Laura said:
Earliest songs I remember:
Zip a dee doo dah, from "Song of the South"
Old Man River from "Showboat".
I partly recall snatches of the films as well.
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
My oh my, what a wonderful day
Plenty of sunshine heading my way
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
Mister bluebird on my shoulder
It's the truth
It's actual
Everything is satisfactual
Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah
Zip-A-Dee-A
Wonderful feeling
Wonderful day
I used to harass my mother to sing Old Man River at bedtime.
Interesting to recall that the two most impressive songs I remember from my early childhood were sung by black men and depicted the plight of black people in the racial US, more or less. One was irrepressibly cheerful and the other a soul wrenching lament.
My mom and I sung this a lot when I was a kid. Thanks for bringing this to mind again. :)
There's this too:
https://youtu.be/rc2jsjnt-HY
I listen to a lot of music... I have about 1500 songs on my portable music player. I notice that the more I work on myself and clear and cleanse trauma and whatnot, my tastes change. A lot of music that used to be a staple is almost unlistenable to me.
Indie Rock is one of my favorite genres, and a lot of the music is ostensibly happy and upbeat. But when you listen to the lyrics, they're not unambiguously positive. A lot of it is in fact negative. I wonder if this reflects the unease of the collective unconscious, which values personal happiness above all things, but ends in misery and destruction of the things that make us human. Or if it just shows veneer and varnish in the culture covers some pretty severe rot.
Lyrics are easy to analyze, but what about the sounds of music itself? There are many elements in music that produce all the variety. One of which is the type of music scales used... major or minor... C, G, A, etc. Major scales (especially C) seem to produce really bold and joyeous music, while minor scales seem (at least to me) to be much more subdued and sad.
There is also the tempo of the music (beats per minute), as well as the number of beats per measure (waltz music is 3/4, "regular" pop music is 4/4, etc.). Love songs often use a speed that puts the brain into an alpha state. Dancing music usually sends people to beta to keep them up, since people usually listen to it when drinking alcohol (a depressant) in dark rooms late at night.
There's also the elements of rhythm, accent and syncopation. Wiki sez rhythm is a regular succession of strong and weak elements in music). Syncopation is the interruption or shifting of these rhythms during a song. Syncopation keeps music interesting, since one regular rhythm going forever would be boring. It also has a dark side though. One type of syncopation, called missed beat syncopation:
[quote author=wikipedia]Missed beat syncopation causes a physical effect in the body of the listener as his/her body moves to supply the missing beat. Complex syncopation has been used to overload the brain to induce abreaction and as a prelude to brain washing[/quote]
(source: _https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation#Types_of_syncopation)
Predictably, modern music uses a lot of syncopation. It was initially popularized by jazz, which came from African folk rhythms (although syncopation has been used a lot before in a number of western classical contexts).
Accents are where the human ear places "emphasis" on certain notes. If you listen to a metronome, for example, you subconsciously start to group the sounds (1 beat repeated) into groups of 2 or 4. Sometimes people even subconsciously add an accent to the silence between the notes (1-and-2-and-3-and-4) etc. A clever musician can keep a rhythm going without syncopation, but at the same time still switch the accents around.
More on rhythm, accent, and syncopation here:
https://youtu.be/zTQ1A7YT1pQ
I love music.
For those of you who can detect the level of rhythm, shifts in accent, and syncopation types and levels, how do you find it gels with your subconscious?