How humans evolved music | Michael Spitzer 

I hope what aliens have in common with humans is a record player.

When birds sing, it’s peaceful because the birds’ singing of beautiful melodies also means that there is no eminent danger. Birds singing is peace. Not inadequacy. I have totally enjoyed the presentation nevertheless. Thank you so much for the video! That human music is learned also means it's a human creation probably inspired by all corners of nature and cultures, etc... Perhaps music does make human feel some inadequacy because we have to practice so hard at it to get it right.😂 Any musicians out there knows: practice, practice, practice!😅 But that's secondary, I think. Because when we are at a concert or hiking in the woods, our first feelings toward the music or bird songs are enjoyment and that all is good.

Dr. Spitzer, you are so close! You touch on the linguistic characteristics of music; you also briefly imply there’s a distinction between the noun “music” and the adjective “musical.” Please allow me to fill in some of the gaps. In the 60s, Cage, McLuhan and others disempowered the word “music” by equating it with any sound. Yet it was obvious that, in light of the Avant Garde movement, the more classical definitions involving rhythm, melody and harmony were no longer sufficient. In the past 25 years or so, neurophysiology changed our understanding of music, when it was demonstrated that familiar music is processed primarily in speech-related centers of the brain instead of just the auditory region. This provided the long-sought proof that Aristotle’s concepts of music as language was empirically verified. I don’t think anyone can show any advantage for early humans to be able to hear whale or elephant songs; those are also the frequencies of the sounds the bones of the neck makes when one moves their head around. Being able to hear such sounds would only serve to distract from the more important sounds humans needed to hear during the hunt. The same is true for high bat frequencies; what possible survival purposes would it serve if humans had evolved the high frequency hearing of dogs? You also perhaps unintentionally created a silence gap among primate sound-making. All primates make some sort of vocalizations, some more sophisticated than others (a human judgment!). As the modern human primate evolved, the involved species were continuously inundated with a variety of sounds. The humans were already keen observers and could see how animals might call each other with their species-specific sounds, and to make their hunt easier would begin to imitate the sounds as a means of attracting their prey. This is very simplified, I know, but this does provide a basis for understanding the evolution of language and music. As humans evolved, those whose hyoid bones were higher and whose pharynxes gradually changed shape were the ones who gradually developed the advanced vocal control necessary for speech and vocal music. When we put all this together with the way the brain integrates the processing of speech and music, we have the basis for a new definition of music that returns its power as a word and even expands on that power: Music is non-verbal sonic linguistic communication created directly or indirectly by humans. Thus the bird’s song is not music, but it is indeed musical! Record the bird’s song and incorporate it in a human-created non-verbal sonic linguistic communication (Respighi), and the bird’s recording becomes an instrument among others used to create music. This definition also shifts the paradigm of how we compose, perform, teach, and listen to music. It is first and foremost language; as in spoken language, the art aspect comes later. This language concept also fully explains your observation that music is not a universal language, but like speech, is universal. Music genres are the rough equivalents to different languages; this helps in understanding why someone who likes classical music might not enjoy rock or the other way around. They simply are not familiar with the language of the other genre. Note too that this definition makes no aesthetic judgment whatsoever; there is good classical and rock; there is also bad classical and rock! If music is taught the same way spoken languages are taught, there are completely different outcome expectations. No one would teach a second language with the expectation that all students will become great speakers, writers, or actors; similarly, music should not be taught with the expectation that all students should strive to become great performers, composers, or operatic divas. In both instances, those who wish to evolve their appreciation of the respective languages into art will easily be discovered and will strive to do so.

the musical intervals that humans find appealing are based on the physics of waveforms, how various waveforms interact in predictable ways. It follows that music across the universe would fall into similar patterns. Aliens would recognize that in our music.

With all due respect, I’ve been studying this question by participating in classical music, exploring its connection to our emotions through neuroaesthetics, and helping my students use musical elements in how they connect and communicate with each other for decades. As with other Big Think presenters, I find that Mr. Spitzer lacks the depth and breadth of ideas - and feelings - necessary to answer this beautiful question. Ah well…

This talk has articulated both my questions and feelings about music. Thank you.

❤❤❤Loved the talk and the music.

I agree more with Chomsky on this issue regarding Mathematics, Language and Music.

This was great! Thank you Professor Spitzer

Excellent topic and discussion of it.

