Why do you like your favorite songs? | Scarlet Keys | TEDxPortsmouth
Summary
TLDRThe speaker, a songwriter and professor at Berkeley College of Music, explores the profound impact of songs on our lives, from marking milestones to evoking memories. They delve into the mechanics of songwriting, discussing how melody, tone, chords, and repetition influence emotions. Using examples like Adele's 'Someone Like You,' they illustrate how these elements can alter a song's emotional resonance. The talk also touches on the therapeutic power of music, as the speaker shares personal experiences of using songwriting to process emotions, including a battle with breast cancer, highlighting music's role in emotional healing and connection.
Takeaways
- 🎶 Songs serve as a soundtrack to our lives, marking significant moments and evoking emotions.
- 🚗 Music can transport us back to specific memories, as illustrated by the example of hearing a song from a past love while in traffic.
- 🎵 The power of a song lies in its ability to encode emotions and memories, impacting us deeply in just a few minutes.
- 📝 As a songwriter and professor, the speaker emphasizes the tools used in songwriting to affect emotions, such as tone.
- 🗣️ Tone of voice, like in a doctor's greeting, can significantly affect how a message is received, either calming or alarming.
- 🎼 Melody is likened to the song's tone of voice, with Western listeners having expectations for how it should feel and progress.
- 🔄 The use of unstable and stable notes in melody can build empathy with the audience, as demonstrated with Adele's 'Someone Like You'.
- 🎹 Chords contribute to defining the mood of a song, with the speaker using the example of eating a Snickers bar to explain emotional impact.
- 🔄 Repetition in songwriting helps listeners remember and engage with the song, but too much can lead to disinterest or cliché.
- 💡 Music aids in processing emotions, with dopamine released when listening to loved songs and cortisol when subjected to disliked music.
- 💖 The speaker's personal experiences with aging and breast cancer demonstrate how writing and listening to music can be therapeutic and provide emotional support.
Q & A
What is the significance of songs in our lives according to the speaker?
-Songs are described as the soundtrack of our lives, enhancing moments and seasons, evoking emotions, and serving as a time capsule and time machine to remember past experiences.
How does the speaker describe the power of a song to transport us back to a specific memory?
-The speaker illustrates that a song encoded in our brain can instantly transport us back to a specific time and place, like a vivid memory of a past love, due to its emotional connection.
What is the role of tone in songwriting according to the speaker?
-Tone in songwriting is compared to the tone of voice in conversation, affecting the listener's emotional response, with the speaker using the example of a doctor's tone to explain its impact.
What is the importance of melody in conveying the emotion of a song?
-Melody is considered the song's 'tone of voice', with the arrangement of notes impacting the listener's emotional response, and the speaker demonstrates this with an example involving Adele's song 'Someone Like You'.
How does the speaker explain the concept of stable and unstable notes in a melody?
-Stable notes are described as feeling resolved, while unstable notes create a sense of tension or longing for resolution, which songwriters can use to build empathy with the audience.
What is the role of chords in defining the mood of a song?
-Chords, consisting of three to four notes played simultaneously, contribute significantly to the emotional feel of the lyrics and the overall mood of the song.
Why is repetition used in songwriting and what are its potential pitfalls?
-Repetition helps listeners remember the song and engage with it, but too much repetition can lead to habituation, causing the listener to zone out or perceive the song as cliché.
How does the speaker use the example of eating a Snickers bar to explain the choice of chords in songwriting?
-The speaker contrasts two scenarios of eating a Snickers bar—one feeling amazing and the other despondent—to demonstrate how different chords can reflect and enhance the emotional context of the lyrics.
What is the impact of music on our brain's release of hormones like dopamine and cortisol?
-Listening to loved songs releases dopamine, a feel-good hormone, while disliking or hating music can cause the release of cortisol, a stress hormone.
How did the speaker use songwriting as a form of therapy during her battle with breast cancer?
-The speaker turned to songwriting as a means to process her emotions and experiences during cancer treatment, using music to release dopamine and maintain optimism.
What is the significance of the song 'It's About Damn Time' in the speaker's personal journey?
-The song 'It's About Damn Time' served as the speaker's fight song, embodying her optimism and resilience during her cancer treatment, and helping her to metabolize difficult emotions.
