Self-soundtrack
A couple of posts ago I wrote about the music presidential hopefuls have been using as the sound palette for their speeches and rallies. While I find the whole idea of choosing the soundtrack of your life's work quite fascinating, there is a whole other side to the idea of the self-sountrack; the music that is actually there, already running through your head.
If you stop to think (and, more importantly, listen), you are more likely than not to be hearing some snippet of repetitive sound. For some, it is verbal - a key phrase or even simply a word that may be hovering in the background of your consciousness like a screensaver on a computer. For others (and, from anecdotal evidence, more commonly), it is a musical tune or phrase that is on endless loop in one's mind. In the 80's the term "earworm" (from the German Ohrwurm) was coined as the name for this phenomenon, and it is really an apt description; the music wiggles its way into your ear and around your mind like it has a life of its own.
In some instances, this is not at all coincidental. If the music in question is from a commercial or a movie soundtrack or the latest Top 40 hit, it is most likely the result of carefully crafted "hook" that is designed to stick in your head. A "hook" is the music industry's way of "catching your ear"; it is a melodic or rhythmic pattern, usually highly repetitive, that is immediately attractive. (What makes it attractive is difficult to pin down or create a formula for - which I find encouraging! - you don't want to take all the magic out of it...) For example, when you think of the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", you are most likely to first recall the background chorus that is singing "a-weem-o-weh, a-weem-o-weh" - the "hook".
Hooks can be rather insidious because of their very nature; they're meant to winnow their way into your consciousness and stay there on an endless repeat. One "hook-y" song that often finds its way into my mind (and, please, don't laugh...) is a Jennifer Lopez/Ja Rule collaboration from 2001, "I'm Real". I'm not really a fan of Ms. Lopez's breathy vocals, and I find faux-thug Ja Rule to be a DMX wannabe (and I'd much rather listen to, say, Chuck D or Talib Kweli). But there's something about that "hook", the flute-like synth lick that repeats for the whole song, that's just ridiculously catchy, and if it happens to be playing on MTV2 late one night while I'm redoing "Messiah" bowings (yeah, welcome to my glamorous life), the song will be stuck in my head for days.
Hooks are not exclusive to the popular music world; examples abound in classical music as well. One only need listen to the first few seconds of Ravel's Bolero to understand the mesmerizing quality of the snare drum ostinato and the way it burrows itself into your mind (speaking of Bolero, you really must see this version to believe it). One piece that I can't expunge from my head when I start thinking about it is the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6; there is something about the undulating rhythm and cadential motive that settles into my psyche.
And it is not all just a matter of hooks, as "sticky" as they can be in our subconscious. Many musicians I know tell me that they have a pretty much constant soundtrack in their minds - it can run the gamut from a piece they're working on to a random composition not even for their instrument that they can't recall hearing recently but is nevertheless lodged in their inner ear. Oliver Sacks in his wonderful new book "Musicophilia" describes how he often enjoys mental "replays" of Beethoven's Third and Fourth Piano Concertos - and these are specific performances, recordings of Leon Fleisher from the 60's. I remember a very odd period in college when I had the slow movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony (BSO/Ozawa) in my head for over 2 weeks; right now, because I just wrote about Beethoven's Pastorale, it's all of a sudden having a party in my cranial sound system.
I've put out an APB to a bunch of colleagues about what's playing in their heads this gloomy Sunday afternoon; what's in yours??
If you stop to think (and, more importantly, listen), you are more likely than not to be hearing some snippet of repetitive sound. For some, it is verbal - a key phrase or even simply a word that may be hovering in the background of your consciousness like a screensaver on a computer. For others (and, from anecdotal evidence, more commonly), it is a musical tune or phrase that is on endless loop in one's mind. In the 80's the term "earworm" (from the German Ohrwurm) was coined as the name for this phenomenon, and it is really an apt description; the music wiggles its way into your ear and around your mind like it has a life of its own.
In some instances, this is not at all coincidental. If the music in question is from a commercial or a movie soundtrack or the latest Top 40 hit, it is most likely the result of carefully crafted "hook" that is designed to stick in your head. A "hook" is the music industry's way of "catching your ear"; it is a melodic or rhythmic pattern, usually highly repetitive, that is immediately attractive. (What makes it attractive is difficult to pin down or create a formula for - which I find encouraging! - you don't want to take all the magic out of it...) For example, when you think of the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", you are most likely to first recall the background chorus that is singing "a-weem-o-weh, a-weem-o-weh" - the "hook".
Hooks can be rather insidious because of their very nature; they're meant to winnow their way into your consciousness and stay there on an endless repeat. One "hook-y" song that often finds its way into my mind (and, please, don't laugh...) is a Jennifer Lopez/Ja Rule collaboration from 2001, "I'm Real". I'm not really a fan of Ms. Lopez's breathy vocals, and I find faux-thug Ja Rule to be a DMX wannabe (and I'd much rather listen to, say, Chuck D or Talib Kweli). But there's something about that "hook", the flute-like synth lick that repeats for the whole song, that's just ridiculously catchy, and if it happens to be playing on MTV2 late one night while I'm redoing "Messiah" bowings (yeah, welcome to my glamorous life), the song will be stuck in my head for days.
Hooks are not exclusive to the popular music world; examples abound in classical music as well. One only need listen to the first few seconds of Ravel's Bolero to understand the mesmerizing quality of the snare drum ostinato and the way it burrows itself into your mind (speaking of Bolero, you really must see this version to believe it). One piece that I can't expunge from my head when I start thinking about it is the second movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6; there is something about the undulating rhythm and cadential motive that settles into my psyche.
And it is not all just a matter of hooks, as "sticky" as they can be in our subconscious. Many musicians I know tell me that they have a pretty much constant soundtrack in their minds - it can run the gamut from a piece they're working on to a random composition not even for their instrument that they can't recall hearing recently but is nevertheless lodged in their inner ear. Oliver Sacks in his wonderful new book "Musicophilia" describes how he often enjoys mental "replays" of Beethoven's Third and Fourth Piano Concertos - and these are specific performances, recordings of Leon Fleisher from the 60's. I remember a very odd period in college when I had the slow movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony (BSO/Ozawa) in my head for over 2 weeks; right now, because I just wrote about Beethoven's Pastorale, it's all of a sudden having a party in my cranial sound system.
I've put out an APB to a bunch of colleagues about what's playing in their heads this gloomy Sunday afternoon; what's in yours??
Labels: music and psychology
posted by Sarah at
10:31 AM
3 Comments:
Land Down Under by Men At Work. Last night I attended a "christening" party for a friend's new piano. A bunch of us nerdy music types gathered around her new piano with various sundry instruments and sang/jammed to TV theme songs, the Carpenters, and top 40 hits from the 80s. My friend was gracious (and ridiculous) enough to transcribe the funky flute interludes for me to read during "Land Down Under", and so naturally that is what's stuck in my head today. (Luckily, it's the legit funky flute licks of the original recording that are buzzing through my head today - NOT my semi-intoxicated, painfully classically-influenced interpretation of them to which my friends were subjected last night.)
I have the bass line from Peter Gabriel's "Sledgehammer" hammered into my head today.
And in the please, don't laugh department... the high hook in the Take The First Step song in Elmo's Adventures In Grouchland. My 18-month-old would be so proud :)
First movement of Dvorak's Seventh Symphony -- I've just been writing how my conductor main character in my novel is taking his daily run and using that music to set his pace. He's also planning on conducting it soon but hasn't in several years, so he's testing himself to see how he remembers it.... I love this symphony.
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