yeah we're drifting

00:19:47.200 toward more abstraction and that's not a bad thing it's it's actually a great thing for people who like

00:19:52.240 that sort of thing because now they have more options than ever before so it sounds like if you're

00:19:57.740 listening to music and you like imagining the band performing or you're at the concert watching the

00:20:03.340 band you know beat the drums play the guitar you're probably more towards that realism side if that

00:20:09.680 stuff doesn't really matter to you or you when you listen to music you imagine other things maybe

00:20:14.640 the lyrics that are being painted in your head like a picture maybe more abstract yeah students will

00:20:21.520 turn me on to electronic music that i admire cognitively i might think stylistically this is

00:20:27.700 great this is innovative but i don't get that visceral reaction of love and i think in part it's

00:20:36.140 because my brain is searching to get its treat to get its its visualization and if it can't find it

00:20:42.960 it says well yeah this is good but there's nothing for me over there in that particular corner

00:20:48.560 well let's talk about the novelty dimension some people they like music that sounds familiar other

00:20:54.440 people's they're always searching for the the next new thing the stuff that sounds avant-garde

00:20:58.900 in your research and just in your experience are there differences between the two groups of people

00:21:03.680 you know psychologically who want the familiar over the novel it's so cool to think about because we

00:21:10.300 humans we are full of paradoxes there are genes in our body that encode for sensation seeking and

00:21:18.800 some people are extreme and that they take extreme risks alex honnold the climber came to mind and the late

00:21:28.580 marc-andre leclerc these guys do incredibly risky things they're definitely cut from a different piece

00:21:36.220 of cloth most of us are somewhere in the middle where we can be bold and risk-taking in certain

00:21:42.420 settings and we can be just a little bit more cautious in others whether it's financial or with food or

00:21:48.600 fashion or or with music so for some of us we're okay with taking a risk musically or aesthetically

00:21:58.760 we're okay with spending the money and the time to go to an art house film which could be terrible

00:22:04.140 no one's talked about it it's not seen by many people but we'll take that risk because we love film a

00:22:10.640 great deal and we've been rewarded in the past by checking out some art films and it's the same thing

00:22:15.720 with music some of us will take risks and spend our time to explore boundary pushing styles of music

00:22:23.840 i'm one of those people i enjoy that it's rewarding to me others i'm thinking of my brothers who are all

00:22:30.300 around my age but they like their they like their classic rock and roll it's so unappealing to them

00:22:36.780 the idea of checking out innovative music what they love just like many sports fans is give me a

00:22:44.460 stimulus the form of which i know really well so that the form doesn't surprise me because what i want

00:22:51.820 to attend to is these individual performances blow me away with your guitar tones or with your

00:23:00.340 performances or with your lyrical messages sticking to this familiar form again another sweet spot we all

00:23:08.860 have have have our preferences there on that axis of novelty versus familiarity for music and i think

00:23:15.680 it can change through the lifespan i know when i was younger in high school early college years i was

00:23:21.360 much more exploratory with my music i'd love going to the record store when record stores were all over

00:23:27.420 the place and just spending hours there just shifting through all the new albums i would be willing to

00:23:32.860 listen to some local band that you know made a cassette tape today not so much i kind of like you

00:23:37.760 said i after you know about when i was done with college i kind of set in what i liked and i i said that's

00:23:42.860 where i'm i'm not that's not to say i don't i don't if a new group shows up i'm not going to give

00:23:46.540 them a shot but i'm not actively seeking out new stuff yeah and there's another reason for that and that

00:23:53.640 has to do with um a little bit with the lyrical content and style but when we're young we have

00:24:01.780 this huge problem to deal with and that huge problem is figuring out who we are compared to

00:24:10.660 all the other kids so when you're a teenager there is nothing that your brain is more interested in

00:24:15.600 than establishing your identity you're very concerned with what the other kids think of you

00:24:21.320 so you need a source of intelligence on these matters often a record can provide that intelligence

00:24:28.820 you privately listens to a piece of music you'll listen to it through your earbuds or your headphones

00:24:33.480 and that singer may just convey to you the exact right attitude or the exact perfect phrase or lyrics

