A: Both believe in the secret power of sound to change our brains.

First, these teens…

In the last few weeks, reports have been popping up everywhere about a new craze among the iPod generation – ‘i-dosing’ – listening to music designed to get kids ‘high’. It’s based on the musical illusion of binaural beats. But the makers of these digital drugs have been claiming that listening to these audio clips will create the same effect as taking illegal narcotics.

If the concept sounds silly, the media’s coverage of it has been even sillier:

The idea that certain sounds can mess with our brains isn’t a new one. Far from it. Time for some ancient Greek philosophy…

Back in Plato’s time, songs could be played in a variety of different musical modes, kind of like how we use major and minor. Each different mode evoked a slightly different emotion for an ancient Greek listener, just like the major mode sounds “happy” and the minor mode sounds “sad” to us. But Plato and other philosophers believed music could affect more than just emotions. They thought these different modes would affect mental states and behaviours. Listening to one mode would mold their youths into intelligent warriors, while another would make them lazy drunks. Sound familiar? Some things never change.

If you’re wondering what Plato had to say about it, here’s some of his dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon, from the third book of The Republic. They’re deciding which musical modes would create a nation of intelligent warrior teens:

We said we did not require dirges and lamentations in words.

We do not.

What then, are the dirgelike modes of music? Tell me, for you are a musician.

The mixed Lydian, he said, and the tense or higher Lydian, and similar modes.

These, then, said I, we must do away with. But again, drunkenness is a thing most unbefitting guardians, and so is softness and sloth.

Yes.

What, then, are the soft and convivial modes?

There are certain Ionian and also Lydian modes that are called lax.

Will you make any use of them for warriors?

None at all, he said, but it would seem that you have left the Dorian and the Phrygian.

Socrates then goes on to explain that the Dorian mode instills a sense of courage, while the Phrygian mode promotes thoughtfulness. If only it were that easy to change our behaviour! Then again, there’s always the Mozart effect…

A note for our music nerds out there – even though the modes Plato mentions have the same names as modes we use today (Lydian, Dorian, Phrygian), these ancient Greek modes sounded nothing like them. Medieval music theorists confused matters by misnaming and misinterpreting the ancient Greeks!

If you’re interested, you can find out a little more about ancient Greek music here.

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

Q: What do ‘digital drug’ teens have in common with ancient Greek philosophers? is a post from: soundlounge

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At soundlounge, our job is to seek out the most talented musical minds for any given commercial brief. Our music supervision team can attest to the abundance of talented new composers eager to write original scores for TV ads and films. But what if we were able to tap into the minds of past geniuses like Bach or Beethoven? What if original music could be composed from beyond the grave? It might sound ridiculously farfetched, but through the power of computer processing, one clever composer has found a way to ‘reanimate’ the dead masters…

The folks over at Radiolab spoke with David Cope about his controversial dead-composer-resurrecting software EMI (Experiments in Musical Intelligence). His program can analyze sheet music and spit out an entirely new piece, based on the compositional style of the original music. Cope has tried it out with just about every famous composer, from Mozart to Scott Joplin, and the results have been eerily on-the-nose. When performed by human players, these pieces often turn out to be beautiful and moving.

Have a listen to the Radiolab conversation:

Cope admits that he gets criticized more often than praised. He has been in shouting matches and has even been physically attacked by people who feel threatened by his experiments. Cope explains:

“If you’ve spent a good portion of your life being in love with these dead composers…and along comes some twerp who claims to have this little piece of software…that can move you in the same way, suddenly you’re saying to yourself, ‘Well what’s happened here? Certainly my relation to the original pieces of music has cheapened in some way. Is Chopin really just nothing more than a bunch of clichés strung together?’”

It’s an unsettling thought for most music lovers. If we’re moved by a piece of music, we like to think it’s because the composer felt that same emotion, and was brilliant enough to put the emotion into musical notes. We’d feel like fools if we got emotional over a string of random notes.