Outlines
🎶 The Emotional Power of Songs
This paragraph discusses the profound impact songs have on our lives, from marking significant life events to evoking powerful emotions. The speaker, a songwriter and professor, introduces the concept of how songs can transport us back in time and explores the components of a song that contribute to its emotional resonance. The importance of tone is highlighted, using the analogy of a doctor's tone of voice in a hospital setting, to illustrate how melody, akin to a song's tone, influences our emotional response. The speaker also touches on the expectations Western listeners have towards melody and how songwriters can manipulate these expectations to elicit specific feelings.
🎵 The Art of Songwriting: Melody, Emotion, and Empathy
In this paragraph, the speaker delves deeper into the mechanics of songwriting, focusing on melody and its emotional implications. The concept of stable and unstable musical notes is introduced, demonstrating how they can be used to build empathy with the audience. The example of Adele's 'Someone Like You' is used to illustrate how changing the melody can alter the emotional message of a song. The paragraph also discusses the use of chords to convey different moods and the importance of repetition in making a song memorable, while cautioning against over-repetition that can lead to listener disengagement.
🎶 Music and Emotional Processing
The speaker explains how music helps us process emotions, with the brain releasing dopamine when we listen to songs we love and cortisol when subjected to music we dislike. The paragraph suggests using music to start the day positively and to ease social situations. It emphasizes the role of songwriting in expressing and processing complex emotions, using personal experiences of aging and a breast cancer diagnosis as examples. The speaker shares how writing songs about these experiences helped in coping with the emotions associated with them, turning them into sources of optimism and support.
🎵 The Healing Power of Music in Adversity
This paragraph concludes the script with a personal story of how music was used as a therapeutic tool during the speaker's battle with breast cancer. The speaker describes the process of writing a song as a way to process the complex emotions of fear, sadness, and hope. The choice of writing the song in a major key with a minor twist reflects the blend of darkness and light experienced during this period. The paragraph ends with a dedication of the song to anyone facing hardships, highlighting the communal power of music to provide strength and solace in times of need.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Songs
💡Emotion
💡Melody
💡Tone
💡Chords
💡Repetition
💡Dopamine
💡Cortisol
💡Songwriting
💡Empathy
💡Therapy
Highlights
Songs serve as a soundtrack to life's milestones, from birthdays to weddings and funerals.
Songs enhance moments and evoke emotions such as making us dance, cry, or even tolerate traffic better.
The power of a song can transport us back to significant memories, as illustrated by the example of a summer love.
Songwriters use specific tools to affect emotions, such as tone, melody, and chords.
Tone of voice in a song can significantly impact the listener's emotional response, similar to a doctor's bedside manner.
Melody is the song's 'tone of voice' and is crucial in conveying the intended emotion.
Western listeners have expectations tied to melody, which songwriters must consider.
The stability or instability of musical notes can influence the listener's emotional journey.
Adele's 'Someone Like You' uses melody to convey emotional complexity and create empathy with the audience.
Chords can define the mood of a song and are integral to emotional expression in music.
Repetition in songwriting helps listeners remember and engage with the song, but too much can lead to disinterest.
The 'rule of three' in songwriting suggests variation is necessary to maintain listener engagement.
Songs can process emotions and provide insights into our feelings, as demonstrated by the presenter's personal experiences.
Listening to or writing songs can help metabolize difficult emotions, as supported by psychological concepts.
The presenter's personal battle with breast cancer was aided by writing a song, turning it into a form of therapy.
The song 'Lizo (About Damn Time)' became a symbol of optimism and a source of dopamine during the presenter's recovery.
The support from friends and community can be as uplifting as the music itself, as experienced during the presenter's chemotherapy.
The songwriting process can help individuals name and tame difficult emotions, leading to emotional healing.
The final song dedicated to overcoming adversity emphasizes the power of love and support in tough times.