00:24:42.700 that you think yeah that's gonna help me i'm gonna say this tomorrow i'm gonna be this person tomorrow

00:24:50.180 i'm gonna dress like this person and have this attitude tomorrow that's gonna work for me i want

00:24:55.340 to adopt this identity and try it on just to see if it works for me in the social world as we get older

00:25:02.360 we don't have to solve those problems we have a greater sense of who we are so we're less likely to go

00:25:08.740 exploring for music that solves problems and more likely to go exploring for music that matches our mood

00:25:16.780 or changes our mood we use music when we're older as more of a self-medication we're modifying our

00:25:22.600 moods with music i think that explains that we just talked about so when i was in high school i was

00:25:28.560 really into punk rock and ska music and then i stopped listening to it and then i every now and

00:25:34.340 then i'll go back and i'll spotify you know ska 1990s ska and i'll try to listen i'm like i just i can't

00:25:40.420 i can do maybe one or two songs and then i can't do it anymore it just doesn't resonate anymore

00:25:44.560 and what i think is interesting about the killers we're doing a record poll here i love the killers

00:25:48.680 what i love about them is that i feel like they've evolved they've grown with me right like they

00:25:54.320 started out sort of that synth party dance music in the early 2000s and then what's interesting as

00:25:59.580 their albums have developed the lyrics it talks about you know becoming a dad getting married and

00:26:05.560 like that i'm dealing with that stuff and so i i've kind of grown they've kind of grown up with

00:26:10.660 me i think it's one of the reasons i keep going back to them isn't that wonderful that's what smart

00:26:15.780 artists do they recognize that uh for example right you're college age and you got a band and

00:26:23.940 kids are coming out to see you and it's great it's great and the record you make is inviting

00:26:29.500 college age people to come out and see you play live five years later that same audience is likely to

00:26:37.720 have infants they've got kids at home they've got jobs they've got to get up in the morning they're

00:26:42.480 not going to come out on a wednesday night to see you play because they have to hire a babysitter

00:26:46.140 and they got to get up in the morning it's just it's not the same so a savvy record producer and or

00:26:52.980 artist will shape subsequent records to allow the audience to stay attached to that band as you all grow

00:27:01.720 together someone i worked with who's doing that really really well two folks actually both ed

00:27:07.560 robertson and stephen page of bare naked ladies are really good at it i've seen stephen with his solo

00:27:13.780 his solo act he's not with bare naked ladies anymore but i've seen him play in the local boston area in the

00:27:20.840 last five ten years and his audience is filled with middle-aged men and his lyrics are talking about

00:27:27.620 what it's like to be a middle-aged man it's an underserved audience that seems to be very

00:27:33.800 appreciative of what he's doing we're gonna take a quick break for your word from our sponsors

00:27:37.920 and now back to the show so we've we've kind of shifted into one of the other dimensions the

00:27:46.660 musical dimensions is lyrics in our conversation about you know bands growing with us and i think

00:27:52.300 one thing we talked about earlier like some people when they hear lyrics they like it when it paints a

00:27:58.020 a story in their head that's what i like i think johnny cash does this really well um i think cake

00:28:05.460 the band cake does this really well i love listening to your lyrics and kind of delve these cool things

00:28:09.980 killers does that for me but then some people they don't really care about the lyrics they could just

00:28:14.560 listen to kind of googly gook and they're okay with that so is there an example of an artist or musician

00:28:20.080 who has lyrics that aren't very literal but people still respond to it oh there must be loads and

00:28:26.740 loads of them i tend to love lyrics so i don't tend to be a big fan of lyrics that are just dense and

00:28:33.960 really abstract but i'm remembering from uh there were those art bands in the late 70s i'm thinking of

00:28:41.720 the band yes for example and there were a lot of drug fueled lyrics that were just utter nonsense in

00:28:49.120 particular i'm thinking of the line on the song was roundabout and the line is mountains come out

00:28:54.520 of the sky and they stand there i remember being being young and hearing that and you know when

00:29:01.860 you're really young you're trying to figure out this must mean something what does this mean it's

00:29:05.880 important i just can't figure it out and after a while you realize it doesn't mean anything they're

