Guitar Zero presents a panorama of topics that relate two seemingly separate fields: science and the arts. Two of the topics that I found interesting were the relationship between language and music, and the evolution of music.
Baby Say What?
In the chapter, Talking Heads, Gary Marcus ponders on what music and language have in common that they do not share with other concepts. A recent study entitled Music and Early Language Acquisition done by researchers from University of Maryland, College Park's Shepherd School of Music asserts the importance of music in language acquisition, instead of the other way around. Additionally, the study "[challenges] the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language," stating that learning music happens at the same rate and effort as music acquisition does (Brandt, Slevc, and Gebrian 2012). The authors review various literature on early language perception, such as researches on infant sensitivity to phonemes of words, and the rhythm of speech. They conclude that infants are not simply processing the underlying emotions or meanings attached to what we say to them but more importantly, infants are also highly sensitive to the way words are said. They try to make sense of words by listening to the composition of language, and then the meanings of these words come in the later developmental stages.
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| First year of language and music development[Photo source] |
By nine months, they are able to differentiate the distinct rhythms of their native language, as well as the changing tempo and pitch. Additionally, they also become less sensitive to music and language that are not from their native tongue. By twelve months, they are absolutely unable to differentiate foreign speech and musical sounds, although they have already developed the ability to comprehend, generalize, and utter their first words. These findings indicate that sensitivity to aspects of language that are "musical" (e.g. rhythm, pitch, tempo) are learned earlier, whereas the semantic aspects such as meanings of words are developed later on. Beyond the first year, musical and language abilities continue to develop, although in a more parallel sense this time. For instance, familiarity of syntax and their appropriate contexts is learned before six years of age. Pitch and harmonic sensitivity are comparable to an adult's by twelve years, as well as the child's syntactic and semantic knowledge. The authors suggest that focusing on these musical aspects of speech might help in learning a second language later on in life.
The authors also review the use of motherese, or a kind of speech that is high- pitched, slow, melodically contoured, and rhythmic. This way of talking is used on babies by mothers, and is also known as "baby talk." The study concludes that motherese helps infants understand the language more, as well convey the affect that is attached to the speech.
These are just some of the findings cited in Brand, Slevc, and Gebrian's research. The authors conclude that "language is simply a subset of music in a child's point of view," since during their earlier months, when the semantics are not yet that defined, infants are drawn to the prosodics, the pitch, the melody, and other musical aspects of speech.
In the chapter, Talking Heads, Gary Marcus describes how language and music could be related. He claims that musical species also have a rich system for communication, and indeed, the human language is such. He goes on to describe how language and music are similar because "both are products that emerge from the same fundamental collection of brain tools" (Marcus 57). Since brain structures are not solely devoted to a single function, Brandt, Gebrian, and Slevc's claims are indeed reasonable: early language could've been an offshoot of the brain's musical development. It was also mentioned in the study that some linguistic processes in the brain occur in similar areas where some musical processes occur, such as processing of musical timbre and consonant and phoneme identification. Thus, according to Brandt, Slevc, and Gebrian, it is not a surprise that people who have language deficits such as dyslexia and specific language impairment could be less sensitive to music, such as having trouble distinguishing instruments and sound durations.
Overall, the study is an interesting perspective to add to the debate of whether language stems from music, or the other way around. It would be better if someone could probably make a longitudinal study on infants and their music and language development, since these findings would be helpful in designing music and language education programs
Survival of the Hit-test
Another interesting breakthrough that we could relate to Guitar Zero is the study of music evolution.
In the book, Marcus mentions some innovations of music that occurred throughout the years, such as the development of instruments, avant- garde technologies, as well as novel playing techniques. One innovation that was mentioned was how music was once monophonic, until it evolved into different chords and harmonies. Soon, "[c]omposers and keyboard players figured out strict rules for which sets of notes (chords) sounded good together," eventually leading to newer tunes (Marcus 116). According to Marcus, the music that we have now is "a production of cultural selection as it is of natural selection" (Marcus 118). An online study, called DarwinTunes, seems to be testing this idea.I came across DarwinTunes whilst looking for literature for this blog. DarwinTunes is based on the hypothesis that music "evolves" depending on the preference of the public. By setting up an online survey, listeners get to choose which loops they like best, and the ones that are highly chosen "have sex" and create "baby loops." In other words, these sound loops combine depending on the preference of their appeal to the survey participants. The researchers, Dr. MacCallum and Prof. Leroi from the Imperial College of London, started out with sounds that were randomly generated by the computer. As "generations" of music developed, they noticed that newer generations were quickly starting to sound a lot like "aesthetically pleasing chords and music" (MacCallum et al. 2012). However, as these loops adapted positively to the listeners, "procreation" seemed to slow down As of this writing, they have produced around 3 500 generations since they started it in 2010, and they are still currently "breeding" the popular loops. I participated in their study and tried listening to newer, random loops, which now included percussions, and found the experiment amusing. I also listened to earlier loops, and they indeed sounded more awful compared to newer loops. Although I doubt that they'd include lyrics to these tunes someday, the study per se is interesting, since it gives us insight on how the public's musical taste throughout the years could've possibly determined the kind of music that we are enjoying now.
Sources:
Brandt, Anthony, Molly Gebrian, and L. Robert Slevc. "Music and early language acquisition." Frontiers in Psychology. 3. (2012): n. page. Print. <http://www.frontiersin.org/Auditory_Cognitive_Neuroscience/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00327/full>.
MacCallum, Robert, Matthias Mauch, Austin Burt, and Armand Leroi. "Evolution of music by public choice." PNAS. (2012): n. page. Print. <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/12/1203182109>.
Marcus, Gary. Guitar Zero. 1st ed. The Penguin Press, 2012. Print.
Yong, Ed. "Tunes without composers: music naturally evolves on DarwinTunes." Discover Magazine .
18 June 2012: n. page. Web. 11 Oct. 2012.
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2012/06/18/tunes-without-composers-music-naturally-evolves-on-darwintunes/>.
http://news.rice.edu/2012/09/18/theory-music-underlies-language-acquisition/
*photo credits linked
*participate in the DarwinTunes study! http://darwintunes.org/
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