Animals may use rhythm and melody but not harmony or polyphony. So there’s that. It doesn’t fit neatly with your theory does it?

music for myself even without being a fomer musicians, means everything in my life, really enjoy being alive to hear something

Very interesting. Great vid.

this had inexplicably made me cry

It was used for sharing and retaining important information

This was excellent. So meaningful and insightful. I really enjoyed and related to the revelations

need more in depth! Fascinating department

3:46 Haystack Rock, Oregon

Rock on! 🤟🏼

Remarkable

This maybe overcomplicates it. My summation of why human music is why it is having thought about it over years (as a musician): >> ‘Music’ is sounds within certain frequencies, played at certain rhythms and tempos, typically layered up to ‘align’ to said rhythm/tempo (even if it’s an ‘odd’, rarer time signature) >> the tempo range is dictated by our own human system: speed of heartbeat and speed of walking >> heartbeat: think both ‘lub-dub’ parts of the heartbeat- so resting heart rate c65bps = 130bpm lub dubs). >> And/or steps: slow walk of say 100 steps per minute (spm) or jog/run 125+ spm >> these human inherent tempos dictate that ‘slower’ music >‘Faster’ music >125bpm for example, tends to speeds up our body and mind…It’s why it makes us drive or run faster. Or want to move/dance/jump rhythmically to the beat of the music. Think of fractal noises of different frequencies: pink noise, green noise, brown noise etc. >> Frequencies (bass/melody): again, humans have a discrete range of sounds we can make with our voices. Singing, humming, whilsting, babies cries, laughter, speaking. >> these inherent frequencies we make, along with the sounds we are able to hear and distinguish, dictate the general frequencies we use in music. We tend to make music to the frequencies we can sing or hum. It relates to us; our biology and nervous system. >> Complexity: the layers of rhythm and sounds, relative and combined, produce feelings for most humans or some kind. >> The ‘colour wheel’ of sound. Minor sounds tend to sound ‘sad’, major tend to be ‘happier’. But it’s more about the interplay and dynamic / story between them. We’ve been conditioned to this (minor = sad etc). Also, major can sound more ‘resolved’ and therefore ‘arrived’ and happier, minor tend to sound less resolved, and therefore less ‘happy’. >> Similarly, smooth long sounds, drones like violins together for example can be more relaxing, move the brain into different states (brain waves slow down). Play the same frequency, but with a much faster or varied rhythm and it gives the song more energy; it moves in a more complex pattern. It tells a different story and increases the brain waves. >> non-human music: for another species, of this Earth or not, for them to hear and feel our music in a way which would make ‘sense’ or be of enjoyment to them might mean: 1) an assumption they are able to ‘hear’ in the first place in some way 2) they might need the tempo changing dramatically based on their natural rhythms / sense of time, like our heartbeat and walking 3) frequencies may need to be shifted significantly depending on what frequencies or pitches the species uses and/or can hear (eg much lower (whales, elephants, reptiles) or higher (cat, dog, bat). >> Open to ideas on or additional thoughts/science/logic…Despite the science, Music feels close to magic in its effects.

Could you provide your source???

The evolution of music may as well be in comparison with the evolution of apes to human beings. It's an all encompassing story worth telling for thousands of generations to come.

Music has power to change mindset

I worked with SETI scientists. The recording included a player and pictured instructions on how to use it. Ellen Jackson, author of LOOKING FOR LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE

MUSIC and RHYTHM facilitates REPETITION, IMPACT, and MEMORY "Reading and Writing and Rithmetic, taught to the TUNE of a Hickory Stick" Perhaps, adding music and rhythm can enhance learning and impact, and even POLITICS. ================================================================== TNX MCH

I appreciated this video, but I think that mention should be made of how the development of functional language also helped to develop musicality, in that the prosody in words, the natural high and low note inherent in speech are very much the root of melodyies, but that melodies could be extended beyond language too. Music also arose into an intellectual form from humans trying to describe the parts and elements of music, and from discovering and trying to describe combinations of notes (chords), and different scale choices, and the many rhythms that various cultures developed. Language about music helps people play music together, like when a band leader says "Play a 12 bar Blues in G Major " or "it's a sonata in D Minor". or " the rhythm is Bossa Nova" and other musicians know what is being described. What really amazes me is the ultimate development of the Circle of Fifths as a "rose", a mandala embedded in musical thought that holds the connection between the keys and enables a cyclic musical modulation from key to key. Seeing the Circle of Fifths for the first time in my path made me realize that music is not only from us the bodily functions and structures , but also manifests in us from higher levels outside of individual human's mind.

According to the end of the video, we "envy" birds for their songs because they are "natural" while our synthesis of sound is unnatural. Are human vocals unnatural in your opinion? It doesn't really make sense to say that singing is not commonality between birds and humans.

In Homo sapiens Music started by being aware and listening to the sounds of their environment. Then with the vocal cords were able to imitate those sounds.

Non sapient animals are not making music. Birdsong isn't a song; WE call it that as a metaphor.

My hypothesis is that music was the first language before speech.