00:29:10.120 just high so yeah lyrics are more important to some people than to others we can be really tolerant in

00:29:20.680 some cases lyrics that have no meaning for me personally on a record that i love are i'm thinking

00:29:27.740 of james brown's hot pants gives you confidence well that's just cool and it's just silly but i i don't

00:29:35.380 care about hot pants and confidence i'm not listening to that record for its lyrical content

00:29:40.020 i'm listening for jimmy nolan on rhythm guitar and clyde stubblefield the funky drummer on drums

00:29:46.500 i'm getting my treat from the rhythm so i can safely ignore the lyrics they can be whatever they want to

00:29:53.040 be i'm not listening there my treats are being delivered elsewhere the listener profile uh is is drawn

00:29:59.600 from things i learned in college and on papers and academic conferences and things like that but it

00:30:06.380 turns out there are different modules in our brain that can independently of the others deliver us a

00:30:13.160 treat uh release of dopamine or opiates in response to a feature on the record so we can choose to find

00:30:21.460 our treats in one aspect and then and then ignore the others this is why when you ask most people

00:30:27.520 what kind of music do you like people who are really into music will typically say well i like

00:30:32.700 a variety of styles of course they do they've got a set of records that they go to for their

00:30:38.780 rhythmic treats and a set for their melodic harmonic treats and a set for their lyrical treats they might

00:30:44.920 not be consciously aware of it but that's what we're doing when we reach for a given record in a given

00:30:49.860 moment in time one of those circuits in our brains one of those seven has won the argument so to

00:30:56.880 speak and says me what i really want out of music right now more than anything else is i want a

00:31:02.820 performance that blows me away i did that yesterday i thought you know what i really want right now

00:31:08.660 is hit me up with some innovation i want to hear something brilliant a brilliant idea i'm seeking

00:31:15.320 novelty here and i chose a very different style of music for that specific treat well let's talk about

00:31:22.020 another musical dimension of our listener profile and that's melody for lay people i think we all kind

00:31:27.540 of know what a melody is but like how do you describe a melody it's the pattern of pitch changes it's what

00:31:34.180 you sing when you're not singing the words an example that i gave in the book contrasting two songs and so

00:31:41.480 let's do it now contrasting pharrell williams is happy with carly ray jepson's call me maybe the songs

00:31:48.080 from 10 years ago but the melody for happy goes that's basically it and then the background vocals

00:31:56.900 that are very rhythmic there it's pretty simple so it's the words and the arrangement in that record

00:32:06.140 that help convey that feeling of joy and happiness of a balloon taking off but carly ray jepson's song

00:32:13.780 has a melody in the chorus that goes da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da

00:32:21.860 and that's perfect for suggesting i just met you this is crazy like oh i got a little hesitation going

00:32:31.840 on here but i got a smile on my face here's my number da da da da meaning this is a little bit risky

00:32:41.020 but i i'm i'm cool with it i think this is going to be okay so melody conveys feelings that's what

00:32:48.900 it's optimized to do and words convey ideas on a given record there might be congruence or

00:32:55.920 incongruence the words and the melody can fit together perfectly like on call me maybe or there

00:33:01.480 can be a total contrast where the singer is saying i'm doing great i'm so glad she's gone this is

00:33:06.620 fantastic she was a pain in the ass anyway i'm fine and the music is saying his heart is broken

00:33:12.980 he's devastated or the other way around congruence versus incongruence it can even shift you know

00:33:18.840 throughout the course of a song and and that deepens the meaning on a record so where do people

00:33:25.460 lie in the spectrum of melody you know what's one side and what's the other now the three aesthetic

00:33:30.680 dimensions that we talked about those are pretty bi-directional there's the two poles of novelty

00:33:35.260 and familiarity realism and abstraction when it comes to the musical dimensions they're multivariate

00:33:41.740 it's you think of melody more like a melodic space than a melodic access because melodies can vary in a

00:33:50.180 number of ways they can be wide or narrow they can be major or minor they can be very fast-paced

00:33:56.420 short notes very long legato with long notes so melodic space is is probably a better way of putting it

00:34:04.560 and many of us we might not be consciously aware of having a preference if push came to shove you

00:34:10.600 might say well okay i guess it's this and sometimes that's kind of a gray or vague area your sweet spot

00:34:17.280 on melody for myself personally i have some strong preferences i've talked to others who who do not

00:34:23.220 have strong preferences yeah i think a good example of differences in melody where you could be on this

00:34:27.940 is miles davis right so birth of the cool it's that more like it's shorter melody it's like but it's

00:34:33.100 just really peppy right and then you look at kind of blue and the melody just gets drawn out

00:34:38.360 and it's it's slower and it just the melody changes slowly where you don't even notice it

00:34:44.580 and i i mean i like both but i find myself drawn to listening i'd rather put in kind of blue if i was

00:34:51.800 going to listen to a miles davis album yeah movie theme songs or movie themes i should say not songs

00:34:58.180 but movie themes are a good way of examining how we feel about melody sometimes a theme from a movie

00:35:04.660 will just break your heart just listening to it and it doesn't have to have words to it in fact

00:35:08.880 usually it doesn't but that melody will just make you swoon if if you've got some favorites there then

00:35:15.720 you're likely to be someone who is a melodic listener you mentioned frank sinatra as an artist who

00:35:21.240 mastered melody uh tell us about his evolution as an artist i think we all know the frank sinatra

00:35:26.540 from like the 1950s right rat pack era frank sinatra but he had a successful music career before that

00:35:34.140 but he was a vastly different artist so tell us walk us through that how he used melody to catapult his

00:35:40.640 career basically frank frank is regarded by many musicians frank and ella fitzgerald are both regarded

00:35:48.140 by many musicians as the greatest singers america has ever produced but uh musicians would kind of

00:35:54.640 give the edge to frank for being such a maestro so when frank was young a young singer in his early 20s

00:36:02.120 he desperately wanted to be famous and successful and he attended this concert at carnegie hall with

00:36:09.200 jasher heifetz and he was he was very interested in heifetz's violin bowing technique it was kind of

00:36:16.400 circular it seemed like heifetz could play a phrase and then not even raise his bow he could just kind

00:36:21.920 of keep going and let a melodic phrase just continue and continue and young frank he was only 24 at the

00:36:28.120 time thought to himself i need to learn how to do that with my voice so he started taking voice lessons

00:36:33.920 as many great singers do he took voice lessons and he took up swimming and he took up running and he learned

00:36:40.120 to control his breath so well that frank could inhale as you do at the top of a melodic phrase

00:36:48.540 but the thing frank could do is just keep going and going and going and going he could time his phrases

00:36:56.580 to be perfect and carry over the bar and keep going longer than you think they would the subtext that

00:37:06.180 that's conveying to listeners is i've got more virility than you do i've got greater power and

00:37:14.140 that's a good thing that makes you popular among women who think wow this guy's really got it going

00:37:19.460 on and it makes you popular among men who think damn this guy's doing something right so melodic phrasing

00:37:27.920 became his uh his forte and his signature sound frank was the undisputed maestro of mastering melody as

00:37:37.280 a singer so yeah i think if listeners want to hear this difference like you know search on youtube for

00:37:41.980 a frank sinatra song from 1940 or 1939 and it's going to sound like a bean crosby song bean crosby great

00:37:48.580 singer nothing wrong with it but it it's kind of vanilla it's kind of it just it's it's good and then if

00:37:55.040 you uh youtube search or spotify search for it was a very good year oh that that's a perfect example

00:38:00.680 of him being able to extend that melodic phrase where you think it's you you should be done man

00:38:06.440 like you should be but he just keeps going crazy great and it'll just make you swoon because humans

00:38:15.220 have mirror neurons they're technically called von economo neurons and and what we're doing with those is

00:38:22.180 when we're really into it a performance someone else's performance whether it's playing tennis or

00:38:27.260 basketball or singing there are circuits in our brain some of these neurons are following along as

00:38:33.320 if we were doing it and you know a singer's gonna inhale and okay you've just expended all your air

00:38:41.980 you should be done right and when you're not done and you keep going over the bar something about