But Cope’s invention upends the idea that the composer is the only emotional genius. In a way, it gives the performers and listeners more credit. As performers, we can take computer-generated sequences of notes and convey a meaningful story with them. As listeners, we hear these performances and create our own meaning. The emotions we feel are entirely from within, from our own musical background, from our own life experiences.

What are your thoughts? Does Cope’s software cheapen the work of the great composers, or does it honor them? Would you pay to see the premiere of a ‘new’ piece by Beethoven? Would you be offended if it showed up in the next car commercial?

You can listen to the entire Radiolab episode here. You can hear Cope’s EMI pieces here.

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

Beethoven, Bach, Back from the Dead is a post from: soundlounge

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1. Coca-Cola: The J.S. Bach of Brands

It’s rare for a commercial to be so moving it sends chills down my spine, but Nike’s “Human Chain” ad struck me just right.

“Ali in the Jungle” by The Hours is great song, but I’m not sure the song itself would have given me goosebumps. And the visuals, stunning as they may be, would never have done it for me without this song. Many of the 250,000+ YouTube viewers would probably agree – these music supervisors and film editors found the perfect match of music and images.

If an ad agency knew the secret formula for a “chill response” and could guarantee X number of them in their viewers, they’d be set for life. Why?

1. A chill response signifies an intense emotional reaction.

2. These reactions to music and film are almost always associated with positive feelings.

3. The chill response is physically measurable market research.

So why haven’t marketers been all over this? In truth, psychologists have been studying chill responses to music for years, but their findings have been limited by the unpredictable nature of chills. A powerful chill reaction is rare, and it seems to depend on a delicate balance of many factors. Reactions can vary widely from person to person, and some people reportedly never experience chills or goosebumps at all when they listen to music.

Still, some studies have found common musical qualities that tend to give people the chills:

1. Changes in volume

2. Entry of a voice

3. New or unprepared harmonies

4. Sudden textural changes

5. Solo instrument emerging from a softer orchestral background

While none of these factors alone will guarantee an emotionally powerful song, they can be helpful guidelines for critiquing a track. Ask: does the track change enough musically? Does it have dynamic highs and lows? Does it surprise the listener at key points? These questions can help steer you toward the next goosebump-inducing hit.

Which commercials are so good they’ve given you the chills? Post them in the comments section below.

For more info, this study outlines some of the best chill research out there: “Listening to Music as a Re-Creative Process” Grewe, et. al., 2007 (pdf).  http://musicweb.hmt-hannover.de/kopiez/Grewe-etal(2007)Chills.pdf

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

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And your word for the day is…’diegetic’. Diegetic and non-diegetic are cinematic terms relating to the use of sound in a film. Diegetic refers to sound whose source is visible on the screen, or whose source is implied to be present by the action of the film. Where as non-diegetic is sound whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action. A film’s music soundtrack is nearly always non-diegetic, creating a sense of mood and accentuating key moments in a film’s plot. In the following clip from Mel Brooks’ film High Anxiety, he cleverly plays with this convention – moving the music from non-diegetic to diegetic – enjoy.

Brian Kelly, Creative Director
soundlounge

Where’s That Sound Coming From? is a post from: soundlounge

As I was watching Sprint’s clever “What if ____ ran the world?” ads, I noticed they used no music, no jingles, nothing that would traditionally qualify as a sonic logo. Only one sound stands out consistently in each ad: the walkie-talkie-like bleep of the Sprint phone itself. And every time we hear it in Sprint’s commercials, it’s followed by a joke. By the end of each ad, we’ve heard it 6 to 12 times, and it’s no longer just a phone bleep. It’s a brilliantly timed comic device that has preconditioned us to laughter.

