Duet

I like music.

I don't know music, but I like it. You may know more and better bands than I, you may be better versed in music theory, and your talent with your voice/guitar/whatever may far exceed mine... in fact, you may even like music more than I do. The simple truth with which we will start this discourse is that I like music.

Music appreciation is an abstract thing, all qualitative and intangible, so I will take the liberty of narrowing our focus further. I like music, and when I really like music, I feel it.

Maybe more than most, maybe less - Relativism was never my forte - I get chills when I listen to a beautiful piece of music. You know that shiver down your spine, that deep down tingle that you can't quite explain? Like fingernails tracing lightly up the inside of your arm, or lips nuzzling where your collarbone meets your neck. That is how I feel music, when the music is good.

Take a moment to collect your thoughts. I'll wait.

It's nearly impossible to classify what type of music produces this sort of a response in me, for the same reason as it's unfair to ask "what's your favorite band?". I have gotten the chills from British blues-rock and from a six-year old's take on an old standard, from orchestras and a capella choirs. There's no guarantee that one genre will strike me in that way, nor is there any way to predict whether a different song by the same artist will have the same effect as an earlier piece.

That said, let's magnify again; that is, let's reduce the scope of this inquiry to better focus on the palpable. Duets, done properly, are extremely likely to give me the chills.

Not this Duets. Well, actually, why not? Listen to this, and enjoy.


Nice, right?

For me, it isn't so much that Huey and Gwyneth can sing - can't they, though? - but rather it's the way they sound in harmony. It's less about the vocal quality (sing the right pitches and I'm essentially satisfied) and more about the composition (what pitches are they singing?).

It turns out that there is a physiological reason for these sensations. (From here on out, I will rely heavily on Dan Levitin's book, This is Your Brain on Music). Your cerebellum, the most primitive part of your brain, coordinates your mesolimbic system, which releases opioids and dopamine into the blood [Levitin and Menon 2005]. Your cerebellum can get you high.

That explains the output of the wonderfully mysterious black box that is your brain. Now the question is, what is the stimulus that makes the cerebellum light up?

It seems that one of the cerebellum's functions is to be a timekeeper. Remember, this is a very primitive part of the brain, one we share with lower creatures, like rats and lizards and undergrads. Timekeeping is of evolutionary advantage - Levitin reminds us that the rat, hearing a constant rhythm on the earth above his burrow, can relax; when the rhythm changes, it may mean a predator is approaching, and the rat must prepare to freak out.

How does this translate to us higher beings? Not directly, yet considerably. Your cerebellum is active, and it coordinates the auditory and frontal cortices. For timekeeping, yes, but also for predicting and anticipating. Here, Levitin says it best:

"Music communicates to us emotionally through systematic violations of expectations. These violations can occur in any domain - the domain of pitch, timbre, contour, rhythm, tempo, and so on - but occur they must. Music is organized sound, but the organization has to involve some element of the unexpected or it is emotionally flat and robotic (173)."

This is noticeable in "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", even in a simple, unaccompanied performance by a child, as in the link above. The little girl's octave leap, from "Some" to "where", is essentially against the rules of Western music. It is jarring, at a subconscious level, because you are simply blindsided by the doubling of frequency between notes.

In the same way, duets play to your brain's predispositions. The melody may be somewhat set, but the harmony can play with your expectations, and it can do so different from one verse to the next. Your cerebellum will freak out (as our early ancestors would), and whoosh, neurotransmitters are released into your system. And you get the chills.

A Prairie Home Companion had a program the other night, which they called Pas De Deux, that kept me stuck in the car for nearly an hour. It was a duet competition. It was pretty. I got the chills a lot.

The following was my favorite song. I hope you enjoy.