Transcripts
[Applause]
songs are the soundtrack of Our Lives
from birthday parties lullab our first
love our first
heartbreak our wedding song our next
wedding
song
and ultimately the song that's played at
our
funeral songs enhance the moment or the
season they help us dance they make us
cry they make us run the extra mile and
they can even make us hate sitting in
traffic just a little bit
less songs help us remember our
lives they are a time capsule and a time
machine imagine you're writing in your
car next to your partner in your
perfectly happy marriage when all of a
sudden that song comes
on that song you know that song from
that one summer love and as your partner
is sweetly giving you a traffic update
you are gone
evaporated evaporated from your heated
seat back to that Greek
island with the sunset lips of Pericles
Constantine
Doos coming in for a
kiss you have been transported by a song
that was encoded in your brain that
summer it's not your
fault songs are
powerful have you ever thought about
what's in a song what's in those three
and a half minutes of arranged sound
that have such
impact we all listen to and turn to
songs I've have the privilege of being
someone who writes songs and as a
professor at the Berkeley College of
Music I help other artists write theirs
and there's tools we use as songwriters
that affect emotion one of the tools we
use is tone that's something we all
understand tone imagine you're sitting
in a cold hospital room waiting to meet
your doctor wearing nothing but your
underwear beneath your dignity
gown and your doctor comes in nobody
wants to hear hello my name is Dr Dr
Watson and I'm your brain
surgeon we want to hear hello my name is
Dr Watson and I am your brain surgeon
because when his tone of voice goes up
so does your heart rate and when his
tone of voice goes down you feel calm
and like I'm in good hands so tone of
voice matters the next time you go on a
first date you can either say I haven't
been on a date in a
while or you can say I haven't been on a
date in a while
it matters it
matters so think of Melody as the song's
tone of voice what how we say what we
say is oftentimes more important than
what we say as Western listeners we have
a relationship to Melody and we have an
expectation to that relationship so I'm
going to play something and when I stop
playing I want you to tell me what you
expect me to play
[Music]
next there it is
exactly so some notes feel stable and
some notes feel more unstable begging
for resolution and that's very powerful
information for a songwriter to
know the words we place on those notes
make the listener feel certain things
I'd like to take a moment to ruin an
Adele
song I'm sure you've all heard her song
Someone Like
You in the verse and in the pre chorus
she runs into her ex unexpectedly and
she's clearly still in love and in the
chorus she says never mind I'll find
someone like
you okay you know the song what if it
what if she had sung it like this never
mind I'll find someone like
you what happened I apologize by the way
um in my version We believe her we
believe she will find someone like you
no problem there's plenty of you out
there because I have paired stable notes
in the key and stable cords bringing a
feeling of stability but that's not the
melody she's saying those weren't the
the tones that she sang this is her
version never mind I'll find someone
like
you do you feel the
difference so when she Sayang never mind
she sang it on that the most stable note
in the major key when she's sang find
someone she sang it on that note that
you all wanted me to resolve back to the
home note find
someone and then she sings you on the
Bittersweet 6th degree of the major
scale breaking your heart
you in her version we we know she will
never find anyone like
you we know that because she has paired
unstable pitches to match the way she's
feeling building empathy with the
audience go
Adell
another way that songwriters
emotionalize our lyrics is the use of
Chords chords are just three to four
notes played at the same time
three
four and chords have a lot to say about
how our lyrics
feel so let's say I want to write a song
about eating a Snickers
bar and let's say that I feel amazing
about eating that Snickers bar because
because they just came out with a
fat-free vegan
[Laughter]
version I would want to make sure that I
picked chords that felt as happy about
this news as I
do today I
ate a Snickers
bar but what if what if that wasn't the
case what if I was despondent or or very
upset about the fact that um I meeting
the Snickers bar because it was my ex's
favorite Snickers bar it was his
favorite candy bar and um it was the
last thing we ate
together today I
ate a Snickers
[Music]
bar so
chords cords help us Define the mood of
the
song another tool that we use is
repetition because repetition helps our
listener remember our song and sing with
us so again I'm going to play something
and I want you to be honest I want you
to raise your hand when you start to get
bored you are the world's greatest
audience you are the world's greatest
audience you are the world's greatest
a I'm hurt
no exactly how did we all know that
right because in songwriting there's the
rule of three you can't repeat the same
Melody exactly the same way three times
in a
row something's got to change that third
time maybe I could have change a
chord you are the world's greatest
audience or maybe the melody you are the
world's greatest
audience so our brains love patterns
but our brains also love surprise so I
set up a pattern and then I surprised
you and you were
re-engaged but too much repetition
causes the brain to
habituate and zone out too much
repetition is a Sonic cliche and our
list stops
listening how many times have you said
to your partner in the same melodic
Stratosphere honey pick up your
towels honey pick up up your
towels like after thousands of
repetitions their brain has habituated
to your wife
voice and they don't hear you they
really don't they really
don't so try changing your melody in
some