Of course, the same sound can mean vastly different things for different people. For the majority of us, the sound of an incoming text message is exciting, a happy beep signaling a new message from a friend. But for my mother, it’s a sound that strikes terror in her heart and gets her adrenaline flowing. For her, it means she’s received a text from my younger brother in Africa. Often his messages bear bad news – he was robbed on the street once and lost all his money. So this seemingly harmless sound evokes fear and maternal instincts in a split second. One day she told me, “I hate that sound more than any other sound.” Who knew a simple, neutral beep could stir up such an emotional reaction?

The finest sound designer can craft the most perfect sound for your brand, but context is everything. Though most of us don’t start salivating, we’re a lot like Pavlov’s dogs once we’ve been trained to hear a sound in a certain way. Sprint was smart; they trained us from the beginning to hear their phones as fun, even before we interact with one in real life. As soon as a strong sonic branding plan meets a positive customer experience, the Pavlovian buttons will be pushed in just the right ways. For 99.9% of us, this is good news. For the unfortunate alarm clock marketers of the world…I wish you luck.

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

Sounds in Context – Mobile Phone Ring or Pavlovian ‘Ding’? is a post from: soundlounge

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In sonic branding, much thought and effort goes into finding the perfect sounds to fit a brand’s style. Part of this process involves breaking these sounds into their essential ingredients and critiquing them: “That trumpet is a shade too mellow. Can we find one with more punch?” or “We need to decide if we want a brighter voice or a darker voice.”

Every musical detail counts in the advertising world. Think of the Intel Inside sound, one of the most memorable audio logos of all time – only three seconds long. Creator Walter Werzowa needed a keen ear to carefully design each sound. In the first note alone, he used over 20 different instruments and sounds!

Listen to the Intel sonic logo

Did you hear the anvil, tambourine, and electric spark? If you’re like most listeners, probably not (we’ll get to the reason for this later). But Werzowa hand-picked each of these sounds for a reason. He knew their unique sound “flavours” and was able to mix them perfectly into a memorable audio logo.

We can all tell when an instrument sounds right or wrong in a certain context. This is the “I’ll know it when I hear it” approach, which drives many sound branding decisions. But when it comes down to a few seconds of sound design, it’s important to understand why an instrument sounds mellow, punchy, bright, or dark.

With a little science and an open ear, we’ll explore some of the basic “spices” of sound undiscovered by the average listener – overtones.

Can you sing more than one note at the same time?

Tuvan musician Kongar-ol Ondar employs an age-old Tuvan tradition of overtone singing to sing two, three, or four notes at the same time in this clip from the Late Show with David Letterman:

“How did he do that?!” you might be thinking. Let’s take a closer look at overtones –

When you strike a key on the piano, how many tones are you playing?

If you said one, you’re right…and wrong. Common sense tells us that one piano key produces one tone. In reality, each key has a bit more magic than that.

Let’s say you play a middle C on the piano. The main sound we hear is obviously the note we call “middle C.” But when this single key is struck, it also unleashes a surge of other tones, seemingly out of thin air. Due to the natural resonances of the piano string, different, higher pitches than middle C are produced: G, E, B-flat, D…the list continues up into the musical stratosphere.

These higher pitches are the overtones that tag along with every key struck on a piano, every breath blown into a saxophone, every violin pluck, every vocal “oooo,” and every gong crash. But we don’t normally hear these overtones, because:

1. Overtones are generally much quieter than their fundamental tone (middle C in our example), except in rare instances. Kongar-ol Ondar’s singing is unique, because he can manipulate his voice’s overtones so that they’re louder than the fundamental, droning bass tone.
2. Overtones and their fundamental tone arrive at our ear almost simultaneously. Since our brains tend to group sounds in order to make sense of the world, we hear all of these different tones as one note. This illusion explains why we heard 20+ unique sounds as one in Werzowa’s Intel audio logo.

So if we don’t usually hear these individual overtones, why study them?

Think of a delicious pasta sauce. The average taste-tester can say, “It’s sweet. It’s salty. It’s delicious.” But that’s about it. A good cook, on the other hand, can tell you exactly what seasonings were used, based on the flavours of the end product. A cook could then recreate this sauce exactly, or vary it slightly to suit any type of pasta dish.

Overtones are a little like the spices that go into a pasta sauce. A unique blend of overtones emanate from every instrument, giving each a deliciously different sound. These distinctive overtone flavours (or timbres) explain why the same note sounds different on a clarinet, an oboe, and a flute.

Just like individual spices in a sauce, individual overtones are difficult to hear, but simply being aware of these musical ingredients is one step towards becoming a good sound “cook.” In the end, that’s what sound branding is all about: knowing which sound spices create which musical flavours and emotions, to cook up the perfect sound for a brand.

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

Overtones: The Secret Spices of Musical Sauce is a post from: soundlounge

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The wrinkles and folds of our ears aren’t just bizarre and useless vestiges like human tailbones, webbed feet, wisdom teeth, or appendixes. In fact, complex outer ears like ours are an evolutionary breakthrough. You won’t find protruding ears on less-developed creatures like fish and lizards. Human ears, on the other hand, are complex sound-catchers. The odd bulges and crevices of the pinna (the visible part of the ear) are designed to amplify sounds relevant to humans, especially the sounds of speech. As Robert Jourdain explains in Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy, “Our pinnae are too small to reflect the long waves that constitute low-frequency sound; they boost only high-frequency components…those most important for speech.” Thanks to the logic of Mother Nature, the sounds we produce when speaking are the same sounds we can hear the best.

So how does the shape of our ears affect how we hear music?

Along with our enhanced perception of speech, our perception of music is also influenced by our ears’ slight bias towards higher-frequency sounds. To our ears, a high-pitched piccolo may seem to cut through the orchestra more easily than a low-pitched tuba. Because of their high-frequency-boosting shape, our pinnae make music sound slightly “sweeter,” according to Jourdain. This is true of recorded music as well as live music.

One common misconception of recorded music is that microphones are used exactly like our ears to capture sound. However, unlike our ears, most recording microphones are designed to capture a broad range of frequencies equally well. This allows the music to be played back on speakers with all its natural sounds intact. Our ears then filter the sounds just as we would at a live concert.

But what happens when we completely skip our pinnae and stick earbuds or in-ear headphones straight into our ear canals? Naturally, the sound changes. Our pinnae no longer amplify the same high frequencies they would when listening to the music through speakers or on-ear headphones. So in theory, music piped straight through to our ear canal will sound a bit duller than music that gets reflected through our pinnae.

In reality, though, no pair of headphones or set of speakers recreates live music perfectly, with all frequencies intact. So the average music listener does not consciously perceive this slight frequency difference due to these pinnae reflections. Only the most obsessed audiophile would claim that a lack of pinnae reflections makes music less enjoyable.

Radiohead's Thom Yorke and a dummy head for binaural recording

On the other hand, some imaginative audio engineers have begun using the unique shape of our ears to reinvent the recording process and create incredibly realistic listening experiences. Instead of using traditional microphones, they place two small microphones inside the “ear canals” of an artificial human head. They can then place this “dummy head” anywhere inside a concert hall, even in the middle of an orchestra. The resulting recording will be the sum total of all the sounds from the orchestra bouncing through the dummy’s pair of “ears” and into the microphones. Because of the stereo effect and the natural ear reflections recorded by these dummy head microphones, the listener will feel transported to the concert hall, hearing the orchestra in 360 degrees around his or her head. Expect this eerily-realistic effect (known as binaural dummy head recording) to be used in more and more recordings.

Listen with in-ear headphones to this binaural audio sample from the Wikimedia Commons:

Binaural Recording Sample

The dummy head recording method was used in this Revolt music video:

Charlie McCarron, Sound Consultant
soundlounge

How The Shape Of Our Ears Affects What We Hear is a post from: soundlounge

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