00:38:49.060 that makes you think wow that was exceptional or feel rather than think but you get the sense of

00:38:55.700 you're listening to something extraordinary frank sinatra mastered that all right so melody is all

00:39:01.460 about feeling um and again it's not that bi-directional or bilateral spectrum like the

00:39:06.320 aesthetic qualities there might be some instances where you want a little more peppier

00:39:10.140 like melody like a carly ray jepsen or you want something a little more sad you know low-key

00:39:15.140 and mellow maybe minor just depends on your mood so let's talk about another musical dimension and

00:39:21.360 that is rhythm our brain does some really interesting thing in response to rhythm so

00:39:25.160 what's going on in our brain when we hear a rhythm in music well it used to be thought that humans were

00:39:31.040 the only ones who could do this and now it's been discovered that there are a couple other species

00:39:35.420 who possess the neural architecture to extract a rhythm from music from a record what that means

00:39:43.600 to extract a rhythm means that you can listen to a pattern a repeating pattern of bass and drums let's

00:39:49.540 say and hi-hat and you can accurately predict here's when the next beat is going to arrive now a second to

00:39:57.040 a conscious brain is a second is really short but to our neural circuits a second is a long time

00:40:03.840 so you're going to be making these wee little micro predictions of all right here's when that snare

00:40:08.580 is coming here's when that hi-hat's coming here's when that kick drum is coming and what emerges from

00:40:15.020 all those predictions is an ability to see into the future and to feel really good when an event happens

00:40:22.820 just the way you predicted it would when that actually falls right where you thought it would and

00:40:29.580 i'm talking on the order of milliseconds really really small timings but we're listening for that

00:40:34.820 that's where our sense of groove comes from we all tend to have a certain preference for rhythm based on

00:40:44.040 how our bodies most enjoy moving you go to countless rock shows and the music is really high energy you see a

00:40:52.920 lot of kids just doing that pogo stick that up and down bouncing some bodies prefer to move that way

00:40:58.560 but if you go to an r&b or a soul club or you go to disco you're not going to see that up and down

00:41:03.900 motion as much as you're going to see kind of a front to back motion that's my go-to move and if

00:41:09.760 you go to a club that's playing latin music you're going to see more of a side to side motion where your

00:41:15.320 hips go one direction and your shoulders go the other direction all of those movements involve

00:41:20.060 correctly predicting here's when the beat is going to arrive but that organizational property that has to

00:41:26.900 happen is happening up in higher order circuits some unfortunate folks have impairments in those

00:41:34.100 higher order circuits and just like people with dyslexia who confuse the order of words on a page

00:41:41.640 folks with beat deafness can't make those predictions from a record about where the beats gonna land

00:41:49.900 and they have a hard time synchronizing their bodies clapping or moving in time to music

00:41:55.600 okay so so far we've talked about six of the dimensions of a listener profile there's three

00:42:01.340 aesthetic ones we got authenticity realism and novelty and we've talked about three of the musical ones

00:42:07.360 we've got melody lyrics and rhythm there's one more musical dimension and that's timbre so what is

00:42:13.920 timbre and how does that affect how we listen to a song what it is is it refers to a tone quality

00:42:22.000 if you handed a musician a score for the song young at heart let's say you'd see the lyrics you'd see

00:42:30.200 the melody would be written on the score you'd see the time signature and the suggested tempo you'd see

00:42:35.120 all that but what you would not see on the score is what instruments to play it on because you can play

00:42:40.000 it on guitar you can play it on piano you can play it on a variety of instruments when we're making

00:42:44.960 records we have to make decisions about how to take these songs the melody the lyrics the time

00:42:51.280 signature and how to express them with different sounds is this going to be drum machine or acoustic

00:42:56.600 drums is it going to be acoustic piano or electronic piano what what timbres are we going to employ

00:43:02.740 it matters a lot because our memories of music involve associations with certain sounds this guitar

00:43:12.940 player always uses this guitar maybe it's bb king or it's keith richards or it's jimmy page or someone

00:43:19.260 like that and you're just going to associate that tone with that artist we uh therefore will say

00:43:26.680 sometimes that timbre is the face of a record because it's suggesting um where this record falls

00:43:34.700 in the history of other similar records certainly an orchestra has one timbre a jazz ensemble has

00:43:41.420 another timbre electronic music has a distinct timbre as well and again you might want some type of

00:43:48.100 timbre in certain situations and another type in another situation yes one of my uh favorite studies

00:43:53.720 that i reported about in the book was just mind-blowing and it concerned how long a human

00:43:59.540 brain takes to make up its mind whether it likes or dislikes something oh so sad it's sad because record

00:44:06.440 makers work so hard and we assume oh come on you're going to listen to this song before you make up your

00:44:12.180 mind right and in actual fact the answer is no wrong these researchers took three styles of music just

00:44:20.200 snippets just a milliseconds in some cases or a second long uh classical music jazz music and electronic

00:44:27.760 music and they played these snippets for people who were lying in an fmri scanner within one second

00:44:35.900 listeners brains had recorded positive liking responses to certain timbres and disliking to others

00:44:47.540 so the kids who liked electronic music were far more likely to register a dislike it hate it response

00:44:54.420 to perhaps jazz or orchestral music in the first second this is your brain deciding for you whether or not

00:45:05.880 this stimulus is quote-unquote the music of you does this does this match me or doesn't it no and so

00:45:13.160 yeah we talked about these seven dimensions i thought this was really useful because now what i've been

00:45:16.420 doing this past week after i finished your book is i've just been looking at my music that i enjoy

00:45:20.980 or have enjoyed and it's been able to help me explain like why why i like that music now or why i don't

00:45:27.100 like it anymore and it's it's also helped me i i listen to music more actively now so when i hear a song

00:45:33.100 i mean this is something you talk about in the book a lot of people these days they listen to music

00:45:37.340 passively like you just you put on music when you're working out you're doing chores you're working

00:45:41.860 people don't just sit down in front of the stereo to listen to an album that's not something that

00:45:48.460 doesn't happen very often anymore but there's a joy in that there's actually i i forgot what it

00:45:52.900 was like to do that because i remember doing that when i was in high school just putting in a cd and my

00:45:57.640 cd player and sitting in my room and just listening to an entire album i've been doing that again with

00:46:02.420 songs and i'm using your dimensions you laid out i've kind of figured like well what where does this

00:46:07.420 lie in this dimension and do i like that and it's been a really fun experience listening to music

00:46:13.160 actively again that is so nice i remember being a kid and one of my favorite activities was listening

00:46:19.760 to music which sounds so mind-blowing when you explain that to young people today that listening

00:46:26.280 to music was a thing you were doing like that that was the only thing you were doing you were just

00:46:31.560 listening but yeah you'd take your records and you'd go to a friend's house for the pastime of

00:46:37.240 listening to music together or they'd come over to your house and those were really happy memories

00:46:43.720 doing just that you put the record on the turntable you sit together and you listen you you look at the

00:46:49.520 album covers you read the credits maybe there's lyrics there you read the lyrics but most of the

00:46:53.980 time you just sit and you listen now that's called active listening but today more people are engaged in

00:47:00.560 passive listening where music is a background to another main activity that's kind of rough for certain

00:47:08.760 styles of music some styles of music have most of their finer points embedded in the details and if

00:47:18.180 you're not paying attention to those details you're not going to recognize what's great about this record

00:47:22.240 other records however and good on them for doing this are actually designed to they're going to be cool

00:47:28.520 with just being in the background in fact you better not pay too close attention to it it's it's a

00:47:33.560 three-minute pop song it's not intended for a deep analysis it's just fun yeah i've noticed that there's

00:47:40.460 a genre of music that's popped up the lo-fi like electric so it's like basically you see these artists on

00:47:46.240 spotify and youtube and it's kind of digital music but it's really mellow and basically people listen to

00:47:52.680 it to stuff like my kids they'll listen to that when they're they're studying i gotta i gotta put on a

00:47:56.880 chill hop i gotta listen to chill hop i'm like okay but it's nothing there's really nothing intricate

00:48:01.580 about it and it just it just sounds nice it's pleasant yeah and you know for for music psychologists