Ah, the evolution of music, from hairy apes to potential extraterrestrial headbangers-it's like a cosmic jam session in the making! Professor Michael Spitzer has taken us on a wild musical ride, revealing that humans, unlike our musically gifted bird buddies, had to DIY our tunes from scratch. Imagine our ancestors, with their less-than-melodic grunts and groans, thinking, "Right, let's make something catchy out of this mess!" Thank goodness for those dexterous fingers and that descended larynx-evolution's way of saying, "Here, hold this drumstick and hit this note!" And let's not forget the emotional rollercoaster that is human music. It's not just about sounds; it's about weaving feelings into melodies, like trying to knit a scarf with heartstrings. We humans take it to the next level, turning music into a full-blown identity crisis-because why just sing when you can existential crisis croon? So, picture us humans, belting out tunes that make aliens think, "What on Alpha Centauri is that noise?" Yet somehow, amidst all the chaos, music becomes this universal language-a sort of intergalactic mixtape that says, "Hey, we may be a bit weird, but we've got feelings, too!" In the end, whether we're rockin' out in orchestras or imagining alien karaoke nights, one thing's for sure: music will always be the interstellar glue that holds the universe together, even if it's just with a wonky chord and a side of cosmic laughter. 🎶✨

If you listen to any bird, you can hear the underlying 'Dueling Banjos' fundamentals that underpin humans' natural proclivity post aural observation to compose. 'State/Respond-copy'.

What’s the point of putting that seamless background behind the subject in that fashion for the full-length shots?

Music is worth a lifetime; everything else makes it a terror.

So what came first, the song or the beat. One could say that drums were at first a form of long range communications. Maybe a small child playing with those drums inspired those who heard to explore a pleasing sound. Again, many very young children sit by themselves and invent nonsensical but rhythmic vocal sounds. Could that be the initial inspiration to duplicate pleasing sounds? I’ve looked at many cave paintings and most are childish. Some are ornate to be done by an artist, but that’s a story to explore a different day.

Rhythm and emotion you say? Mmmm, got it.

logical answer

I wondering animal sound is the first language origin of music …. Music is a incredible power connection

I'd say the heartbeat (60-100 bpm) preceeds the walking beat by a significant stretch.

Gamelan is made to resemble the sound of insects and frogs calling each other at night. Therefore, the best time to play gamelan is midnight. This is where gamelan is seen as a mystical thing

Mirror neurons also have been found in other, nonprimate species. That part of our brain shared by VERY conscious, aware, social, and other species, like birds (far older - remember that they are dinosaurs), fish, called cerebellum involved in learning physical and prosodic novel sensorimotor perceptions and actions, is more important than we appear to believe. Social birds and fish recognize acquired familiars, friends. While in ourselves we seek neural correlates in cerebral cortical regions to explain specific perceptions, the cerebellum, containing 1/2 of all our brain's neurons, is most overtly involved with learning -- learning harmony, melody, rhythm, the basic components of ALL music. It is not music, notfull entrainment, including the hormonal stimuli, the coherent neurotransmission neuromodulators , unless it contains all three. Any two or single musical dimension does not contain or fully elicit the attentional entrainment. It is not music without melody, for example. The cerebellum, involved in balance in motion, is strongly activated in formal daily dance, like ballet, which develops fast imitative ability as well as novel combinations occurring in creative action. It is not well-mapped, as are the two cortical sensorimotor regions, in the insula which compares interoception including skinsensors, with exterior events. Yet, when one observes ravens playing, flying upside down within a meter of earth, while interacting in play with another, and the fact that ravens identify individuals of other species through cues i'll call prosodic meaning how they move, in contrast to those of ourselves untrained or inattentive, seeing only the blackness of any aven, completely unable to recognizd it as an individual, one can gain a sense of our quite solipsistic relative heuristic dementia. Play is universal in young mammals, in many birds, and appears probable in many fish, who do share, as i said, recognitions of individuals of other species. We may be caught in illusion by our excessive symbolic verbal capacity, which is in our species used far too much in simulation of nonreal actions and events, and thus in fabrication of deception for social dominance purposes. We are the most deceptive, and deception-obsessed species, and as a result are often slow or absent in detecting pbvious interspecies signaling; while such signaling includes body posture, showing evolutionary homology, the far deeper, more ancient homology of detecting the sensory attention of other individual organisms, and their intentionality in specific circumstances, so well-developed in other animals, appears to be overwhelmed, ignored in children deprived of other species in their environments. Again, music is time-extended entrainment, even if it is involving the exquisitely complex manipulative ability of our hands, breath, and every body part movable through somatic musculature. Lok there to open your mind, and question every heuristic distillationyou make in any effort to encapsulate reality. Not only every organism, but every part and particle of the universe individuates, is unique, acts differently from all others, due to unique position and energies affecting it.

