Birds do it, bees do it. Howler monkeys in the trees do it. Let’s do it, let’s… talk about singing.

I started out with wanting to discuss the differences between how spoken word and sung word are processed, but as I was thinking about where to begin, I realized this was a much larger topic than I had anticipated and would likely require multiple posts to even scratch the surface, since there is a whole subsection of neuroscience dedicated to the way music affects the brain, so here I am with day one of a multi-day post.

Today I thought I would start off with musical expectation. As a musician myself, I can tell you that the ability to predict what is going to come next in a song or a chord progression comes in really handy if you need to play something that you have never heard or seen before. My ability to predict what chords will sound like has saved my butt a time or two when I’ve relied too much on my natural ability to play music rather than practice like I should. Of course, this ability was developed after a lifetime of practicing in various circumstances, and I have been impressed by my own ability to fake my way through a song both while playing an instrument and vocally (in harmony and occasionally in Spanish). But let’s be honest, I would still be a lot better of a musician if I actually practiced (sorry Dad.)

That being said, you don’t have to have my musical inclination to be able to predict the next note in a scale, as is shown here in this Ted Talk by musician Bobby McFerrin, who illustrates this by getting the audience to sing a pentatonic scale as he hops back and forth across the stage. And it doesn’t matter your level of musicianship or if you even know what a pentatonic scale is, your brain (yes YOURS) is hardwired to expect the next note of the scale just by having heard a couple of notes in it. Bobby McFerrin admits he has done this many times with many audiences, and it doesn’t matter where he is, the audience will understand instinctively.

What this suggests is that music is a language all on its own, and probably a more primal language than any that we speak today. But it isn’t a language that we comprehend intellectually, it’s a language we comprehend emotionally. Which we will discuss further over the coming week.