How’s it going Nephews and Nieces?
It is a balls hot Thursday night, and my first night off of the week. Monday was spent tracking bass and scratch guitars for XX XXXX XXX. Tuesday, Ryan and I did some spontanous recording. Last night was spent rehearsing for Friday’s show……..something about My Uncle The Wolf and underground fetish clubs that is beyond me…but I digress.
Labingtone is one of the more popular names for our studio/office space. It is where we rehearse, record, jam, draw, paint and kick it on the regular. It really does have the feel of a fucked science lab where the strangest of tones are emitted, observed, recorded and analyzed….hence Labingtone.
A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a book called This Is Your Brain On Music. Author Daniel J. Levitin was a musician and studio engineer who is now a cognitive neuroscientist who specializes in music perception and the brain. Levitin takes on how we listen to music, why we enjoy it, which parts of the brain are involved in what, processing etc. You get the gist, some music science dude explaining what a major scale is in layman’s terms (WWHWWWH ) and why it makes us happy versus the minor scale.
Some of the more awesome things learned in the book were:
- Listening to music improves your brain function and communication between different parts of your brain. Playing muic does this even more.
- Neurons fire not only when your playing music, but when your visualising it as well.
- Our concept of rhythm is thought to stem from the evolutionary necessity of coordination during running away from predators. If you saw a lion, you best believe your body would be counting 1-2 1-2 1-2 1-2 fast as fuck away from the lion.
- Music predates agriculture in the history of our species. It most probably predates language, and if anything opened the door for the development of cognitive functions necessary for language in the first place.
If you’re interested in science, check it out.
So how does this relate to ya boys in MUTW?
You know that special ineffable feeling when you’re listening to or playing music? That feeling that you can travel through time between which notes have been played, which are being played now and which notes you are anticipating? That feeling that you can communicate in a more honest and direct way (an example of telepathy) than through language? This guy explains some of the science behind the feelings I haven’t felt more strongly in my whole life than the past few weeks in Labingtone with MUTW.
to the veneration of the mystery
-gpv