way next time go honey pick up your
[Laughter]
towels song help us process emotion and
understand how we feel when we listen to
songs we love our brain releases the
feel-good hormone dopamine when we
listen to songs we don't like or hate or
hold music Bad hold music our body
releases the stress hormone
cortisol so try a little bit of this
brain science for yourself at home pick
a song in the morning to start your day
with instead of the usual negative
thought train that blazes through your
brain taking you with it put on a song
song you love that has uplifting lyrics
that primes your nervous system for a
great
day or the next time you have
questionable in-laws coming
over instead of awkward silences and
small talk put on a song you know they
love and let the dopamine
flow I like to start a song with a great
title or a concept or a clear
emotion and then they use the language
that's a mixture of concrete language
metaphor and emotion and then I use all
of the musical elements in support of
that
idea as music helps us process negative
emotions as I've gotten
older I've had to adopt new nouns to my
vocabulary words I never thought would
belong to me like
jowls and turkey
neck and most horrifyingly crepe
skin so in order to process my
rage I wrote a song about
it all right so here's a little
bit grape
skin oh I've got
crep
skin I'm just getting started haven't
figured out the journey yet better than
I've ever been but now I've got a turkey
neck I'm wearing scarves like Dy and
Katon turtleneck sweaters in the summer
when it's heating crep
[Music]
skin
I know you don't relate
but yes I was able to laugh uh at I was
able to laugh at the aging process and
better accept it and the delivery of my
first AARP
magazine over a year ago many of you
might know this over a year ago I was
diagnosed with breast
cancer and I turned to music for my
therapy in fact my song was lizo about
damn
time
yes after a double masectomy
chemotherapy and going bald lizo lyrics
I've been so Down and Under Pressure I
may not be the girl I was or used to be
I might be
better
and and the chorus lyric I've got a
feeling I'm going to be all right okay
it's about damn time became my fight
song of optimism and a shot of
dopamine as there were days um that I
couldn't face the next round of chemo
and I would get a text message from an
old friend or a card in the mail or a
knock on the door with a huge bouquet of
flowers and I was filling f with love
from those simple kindnesses and that
support and that love made me face the
next
treatment it really made me start to
understand why I loved that old song you
are the wind beneath my
wings because I literally felt lifted by
the love and the friendship that was
surrounding me because I shared what I
was going through which I felt was
really important to
do and their love held me when I
couldn't hold myself
one day a one of my favorite song
writers texted me and he said how are
you and I said it's going to take
everything I've got to get through this
and he texted back well it's a good
thing you've got
everything but I'm a songwriter so that
idea which he will get no credit for
I I I held on to that idea because I
thought that's where I those were ideas
come to those were has come to me from
and one day my dear friend an artist
Susan katano came to visit and I said
I'm ready to start processing some of
this I'd like to write a song and I told
her about that idea and we sat down and
of course the first instinct could have
been the minor key
because that's where we sort of feel
that sadness or Darkness
belongs but I was feeling a lot more
complicated and complex than that I was
feeling sadness but I was feeling fear
but it was all lined with sunlight and
hope because of all my amazing friends
and the community around me and so we
decided to write it in a major key
altering one note so it was a blend of
Darkness and Light from the major key we
got the major and then altering one note
we sort of got a little bit of the
darkness there in Psychology there's a
term name it to tame it
and when we listen to songs that give
name to how we feel or we write them um
we can transmute and metabolize
difficult emotions and I felt better on
the other side of this song and I'd like
to dedicate it to anyone here that's
facing the hardest
thing
the room went out of focus when I heard
that
diagnosis words I never thought i'
hear I told my family then my friends as
we all tried to
pretend that nothing bad ever happens
here but then there were cards and calls
and flowers at my
door I don't feel so alone
anymore it's going to take everything
I've got it's going to take everything
I've
got
everything to get me
through it's going to take everything
I've
got everything I've
got
everything to see me
through so it's a good
thing that I've got
everything my head was spinning with a
thousand split decisions with my fragile
Fai than a rose qus in my
hand but then family friends and
neighbors the kindness of strangers when
I think that I can't do this they make
me think I can and it's going to take
everything I've
got everything I've
got
everything to get me
through it's going to take everything
I've
got everything I've
got
everything to see me
through so it's a good
thing I've got
everything cuz
love love is a real
thing and love
love is a real
thing and it's the only
thing and it's everything we've got it's
everything we've
got
everything to get us
through it's going to take everything
we've
got everything we've
got
everything to get us through
so it's a good
thing that we've got
[Music]
everything thank
you
w
Посмотреть больше похожих видео
Symphony of science - music therapy in health care: Carly Flaagan at TEDxGrandForks
Music’s power over your brain, explained | Michael Spitzer
Intelligenza Emotiva, di Daniel Goleman - Estratto da BookTheory
Emotion, Stress, and Health: Crash Course Psychology #26
Ed Sheeran's 'Shape of You': Making 2017’s Biggest Track | Diary of a Song
Música - Capítulo completo - El Cerebro y Yo
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)