00:48:08.520 that's what's so darned interesting i tried to emphasize in the book over and over again that music

00:48:15.800 is varied because it is functional we need music to perform a job for us when we choose it

00:48:25.780 and it performs different jobs and different types of music will get the job done for you

00:48:31.900 compared to other types so for your kids what they need is probably they they want a little bit of a

00:48:38.140 companion they want they want a little bit of melody going on in the background they want some sounds

00:48:42.460 it's an accompaniment to other mental activity that they're engaged in and it feels good it's lifting

00:48:48.540 their overall energy up it's working for them for someone else who might say okay well let me listen

00:48:55.360 to this and let me try to analyze it and let me let me see if it can do the job for me of describing

00:49:02.120 a complex musical stimulus it's unlikely to function in that way this is why you should never ever be a

00:49:11.240 music snob when someone likes music all they're saying is that it works for them that's it

00:49:16.840 you talk about in the book that there's research that suggests that music or listening to music

00:49:22.180 is like daydreaming how so what's going on there oh so a hot topic in neuroscience right now is this

00:49:28.820 default network the default network is an interconnected set of brain nuclei that are all collectively involved

00:49:38.920 in our sense of self our self-image self-awareness self-consciousness when you're thinking about yourself or when

00:49:46.500 you're going into your own head so to speak which brains are always doing they're focusing on the

00:49:51.340 outside world and then they're daydreaming they're going into their own heads when you go into your own

00:49:55.600 head it's the default network that gets active it turns out that when we listen to music that we like

00:50:02.920 it activates our default network so this is what i mean by music being functional

00:50:09.200 if you're really enjoying it you will lose your focus on an exterior object and you will increase

00:50:20.720 your representation of yourself of what you like of who you are and that will lead to the kind of spontaneous

00:50:30.300 thought that is the origin of creativity so for many people listening to music will actually prime the pump

00:50:38.180 to help them do their best and most creative thinking i like that so if you want to develop yourself be more

00:50:44.440 creative start listening to music start by daydreaming and and and sometimes listening to music you love is a

00:50:51.480 great way to daydream i always teach students that our daydreams are so important when you take your brain off

00:50:59.540 its leash and you say you don't have to do anything right now you don't have to look at the phone you don't have to

00:51:04.400 be on your computer you don't have to do anything let's say when you're in the shower maybe or just

00:51:09.460 as you're falling asleep go wherever you want to go it's gonna go where its treats are it's gonna go

00:51:16.480 to fantasies that feel good that's your brain telling you what it wants i've based two careers

00:51:24.060 on a capacity to daydream and listen to my brain telling me what it was it wanted well susan this has

00:51:30.320 been a great conversation where can people go to learn more about the book in your work oh i thank

00:51:35.060 you thank you uh the books for sale everywhere and if you want to join the record poll meaning if you

00:51:40.200 want to suggest a record that you love and that just lights up your world go to this is what it

00:51:46.480 sounds like dot com it's all one word there's a link there to the record poll and you can put your

00:51:52.460 record in i'll read that and respond to it all right well susan rogers thanks for time it's been a

00:51:56.400 pleasure thank you so much brett uh good luck to you and thank you for having me on your program

00:52:01.140 my guest today was susan rogers she's the author of the book this is what it sounds like it's

00:52:05.560 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about our work at

00:52:09.360 our website this is what it sounds like dot com where you see examples of the seven dimensions we

00:52:13.480 talked about also check out our show notes at a1.is slash music where you find links to resources

00:52:18.540 we delve deeper into this topic including links to the songs that we've mentioned in this show so you

00:52:22.680 can hear what we're talking about well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast make sure to

00:52:34.360 check out our website at artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of

00:52:38.820 articles we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of and if you'd like to

00:52:42.560 enjoy ad for your episodes of the a1 podcast you can do so on stitcher premium head over to

00:52:46.300 stitcherpremium.com sign up use code manly at checkout for a free month trial once you're signed up

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00:53:05.720 as always thank you for the continued support until next time it's brett mckay

00:53:09.140 remind you to listen to the a1 podcast but put what you've heard into action

00:53:20.920 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Why You Like the Music You Do

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