MLT Club Member Jürgen
MLT Club MemberForum Replies Created
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Also a great intro with goosebumps guarantee: „My Sweet Lord“. Unfortunately, this wonderful song then loses some momentum at some point. That was the „bubble gum“ music of the 70s: the longer the better. „Short and crisp“ (kurz und knackig) of the 50s and 60s was history at this point.
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The fab four moustaches 🙂
The new videolink works, thanks Jung. I am surprised that you are not already in bed – greetings from the future-
An unusual intro and an unusual song from an even more peculiar album (even by Pink Floyd standards). But I love it.
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Hi Jung, yes we had the guitar intro before. But it really doesn’t matter, a very nice topic, again and again… 🙂 Good idea!
I found a nice cover version of Hotel California here (the original should be well known).
PS: And so that no ressentiments arise, I would also like to mention that of course our two favorite musicians played a likewise enchanting cover version of this song, but unfortunately I can’t link it right now.
PPS: your second videolink is blocked in Germany (maybe also in Europe). I can not watch it.
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Tom you are on the right track. I would first distinguish between hearing loss and deafness. Complete deafness is usually preceded by a longer period of hearing loss. What does deaf mean? Acoustic information causes the eardrum to vibrate. Three small bones are fused to the eardrum. They form a lever system that mechanically transmits the vibrations of the eardrum to the inner ear. The inner ear contains the actual hearing organ: the cochlea (also called snail after its shape). The cochlea is filled with a fluid and on an elongated membrane inside it there are innumerable sensory hairs. These sensory hairs are stimulated by incoming vibrations and convert the mechanical or physical signal into an electrical impulse (in sensory physiology this is also referred to as action potentials). These in turn are transmitted to the brain. If these sensory hairs in the cochlea are exposed to high sound pressure (volume) over a long period of time, they become desolate and die. One becomes hard of hearing. First, high frequencies can no longer be perceived properly. Then the middle frequencies and at the very end also the low frequencies. A phenomenon that is unfortunately only too well known in old people. Inflammatory diseases, such as an inflammation of the middle ear, can also lead to permanent damage to hearing in severe cases. Beethoven is said to have been infected with a typhus pathogen (typhus exanthemicus) and as a result became deaf. Whether Beethoven was really completely deaf or just severely hard of hearing, I don’t know. Probably he could still hear low frequencies for a very long time. As I mentioned before, very low frequencies with a high amplitude are felt over the whole body. Beethoven was a person of exceptionally high musical intelligence. In addition, he is said to have had an absolute hearing. With such highly gifted people, the information processing in the brain runs somewhat differently than with “normal” humans. A study from 2019 by the University of Toronto concluded that various areas of the auditory center in the brains of “absolutists” are larger than in people without absolute hearing. Moreover, in absolute hearers, neighboring areas of the brain turn on, giving them the advantage of being able to detect sounds and pitches much more quickly. And because of this extraordinary talent, Beethoven will probably have been able to arrange his music in his head without ever being able to hear it. Just as we humans have our inner voice, perhaps he had his inner music. There are many forms of giftedness not only in music. Some people have a so-called photographic memory: they can reproduce complete pictures they have seen with all details. And then there are synesthetes. In these people, the senses are linked differently than is usual. Letters and numbers can always have a certain color with these people or the seen picture is connected with a certain smell. There are several other forms of giftedness.
All sensory impressions arise in the head anyway. It is a great human achievement, but actually nothing unusual. We constantly call up some kind of memory content. We can remember. Singing songs, reciting texts and linking thoughts anew. The only reason we don’t perceive this ability as extraordinary is that we take it for granted. Do you like to cook? Maybe more unusual dishes without a recipe? Then think about what your brain is doing there everyday and bon appétit.
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I almost don’t dare to post this long text, but after following your discussion I can’t help it, sorry 🙂
A very interesting question from David, which has come up here several times: why does music create feelings and why do certain types of chords lead to feelings of happiness. To explain this from a psychological point of view is beyond the scope of this topic and also of the forum.