51 seconds in, my only thought is "Man you think your voice is more important than it is"

Here we go in the comments, with all the youtube experts with their own unsolicited and mostly uninformed opinions, thinking they have something interesting to say that the PhD didn't mention.

0:25 if apes are not musical, how did king Loui came up with his song then?

Ancient attempts at making sounds and modern music is indistinguishable.

Yes primates have heart beats , thus rhythms .

Contrary to common perception, Darwin did not say that humans directly evolved from apes. He merely pointed out the similarities between birds, fishes, mammals, and reptiles and suggested that all life is related 1. The idea that apes like chimpanzees, orangutans, or gorillas are frustrated human designs-species stuck halfway through their evolution-is wholly mistaken. Both they and we have unique evolutionary paths 23. So, while we share a common ancestry with apes, our evolutionary journey took distinct routes! 🌿🧬🦍🌟 I apologize if my previous comment came across as overly assertive or critical. It was not my intention to correct you in a way that might have caused any discomfort. We all learn and grow together, and I appreciate your engagement in this discussion. Thank you for your understanding.

I was 100% with him until he said the last statement when I felt he misspoke. A bird's music and a human's music are equally natural. They both evolved from nature. The songs may serve perceivably different purposes, but they are more deeply two parts of the same natural world. Am I wrong about this?

❤

Humans did not directly evolve from apes, but our evolutionary history is intricately connected to them. Let’s delve into the fascinating journey of human evolution: Common Ancestry: Molecular evidence suggests that 8 to 4 million years ago, gorillas and then chimpanzees (genus Pan) diverged from the lineage leading to humans 1. While we did not evolve from any of the apes living today, we share characteristics with chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans (the great apes) 2. The Hominin Fossil Record: Our evolutionary tree first sprouted in Africa. Our closest living relatives are chimpanzees, and our lineage split from theirs about 7 million years ago. The road to humanity was long. Nearly 4 million years later, our ancestors were still very ape-like. Lucy, a famous 3.2-million-year-old human ancestor discovered in Ethiopia, had a small brain and long arms, suggesting her species still spent time in trees. However, she walked on two legs, a defining human trait. Australopiths, including Lucy, were part of this early phase. They had chimp-like features, tiny brains, and probably walked on two legs. They also likely made simple stone tools. The transition from australopiths to true humans (genus Homo) occurred between 2 and 3 million years ago. The exact species responsible for this transition is debated, but Australopithecus afarensis (possibly Lucy’s species) and Australopithecus sediba are candidates. The first well-established Homo species, Homo erectus, appeared about 1.9 million years ago. Unlike earlier hominins, Homo erectus had come down from trees completely and was found not only in Africa but also in Europe and Asia. Homo erectus was a toolmaker and exhibited wanderlust 3. In summary, while we share common ancestry with apes, our evolution involved distinct stages, adaptations, and innovations that set us apart from our primate relatives. 🌿🌍🧬 🥔

I am bringing back BirdSong 🦅

Apes beat their chests like drums

I have added techno/trance into my music taste. Offcourse by perturbing the brain chemistry lol! Im glad i did!

Are we still using humans evolved from apes theory or it's still up for debate? I'm not being sarcastic, it's seriously asking.

He seems to be missing the point here - there are rules in music (as opposed to sounds) - and these rules are not man-made, we found them, and harnessed the emotional component in rhythm, harmony, pitch etc. There is a mystical/spiritual element to music that proponents of evolutionary theory very rarely talk about, which is kind of sad...

Took so long for 'gradutation'

10th comment, 1000th view 😎

Very superficial and from a very high birds eye view, the true great thing is that we found the scales and chords, and discovered the major minor chord and dominant chord and tension you are talking about sounds not specific music. For me This was not very insightful or interesting.

He lost me in the first minutes when he said apes are not musical.

We "know" this because we "evolved from apes..." again😅😅😅

Hahah when nasa sent the golden record was the dumbest idea because clearly human adapted to natural selection to create a representation of reality, what makes you think that other Alien civilizations have the same interpretation 😅😅

Birds dont make music they communicate

Dude took a potentially interesting and vibrant subject and sucked all of the life right out of it.

you think birds singing and crickets chirping is them making music? come on, man....ridiculous.

This guy is only studying music that has been recorded... he's not looking at the ancient music our ancestors played. We are totally musical beings... not when your brain washed by the big mind of government and news... when you listen and connect to the universe you will be in the wave and can use your throat to craft music

👎👎👎I disagree

Unsupported drivel.

This is misleading. Its not "music" for other animals. They do not do it for re-creation?