If you want to know why music is so important for people and why it has a certain effect on people, you should first deal with biological basics and also with evolution itself. How did life evolve on this planet in the first place and what does it mean for us humans in the end? A biological basic principle says: As little environment as possible. The first simple forms of life are completely surrounded by a membrane, which is only permeable to very specific substances and to which simple life reacts. Communication with the environment also takes place via this membrane. Initially, it is vibrations and pressures that are perceived. The oldest kind of sensory perception. They inform the organism about possible dangers. From this vibration-sensitive membrane our ears have developed at some time (more exactly the middle and the inner ear, to express it once strongly simplified). The sense of hearing is our oldest sense after the habtic sensation. Our ears fulfill first of all only one function: they are a kind of alarm system. Our life insurance. Only much later, after the brain has also developed accordingly, the sense of hearing is also used for social functions such as speech, singing and music. If you take a closer look at this development, you will see that we perceive only a fraction of our environment because we are simply perfectly adapted to our biotope, the earth. Our eyes, our ears and the rest of our senses perceive only what we need to survive. How the world could look like in all its aspects? We do not know. For this we would have to be able to see in the infrared or ultraviolet range and hear in the ultrasonic and infrasonic range. But we have learned very well to live with this limited world. And this brings us to sensory physiology. In order to understand how we hear or perceive and process frequencies and which special features the human auditory system has, one should take a look at the structure of the ear. The first filters are already built in there. Our ears are already neuronally connected in such a way that vital information is perceived better than less relevant stimuli (at the same volume, voices, for example, are perceived better than the rest of the ambient noise. This also applies to singing voices). The perception of acoustic information already functions differently than the physiological structure of our ears would lead us to expect. Now we are already in the area of neuroscience. How is the acoustic (already filtered signal) processed. It is possible to localize certain areas in the brain, which are activated by certain auditory signals (one also speaks of cognitive fields). These areas are always connected to other brain regions, such as the autonomic nervous system, which regulates, for example, the heartbeat, blood pressure and breathing rate. At the same time, certain memory levels are also activated. Complex interactions therefore occur very quickly in the brain. Especially in the field of brain research, rapid progress has been made in recent years, because the diagnostic methods are getting better and better (e.g. MRI or CT). But also here, first of all, processes or procedures in thinking and perception processes are described. This does not mean, however, that one also knows which purpose the whole fulfills or why it happens in such a way.
But that’s not all. At this point, brain metabolism comes into play. So which neutransmitters or messenger substances are released in the brain (e.g. dopamine, norepinephrine, serotonin, etc.) and what do they do in your head and body? The study of brain metabolism is still a fairly young science. Psychiatrists have been experimenting with various drugs and substances since the 1940s and 1950s. But the mechanisms of action are only now really understood (or not) Yes, and then psychology comes into play: Here it is a matter of understanding what influence already learned or formative experiences have on information processing. How are certain memory contents activated, recalled and linked to each other. What function do emotions have and how do we experience our environment. Social psychology also provides interesting insights at this point: which thoughts and behavior patterns are important in a social context. One can only understand the individual person correctly if one knows his social context. People sometimes think and act as a social group completely differently than an individual person. The perception of the environment can also change considerably.
All these scientific sub-disciplines have also conducted many studies on the topic of human perception and emotions and my impression is the following: the overarching interdisciplinary exchange takes place only slowly, so that one has no choice but to deal with all sub-disciplines and their results in order to get an overview. Only in the recent past have physicians, psychologists and physicists come together to form appropriate research teams, because it has been realized that a single, isolated view is not particularly helpful.
To summarize, as beautiful as all the arts we know are, they have their origins in one basic function: to enable or make life easier for us. So if you want to understand why an increase in chords causes feelings of happiness: look around at our environment. What function might it serve, when was it needed in the course of our evolution, or is there perhaps an equivalent to it in our social environment. What happens sensory-physiologically when a single person speaks and what happens when several people speak at the same time, or people sing together? Why does a mother change the pitch of her voice when talking to her infant, why do mothers (and fathers too) sing at all to soothe or cheer up their children? What do we perceive as a fetus already in the womb, initially blind and deaf? From the seventh month we are already able to recognize our mother’s voice, to hear her heartbeat. Do we already perceive there the first chords of our still young life, which shape us forever? All possible factors that could explain the feeling of happiness through the change of chords. Emotions always fulfill a social function and at the same time ensure survival. Emotions are directly linked to our perception. They are much older than language or intellectual achievements such as mathematics. And also interesting: feelings can be triggered by thoughts and/or body sensations (every person with anxiety disorders will unfortunately know this phenomenon) or even music. Music directly addresses the archaic part of our sensory perception: we can feel the vibrations of strong basses (the diaphragm plays a special role here as a ressonance amplifier), feel the rhythm (physiological reactions) and hear the melody (cognitive processes). Certainly a reason why music and emotions are forever connected. Music has become an art form through geniuses like Bach, Beethoven and many other musicians, but music in its pure form can always trigger the same basic emotions: Joy, fear, anger, love, sadness, surprise, and perhaps shame.
One last remark: if something is experienced as harmonious or disharmonious it also has something to do with the synchronization of our two brain hemispheres, which must constantly exchange information. This synchronization follows its own “rhythm” or a certain frequency and also influences our interpretation of the sensory information we receive.
Fun fact: Music is understood worldwide. The African Mafa tribe rarely comes into contact with Western music. A research team headed by Thomas Fritz from the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig changed that in 2009. For a study, the scientists played various styles of music to the Mafa, including tango, rock ‘n’ roll and Johann Sebastian Bach. The people were supposed to assign the three basic moods happy, sad or threatening to the different sounds – which they managed without any problems.
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And why not a song for Mona Lisa ? 🙂
PS: Christopher, you’re right: M&L are way above the level of Billy Idol, but I wasn’t suggesting that Mona should marry the guy because he has such good table manners. I personally like the song even though it’s just a cover song. Billy Idol is a bully or rude guy but I like his music. And that’s what this is all about.
Jung, Cat Stevens song is beautiful and sad at the same time. And we already had the topic: often the slightly melancholic songs are often the best ones.
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Hi David,
a very nice idea and quite a head scratcher. If we also add french it will be even easier 🙂
I try this one:
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Hello Tom,
I just searched once for the term Gematria. Yes sounds very interesting but is also kind of hard stuff. It seems to me you like to play with numbers. Personally, I’m like Bach: mathematics was not necessarily my favorite subject. The numbers didn’t find their way to me and I wasn’t really looking for the numbers 🙂
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B+A+C+H = 14
In the German city of Eisenach, so there the place where Bach went to school, the special exhibition ” B+A+C+H=14 ” took place in the Bach House on March 21, 2014, which explored the question of numbers and other riddles in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach with plenty of tongue in cheek. It is pure coincidence that Bach celebrates his 329th birthday on this day – cross sum: 14.
Bach’s vest on the famous Bach portrait from 1746 has 14 buttons. The monogram on the front of the ‘Bach Cup’, the drinking glass from Bach’s possession kept in the Bach House, contains 14 dots. Since its discovery in 1935, experts have been trying to decipher the symbolism of the Bach Goblet. A mirror monogram with the letters J, S and B is cut into the front – a play on the initials of Bach’s name. The ends of the letters run out in 14 dots. 14 is the “Bach number” because according to the natural number alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc.), B+A+C+H equals 2+1+3+8 equals 14. On the reverse is a poem with elaborate staves that reveal the baroque play with symmetries, reflections, and inversions.
Bach wrote 14 canons on the bass motif of the Goldberg Variations. 14 ‘Contrapuncti’ are contained in Bach’s ‘Art of Fugue’. All this is hardly a coincidence. For in the Baroque period, people playfully related numbers and letters to each other with the ‘number alphabet’. Such number games become ‘number mysticism’ in the so-called ‘Kabbalah’, which assigns numbers to terms in the Bible and interprets their appearance elsewhere as a divine hint, a revelation. Some think that such number mysticism is also hidden in Bach’s works: secret messages that can be deciphered by counting measures, stanzas, or note values.
It was not the composer himself who pointed out this number. It was the Protestant theologian Friedrich Smend, librarian at the Berlin State Library from 1923, who first noticed strange numerical regularities, especially in the great oratorios. These became widely known through Douglas Hofstadter’s 1979 bestseller “Gödel, Escher, Bach.”
Hofstadter called them “strange loops.” Some examples: The 43 Credo calls in the B minor Mass correspond exactly to the number of C+R+E+D+O, calculated according to the natural number alphabet. Also in the 63 Christ calls of the St. Matthew Passion a secret self-portrait of the composer is hidden in the form of the sum of 49 (= 7 x 7) + 14 (the Bach number).
The theory is too good not to be true. For this reason it passed historically without a break into the realm of legend. Musicologists of the past believed to be able to prove that Bach had predicted the date of his own death by the number of measures in his “Goldberg Variations”. According to a Leipzig joke, the total sum of the movements in the cantatas, arranged by groups of works, corresponds to the number of Bach’s account at the local savings bank (financial institution).
(source: Deutschlandfunk / welt)
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Hi JP, of course I didn’t. I know the early faces of Pink Floyd only from their LP covers. As far as the look of Pink Floyd is concerned, I am quite clueless. I wouldn’t even recognize David Gilmour today if he rang my doorbell and brought me a pizza. Too bad I’ll never get an autograph that way.
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Hi Jung, yes “The Scarecrow” is an early song by Pink Floyd from 1967 and was released on the album “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn”. It is the only album that was created entirely under the musical direction of former band member and actual founder of Pink Floyd Syd Barrett, who left the band in 1968. I would be interested to know to what extent The Beatles and Pink Floyd influenced each other. The LP Sgt. Pepper also has a psychedelic touch.
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Yes Tom, in an interview many years ago, Pete Townsend reported that he always stood directly in front of the loudspeakers during live gigs (like probably many other musicians of the 60s). No band does that anymore. But when you’re young, you don’t even think about a lot of things. When I think about the ringing in my ears after going to a discotheque. Oh dear.
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Great find Pascal. „Lisa Mona Lisa“ by an Austrian performer. Very nice. But he only got the 21st place at the Eureopean Song Contest in 1988. Well. Udo Jürgens sounded clearly better in 1966 with his title ” Merci Chérie” and rightly won the first place of the Eurovision Contest (Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson).
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Did you mean something like that David ?
(almost in time for the advent season…)
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Hello Diana,
I know „Luca“ and „Tom’s Diner“ from Suzanne Vega. The title “Language” was unknown to me until now. Thanks for posting. A wonderful song with poetic lyrics which I like very much. When I listen to this song the following comes to my mind: Sometimes it might really be better to listen to your feelings and inner voices instead of discussing everything and destroy beautiful things by talk. Just like Depeche Mode describe it in their song:
