The Infinite Monkey Cage - The Sound of Music

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

The Sound of MusicBrian Cox and Robin Ince take to the stage at Glastonbury Music Festival. They are joined by comedian Matt Kirshen, musicians KT Tunstall and Nitin Sawhney and scientists Lucy Cooke and Trevor Cox. No Julie Andrews for this special edition of the long running science/comedy show, although music does take centre stage as the panel discuss the evolution and science of why and how humans are programmed to love everything from the Rolling Stones to Rap to Rachmaninoff. They'll also be looking at whether there are any examples of music in the animal kingdom and whether gorillas really hum.Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

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Hello, I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. And this is the Infinite Mug Cage podcast, which is a longer version than the one you hear broadcast on Radio 4. Let me stop you there because you have to define what you mean because it could just be longer because you're moving at high speed relative to the listener. Oh yeah, I hadn't really thought of that. Well, I suppose longer in terms of

the minute measurement. You see, you're getting into trouble now. Oh, this is really hadn't really thought of that. Well, I suppose longer in terms of the minute measurement. You see, you're getting into trouble now. Oh, this is really much harder than I thought. You can define it in a particular frame of reference. So you can say in this particular frame of reference where the player is at rest relative to the listener, then the recording you may have made off the radio is shorter than the recording on the podcast.

Thursday? Is that a frame of reference, Thursday? Roughly speaking, I suppose. It's a starting point, isn't it? Yeah. Quite imprecise. This is the Infinite Monkey Cage extended version. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage

recorded live at the Glastonbury Festival! Now, ready, Brian! This is a festival that is ready for inertial frame of references! This is a festival that's ready for gravitational waves and how we detect them, but no time now. So, first of all, Brian, we start off. Why are we here? It began with an exponential expansion of space-time called inflation.

The inflaton field decayed. So why are we at Glastonbury? Well, we're at Glastonbury because we are going to consider the sound of music. Right. I should make it clear we're going to consider the sound of music, not the sound of music, which is a pity. I know he loves it.

I tell you what, if you've never seen Brian in a wimple singing How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria, you haven't lived. I was told it was actually about the sound of music. No, it is about the sound. We can do the science of the sound of music. And, by the way, well done for skipping so much of that script. That really will be a lot easier in the edit. I just felt we had to get on with it.

We've only got about five minutes left. Fair enough, fair enough. I'll tell you what, I was wrong to trust you about those mushrooms. These people are looking weird now. Yeah, we'll cut that bit. It'll be fine. So we are going to be talking about what is music, what is the sound of music from an acoustic engineering and evolutionary perspective, and we have put together

a super group of brilliant minds. So, on guitar, voice and sudden moments of visual clarity, Katie Tunstall. On poison dart frogs and sloths, it's Lucy Cook. On acoustic engineering and constructing musical instruments from courgettes, it's Trevor Cox.

On carefully honed routines about Scientology and so also on the cusp of frequent legal actions, it's Matt Kirshen. On jazz, electronica and the work of Paul McCartney, Brian Eno and Cirque du Soleil, it's Nitin Soni And this is our panel Trevor, we'll start with you, as an acoustic engineer, we always like to have definitions So first of all, what is music? Well it depends on what perspective you want to take, but from an evolutionary point of view,

you know, we get a lot of pleasure from it, but it's a bit of a mystery why we have evolved to like music. So some people argue, like Pinker, that it's auditory cheesecake. We have the sort of mechanisms in our brain to enjoy music really for speech, because when you say a vowel, it's a bit like singing, isn't it? It's a sing song kind of sound and so it's kind of almost an accident that we have music and we love having it and therefore we just kind of exploit it so one perspective it's not really got any evolutionary

purpose but it's just something we do. The other perspective is it's crucial to things and for example when you get a mother teaching a baby to speak they use mother reads so one argument is actually that music predated speech, and it's how we learn language. And actually, if you go back to Neanderthals,

their first sort of proto-language, or our ancestors' first proto-language, might well have been sung rather than spoken. So I'd heard, though, that in terms of the Neanderthal brain, there is a sense that music comes in about 40,000 years ago with Homo sapien, but there is also some evidence to suggest that Neanderthals as well? Well, I wouldn't say there's... I mean, the evidence we have for when we'd had music is actually old musical instruments. You find

vulture bones which have actually got holes and make flutes, so that's about 40,000 years ago, but music probably existed before. It's just there's no archaeological evidence for it earlier on. So, i suppose you could take a guess that when we became big brain which is a long time ago and that predates the andatoles that maybe we were starting to sing then but it's the evidence is really sketchy so

it's very hard to be does that mean that you might think that anything that's sufficiently intelligent anywhere in the universe or even on earth any species that's sufficiently intelligent anywhere in the universe or even on earth any species that's sufficiently intelligent would have music because it's a part of the way you anything communicates essentially i suppose it depends what you think music is so we might think of birdsong as being music but we might just think of that as a way of them calling it's just a communication system so one of the things which separates music i guess from birdsong is that humans are pretty unique and actually just doing it for fun. You know, we'll sit and put some music on just for our enjoyment when we're not trying to attract mates

or we're not trying to protect territory. You know, we use music not for evolutionary purpose. Nitin, can I just ask you, how do you balance out when you're just professionally playing music and when you're playing music to attract mates? Do you find there's a specific division? No, I don't know how to answer that actually.

Yeah, well I think when I'm making music I'm always thinking just to get back to what he was saying, in terms of sound and music I think of them as quite separate because for me sound inspires music and I'm always looking at music as it's a human thing for me because it's

you've got to have the intent to make music so if you're listening to a bird song for example like a nightingale or whatever which is something strangely I did recently you can actually write music that's inspired by that and you have to intend to do that whereas the nightingale obviously well from my perspective wouldn't be intending for its sounds to be musical it would just be using them to attract a mate, as you were saying. So it's kind of the difference is that I will be interpreting what I'm hearing into music and changing it that way. So, Lucy, look at animals, like a nightingale, birdsong.

So is it absolutely known that it is purely an evolutionary thing, it's mechanistic, or is there any sense in which we can say that these animals uh there's more that they're enjoying it yeah i mean it would be lovely wouldn't it it would be lovely to think that there were other animals out there that enjoy music in the way we do and birds do release opiates in their brain when they are singing so they are getting some pleasure from it it, just as we do get pleasure by dopamine being released. So that's the drugs in the sex and drugs and rock and roll. Birds have that too.

But in all likelihood, it has a functional role in the animal kingdom. We haven't really been able to find an animal which is just enjoying music for music's sake. So would you agree then that the music in humans probably started with some kind of functional role, as you say, maybe the origins of language or Neanderthals, and then afterwards the idea that it's a pleasurable thing

is a superimposed on top of something? It would seem so, yeah. I mean, definitely there's ideas that it's a fantastic way of conveying emotions in music. So it might have been an early way for humans to convey emotions to large groups of other humans that rally us and make us defeat the Neanderthals, for instance. It may have been the fact that we had music that gave us that ability. So, I mean, in terms of conveying emotions, they've just recently found that there's a group of gorillas that actually hum while they're eating, and they make these

humming sounds. I don't know whether that's a particularly good impersonation of a gorilla humming whilst eating its dinner, but anyway, that is the impression that you've got. And that's obviously, that's conveying an emotion. They think that's because it's sort of saying this is, it's okay to eat now, I'm eating, I They think that's because it's sort of saying, it's OK to eat now, I'm eating, I'm enjoying this, and then the sort of song there is... So it could well be that that was a part of... That's weird, isn't it? Because in gorillas, we see that as a sign of intelligence.

But if you sit opposite someone who's humming while they're eating, you don't go, what a clever man! Mmm! Chewy! Of course, animals have this sort of disincentive to making noise when it's not got a purpose, because if you're a little songboy, you don't want to attract attention to yourself to predators. So probably maybe our evolutionary success allows us to have this space to make music

where other animals have to stay quiet, unless it's going to detract, it's going to involve energy, and it's going to signal that you're there and there to be eaten. And it also takes a lot of brain power as well. I mean, that's the sort of one fantastic thing about birds is that the enormous amount of brain power that's required to memorise and play all these songs, that birds, songbirds, male songbirds' brains swell in spring so that they can really sing their hearts out and then they shrink after they've had sex.

Which, you know... Because they no longer have to sing. They don't need it. They don't need to be brainy anymore. So they shrink and they become thick birds that can't sing afterwards. But interestingly, it's not just their brains. Their testicles also swell because they're needed. And actually, I don't know what this is. It's irrelevant, but I'm going to tell you anyway.

But a house sparrow's testicles go from being the size of a pinprick to the size of a baked bean. Which is the equivalent of your testicles shrinking to the size of an apple pit, Brian, when you don't need them. I see. So now what we're going to do... As if I still use his own test and after I have sex I turn into a biologist so to find out the

testicle thing obviously Brian you're a musician and so are you, Nitin. Let's find out the difference between the size your testicles get playing guitar and the size in playing old D-Ring hits. So, pop them off, get to the front of the stage. I love it. Katie, this idea that music is primal in the sense that it almost... Suggesting it predates intelligence

does that fit in with your view of it that it's an extremely primal thing well I mean my experience I'm sure Nitin would say the same and you would say the same as well that being a musician is quite an undertaking and it's quite unlikely it's

going to happen so there's a lot of risk involved in doing that and I think that a lot of the reason for chasing that is that there is definitely an innate compulsion to make music as a musician and you really suffer if you don't make it it's a quite a physical experience of an unpleasant feeling if you're stifled from doing that but I think from what Lucy was saying as well that you can imagine that it was probably more likely that that music was a very necessary part of life tens of thousands of years ago, where it was a ritualistic thing, it was a spiritual thing. And that obviously still exists in our culture today, that it's used in that way.

I mean, here is possibly my favourite gig in the world, playing at Glastonbury. And it's just that amazing feeling, and it's why everybody comes, is because you can't really get that sensation unless you're with a group of people who were there for the same reason, watching the same thing and having a very communal experience. And I guess sport is quite similar,

but there's something very emotional and heart-opening about this environment and watching music in that way. Matt, you have been returning to Glastonbury. You're not a musician, you're a comedian. What do you think, from a biological perspective, draws you back to the Glastonbury Festival, to this huge music festival every year? Well, I don't know.

From a biological... There is that idea that maybe Glastonbury is recreating evolution's initial conditions. So it's quite exciting to me. Like, we might actually be... be like somewhere in the middle of this primordial sludge we might be seeing the first new organism and that's exciting to me but right but i've actually got a question i think because i think the big difference between comedy and music as a comedian if you go back to the same town or if you're playing to your fans they

they like surprise they'd like you to go back with with a go back to the same town or if you're playing to your fans, they like surprise. They'd like you to go back with a different show to the one they saw last time. And it's the exact opposite for music. They might want a couple of new songs, but they'd be really upset if you didn't play the hits. So why does music and comedy hit the brain in different ways? Why do we like surprise with comedy but familiarity with music? Interestingly enough, within music, expectation is an incredibly important part of music. One definition of music, going back to the start,

could be stuff that plays with our sense of expectation. So you have a progression of chords, notes going on, and then someone puts in a new note you're not expecting, and your brain goes, wow, that's something really interesting going on. So that almost is like a punchline, almost like a joke, where your brain thinks a sentence is going one way and then it's suddenly subverted. And in composition, this is the real key. Play something really repetitious and something really predictable,

it gets very boring. Play something incredibly random, imagine just bashing notes on the piano, you can't tell what's going on, that's also boring. What you need is a bit of randomness but also a bit of predictability and that's what makes the best music, is playing on your expectations. The trend, though, Nitin, if you think about popular music, so you go back to the 1940s, 1950s, you're talking about the end of jazz, you're talking about Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald,

quite complicated chord structures, you say quite a lot of surprise. And then it's sort of, in a sense, certainly harmonically de-evolved, into rock and roll and you end up with you know cf and g and three chords and those things do it do you have any understanding of of why that is do you agree with that yeah i mean i do agree with it to some degree because i mean i mean it's complicated because also there's a tribal thing isn't there because like people like different music because they have an association with people that they grew up with or they like,

and so they kind of divide into tribes. You know, when I was a kid, it was mods and rockers and blah, blah, blah. But you also get... There's one out there. But there's also the kind of idea with consonants and dissonance. So, for example, you know, when you're playing simpler harmonies, then they're more consonant and they're more pleasurable for the brain. From what I've read recently, there's this whole part of your brain

that actually is responding differently to dissonance. And there's a... Like, for example, with a semitone difference or a major seventh difference, they're more dissonant so you you don't feel um so much pleasure from them and there's lots of those kinds of close harmonies with jazz whereas with uh with rock or pop it's very different they're more consonant so they're easier to digest and that's the same with animals as well apparently that's the same with monkeys um i don't know if you if you could confirm what's the same with monkey they play less seventh chords

no yeah with dissonance and consonance, because they have the same... Apparently the oscillatory phase lock part of the brain is actually responding. It becomes more active when it's dissonant, so that becomes more uncomfortable for the animal as well. So are the older monkeys more into dissonance, but the younger monkeys just don't get it?

But there was also that... Wasn't there a musical interval that was... It was called the Devil's Interval that was banned. It was the tritone and it was back in... Was it an augmented fifth or something like that? It's three tones. Yeah. And there's a lot of theory behind it.

I mean, a lot of our Western harmony comes from church music. And actually, three tones is really hard to sing together in tune properly. So one of the reasons it may have been banned was just the problems of actually choirs getting it to work properly in churches. But yes, for ages, church would not allow that chord. But now you hear it all over the place. It wouldn't be a surprise. It does sound quite evil.

Yes. It is a dissonant chord and basically sounds like the basis of all heavy metal. Pretty much. But by band, you mean literally it was illegal to play that chord? Well, they were writing music for the church, so they had to do what the church wanted. So they said, you can't use these chords. And after a while, obviously, things changed.

So is that why the devil had all the best tunes? Because the best tunes had those, you know, Lemmy, you can have that, we're not allowed to have it in St Michael's, surely would. But actually, the best tunes have a mixture of dissonance and consonance. So something which is perpetually dissonant is really unpleasant. Something which is perpetually consonant, perpetually pleasant is like

nursery rhymes. Again as an adult you'd find that boring after a while. So actually we want to play with tension which you get from dissonance and release which you get from consonant and that's what all western music is pretty much about building tension and releasing it. It's interesting you say that, western music, because there are different harmonies

different scales, different appreciations of different combinations of notes. Do we know much, Nitin, about that? Yeah, I mean, with flamenco, for example, there's a lot of focus on the minor second, and you use certain scales. Like with Indian classical music, it's ragpervi, which is the same as the Phrygian mode.

So you actually have that minor second, which is a dissonant interval, which is quite featured in other cultures. But quite often, I mean, in film music, for example, with people like Bernard Herrmann, with Psycho and films like that, he would actually alternate between dissonance and consonance in order to make people feel on edge and uncomfortable. And with the famous, in fact, with the stabbing in the shower scene,

he used a dissonance interval played on high violins in order to get across the squawking of birds in the mind of Norman Bates. So that dissonance can be associated with the way in which we hear sound as well. So about a minor second, you mean like a C in a C sharp? Yeah, exactly. I love the fact that... Yeah, which is menacing and it's dissonant again.

I've got to say that that was usually, we talk about quantum cosmology or something, everyone glazes over a bit. I love the fact that you can do that with music as well. If you start going to minor second, you've got to feel the need to explain this. Brian, when you were writing your hit, did you... LAUGHTER

I'm interested for the musicians, do you get either of you, Nitin, or can you get a sense of when you are writing? I was thinking of R.E.M. One of their biggest hits ever was Losing My Religion, which I don't think anyone at the time, when it first came on, would have thought, hang on, this thing which opens with a mandolin, it was very kind of where Ari and me were moving, but you wouldn't have

thought that was going to be the worldwide hit that everyone was screaming for. Is there anything that instinctually you go, now, my judgement I think I can go, this is going to be a successful song, or are you constantly still surprised? So the science of it can never get to the point of going right, when you're writing from within and not

as a factory, you can't going right when you're writing from within and not as a factory. You can't work in it. When you're making music, as Katie was saying, you don't actually make music for other people. If you start making music for other people, then you're not making something that's expressive or is coming from the heart. You've got to start that way and then you share it with other people after you've made it

and hopefully they'll like it as well. You're talking yourself out of a job writing jingles right now. It's a different thing. If you're writing for a specific purpose, for example, when I was writing music for the Human Planet series, I had to think about the directors, I had to

think about the audiences, I had to think about the series producer. If you're writing something for yourself, you're writing it to express your feelings or your thoughts. Sorry, just Matt, the jingle thing, the idea that people are going, should it be, ooh, Danon? No, I think, ooh, Danon. We're getting there.

We have got a yogurty hit. Can we, if we wind back a little bit, so we talked about music, talked about birdsong. Can we just talk about sound for a minute, which I suppose are the elemental building blocks of music. Can you give the one-minute description of what sound is and how it behaves? Well, that's a tall order.

It depends, you know, the classic one people talk about when a tree falls in the forest, you hear a sound, kind of illustrates that actually you can have two definitions. So for me as an acoustic engineer, I think of sound and sound waves, and they're a physical thing. But for some people, sound has to have someone auditioning it, and hence why you get this dichotomy with the tree. You know, is there a perception in there or not is a kind of important thing. But in the end, from a physical point of view, so a physicist's point of view, it's about the movement of air molecules and it's about vibration. But from a human point of view, it's all about what goes on between the ears.

It's all psychology and neuroscience. And you're at a... I mean, it's probably quite difficult to hear in here. It's difficult to do sound at a festival like this. So what are the challenges that you have? Let's say the pyramid stage tonight. How is that different and more challenging from doing sound in a in a theater well i've got an advantage here in the tent that the you don't have weather effects so the big problem you get at festivals apart from noise leaking in from other stages is meteorological effects so you get refraction of sound sound

normally travels in nice straight lines but actually bends weather can cause it to bend so if you have a temperature inversion which i think fortunately we're not going to get a glastonbury or unfortunately where you have a change where you have that sort of cold trapped air near the ground you can get sound that should be going up to the air and disappearing actually bending down and coming back down to the later and that causes problems say if you're near a festival in the house you can cause noise problems that sound travels huge distances that are unexpected, even though at the stage it may be relatively quiet. So that would tend to happen when it was a hot day

and you had in the morning or something, the ground's cooler than the air, and then you get these strange effects. Yes, that classic foggy day, you know, when you wake up in November, it's a foggy day and there's trapped cold air. But you can also have it happening horizontally as well. So if you're on a stage and you suddenly hear the treble going in and out, it's probably because wind is creating different speeds of sound and it's literally bending the sound around your head back and forth.

Is that almost like what happens with a mirage, but with light instead of sound? Yeah, when you have a glass and you put a spoon in it, it bends. That's refraction. And the same thing can happen with sound. But in this case, instead of you having air and water, what you have is different stratophers of different speeds of sound, that's refraction, and the same thing can happen with sound. But in this case, instead of you having air and water, what you have is these different stratophers of different speeds of sound, which is causing the bending.

Appears to bend. It's not Uri Geller, is it? It doesn't bend. Visually. Yes, it appears to bend. It's a visual thing. Back to the sound thing. There's the physical thing, and there's also the perception. For me, the spoon has bent.

Yeah, watch out for him. He may be pedantic every now and again. Physicists are. Pedantry is the heart of science. Detail. It's about detail. I told you about those mushrooms. You were wrong. Well, Lucy, the other component of music I suppose is harmony and then

there's rhythm, which is important. So what do we know about rhythm, our appreciation of it where it comes from well it would seem that there are animals that do appreciate rhythm actually so um there was a quite recent discovery um about a cockatoo that sort of rocks the scientific community by rocking out actually on youtube there was this cockatoo called snowball and it was and it was on a video of it dancing to

the Backstreet Boys. Everybody, just so everybody knows. I don't know if anybody's seen it. It got millions of views and it's really going for it. Bobbing its head up and down to the beat and raising its leg and the scientist

was amongst the millions of people that watched this and was like hang on a second he really is he really is dancing to that beat so he got snowball the cockatoo and he took the backstreet boys everybody song and changed the tempo to 11 different versions of of everybody and then paid it to snowy to see whether... Snowball, sorry. ..whether it would still dance and keep the beat. And it did. The cockatoo kept the beat.

25% of the time, actually, the cockatoo kept the beat, which you'd think it would mean that it isn't keeping the beat, but statistically, that is actually significant. So for all of you out there, if you are keeping the beat when you're dancing 25% of the time, statistically you're a good dancer, which is actually quite good to know. But so then after they'd done that experiment, they were like, this would seem that this cockatoo is responding and does actually have rhythm. They then went onto YouTube and then investigated all the videos where people are saying that they've got an animal that's dancing,

so lots of sort of dogs and cats and all these things and and ruled out all the ones in a very scientific way of which ones they weren't actually dancing and came down to the fact that there were actually genuine incidences of parrots cockatoos and asian elephants all keeping the beat and then yes and then what's interesting about that is that they're all animals that are very good at vocal mimicry, which we are also very good at. So whether there is some link in the evolution of music or music appreciation that is between the auditory and the motor skills are somehow linked.

Does that mean... Sorry, go on. The weirdest thing about this is, I mean, this is uncanny, because I'm actually genuinely totally unrelated to this, working on something to do with Snowball. And I've been watching that video, and I'm doing this thing called Animal Symphony, which has all to do with this. And there's also a sea lion called Ronan

who can bob up and down in time to Boogie Wonderland at different tempos. They're also very good vocal mimics. Sea lions also have that ability, yeah. But it's the weirdest thing, because literally before I knew you were going to be talking about any of that, it just happens to be something I've been staring at. So what are the chances of... Actually, Brian, you could probably tell me what the chances are.

Very strange. Just to be clear then, so when we're meant to be working and instead we're watching funny YouTube animal videos, that's science? Yeah. Yeah. And what you need is to get the scientific job to go through YouTube finding all the funny videos.

But actually, rhythm has a really important purpose to the animal kingdom, because if you think, let's say you're trying to run away from something that's attacking you, being very rhythmic is incredibly important. You'll run faster. So these animals, it might not just be about vocal. It might be that they have rhythm

because it's really important for motor skills. Sea lions don't run away from things. What do you know about song lines? Actually, this sea lion, it was trained to respond to Boogie Wonderland in that way. But the fact is that no-one's sure of what it was trained to respond to Boogie Wonderland in that way but the fact is that no one's sure of what it's responding to because it could be and that's what we're trying to figure out at the moment

because in writing this symphony we're trying to ascertain whether it's about the beats or whether it's about is it the kick drum itself or is it something else it's responding to, it's very difficult to know. So the suggestion Trevor then is that it's to do with the tempo of movement at some level, that there's got to be some regularity, an appreciation of regularity, as it were.

Well, you get the effect when you put some music on to exercise, don't you? You lock into that beat. You're getting trained to move with that beat. So it's not that surprising maybe that animals can also get entrained to a beat. But I don't know about the sea lions and the swimming. Maybe when they're swimming underwater, they have to be very rhythmic in the way they swim to be efficient because being arhythmic is an inefficient way of moving. Katie, are you surprised when you actually, again,

looking at the reaction of going back to playing in a big field, you're saying Glastonbury is one of your favourite places to play. Are there certain environments where you go, I feel restricted in what I can do musically? Because sometimes, for instance, it's wonderful to see certain bands in a church. It changes your experience to see that kind of environment. So how do you find the environment, the importance of that? It's a really fantastic challenge.

And I think I also came up busking, and that really changed how I play because I started off listening to Joni Mitchell and picking on a Spanish guitar, and that's not very useful when you go busking. And so really playing in outdoors and in public places where people aren't actually there to see you, they're walking past, really changed the way that I perform. And it became a very rhythmic way of performing.

And I'm a rhythm guitarist. And I'm kind of trying to use the guitar as a drum kit. So, for me, it's really enjoyable, even just with a few people in a room playing, because I'll just kind of mutate into that old street player mode. So what were the tricks? I mean, is there a point where you'd look down at your hat or your guitar case and think, oh, that's not very full, I'd better do underneath the bridge? Yeah, there's a trick.

Or everybody hurts, oh, that's filled it up. Never busk in Dundee. That's one of the tricks. Not worth it. I, unfortunately for busking, I'm really, really bad at remembering lyrics. So I'd struggle to remember my own, never mind remembering covers. So I never really was able to do that many covers.

But it was a good way of working out which songs of my own worked but usually it was the very rhythmic ones and the very repetitive ones that people can latch on to and playing new music as well is really interesting because it can be quite nerve-wracking when you've written new material and you're going out you're playing stuff to fans and people who've never heard you before. And of course, you've recorded this new song and you think it's amazing, but they've never heard it before. And it's really incredible

when you see that very immediate transaction of giving someone something that's memorable and then you see them clocking it and the next time it comes around, it's a great communication. I was going to say, is there anything also just about a festival like Glastonbury, when you talk about the communal nature of music, just the general grime and adversity and that feeling that we're all in this together?

The leveler, the great leveler. It does kind of add a sort of communal atmosphere. The idea that by Sunday we're all just the same dregs of humanity, stinking messes, but at the same time that sort of overcomes that barrier of that individuality. It's also being outside. I think there's something that's very elevated about the experience of very loud sound and it's outdoors.

So it's out with our usual experience it's very it's quite exotic even um but definitely that experience of being in nature and being in the elements and feeling sensations of wind and bad breath and whatever comes your way um it's just it's a it's a very sensory experience that's kind of amplified. There is something wonderful about it, and everyone will experience this in a tent, that you were climatised to Glastonbury really quickly, and then you stop off on your first little chef on the way back

and you look in a mirror and you go, oh, my God, what was I doing? What have I put on my face? It's indelible. We were just talking about it. I think that there's like a feral switch. It's like a Neanderthal feral switch that kind of just gets switched as soon as you get out of your car and you're out, and then you're a changed person for a few days. I also want to know from our physicist here

how a tent can be colder than outdoors at night, and then a second after dawn, it's the hottest that's ever been recorded. APPLAUSE Thermodynamics. The wonders of thermodynamics. My next series. We've talked about music, so harmony, we've talked about rhythm.

There's also the tonal quality itself of the instruments. So you have a guitar or a violin, that is perceived as being a pleasing sound, whereas, I suppose, a drum hit or something like that are rather more dissonant. So can you talk about the differences between the sound itself itself the harmonic structure of the sound yeah the timbre is incredibly important especially to pop music where timbre is played around with you know people talk about not just the melody but getting just the right sound and you can break down the sounds and look at what frequency components are in there because when you when you play a note at middle c there's more than one frequency playing so for something like a violin

or guitar there's a very simple relationship between all the frequencies you generate. They're all multiples of each other. You get 100 hertz, 200 hertz, 300 hertz, 400 hertz going on and upwards. And that's with one string plucked? Just with one string plucked. You should hear one note, because what your brain's got to do is not attend to all those different harmonics.

It'd be confusing. It lumps them into one sound event. So that's one of the clever bits of processing going on your brain all the time and that's how you can tell the difference between a c played on a piano and a c played on a guitar it's the different yeah and particularly in the start of the note so you actually the harmonics change over the note and so the difference we've seen let's say a plucked guitar and say a bowed violin is that sort of is it scraping along the string sound or is it a sudden release sound and that's really in the very early parts of notes so most instruments are made to be like that but if you have had something made structural you know you're going to hit say this table I'm on or bell maybe or cowbell you hear often in pop music you can hear it's got it's

got a note but it's quite indistinct and that's because the harmonics are no longer very simply nice simple relationships and that's what gives theics are no longer very simply nice simple relationships and that's what gives the dissonance and do we know anything about why we find certain combinations of harmonics pleasing and other ones not pleasing is there any insight in biologically into that it happens in the very early processing in the ear so in your inner ear you have a cochlear and what that does is it kind of splits the sound up into frequencies. And when you get dissonance is when you get two components of sounds which are stuck in the same critical band,

the sort of bandwidth where you're processing sound, and that gives a rough sound. So you can see it initially actually in the inner ear. Listen, have you ever found yourself at a point where you've written a song and then you've listened back to it a few days later and gone, that's a sound I shouldn't have put in there? Is there some certain sound which when you're in the studio, when there is the adrenaline going, you think that sounds beautiful and wonderful and then you go, that's going to affect sales and affect my love of that song as well?

No, I don't think that, but I'll think about changing stuff. I mean, if you're in your studio, you've got time to reflect and muck around with tracks and try them different ways. But obviously, if you're playing live, it's about spontaneous feeling and you're working off that. So it differs massively when you're in the studio. You're always looking for... I suppose it's also when you're orchestrating as well. You're looking for the right sounds

that get across the feeling of what you had in mind. And orchestration is a big... A lot of it is to do with organisation of sound and frequency to get across an idea. So, you know, you're doing that a lot with film music. You're actually trying to get across an image, in a way. You're looking at an image, and you're trying to find a sonic way of representing that

and also trying to tap into emotion and psychology at the same time. So there's lots of things you're trying to balance off against each other. Who would you say, from a peer-reviewed point of view, are the most scientifically rigorous band that the audience should go and see and go, good, yep, they've used that A correctly, yep, there we go, that's the use of dissonance in that. Which one would you tell them to go and see?

I never go and see music with that sort of mindset at all. I mean, that would just be horrible, wouldn't it? Can you imagine sitting in the audience, scoring them out of a score of ten on how well they tune their instruments? I mean, if they mistune their instruments, of course, yeah, I'd move on. Lucy, do opiates get released in our brain as well?

Or is that... Because I was just wondering whether, like... do I need to smoke a sparrow? Or can I just listen to music? I think you can just listen to music. Sometimes it's not about me. It needs to be music that you enjoy. I think Oliver Sacks, didn't he do an experiment where he put himself in a MRI?

Because he really liked Bach, but he didn't like Mozart, or one of the two anyway. And his brain corresponded to what he found pleasurable. MRI, because he really liked Bach, but he didn't like Mozart, one of the two anyway, and his brain corresponded to what he found pleasurable. There was massive more lights going off on the tune that he liked against the one

that he didn't like. We were going to also deal with, we won't get time today, why is Bohemian Rhapsody constantly voted number one as people's favourite song? We could have a one second answer, or fivesecond answer. Does anyone know? What is it?

Has anyone got any theory of what it is about either Stairway to Heaven or Bohemian Rhapsody? They are always jockeying for position. I mean, Bohemian Rhapsody, it's about six different songs, so you're hitting... You're kind of hitting different genres of music in that song,

so there's a bit... Everyone's got a different favourite bit. I blame Wayne's World. Which returns us to the cockatoo movement that Lucy showed only a short time earlier. So that brings an end because we've run out of time, so that's all we've got time for. Next week we're treading

mugged back through the BBC Radio Theatre in London, but now can we say thanks to our super group for today who have been Lucy Cook, Trevor Cotts, Matt Kirshen, Katie Tunstall and Nitin Sorni. Now... I can also say that if you are hanging around

the festival, Brian is going to spend the rest of the weekend unicycling down ley lines to increase his energy. Then he's going to wake up in the nettles on Monday with a box that Noel Edmonds sold him. So we are going to end The Sound of Music with The Sound of Music, and in particular on this occasion it is The Sound of Katie Tunstall.

So please welcome to the front of the stage Katie Tunmson! Oh, you're just standing up. It's fun. It's fun. Count one, count two See what you wanna see Count three, count four And it'll start tomorrow Count five, count six And there's a tangible difference And I don't want to say anymore

Cause you're feeling You're feeling So I take my pride And I throw it on the fire Strip my clothes off And say I'm just born. And I ask myself the question over and over. Do I love myself enough that I can love anybody else?

Anybody else? Anybody else? Somebody else? I'm particles and molecules And love and I begin to disperse Your medicine is everything I need You're the healer You're the healer You're the healer When you show me words You showed me worlds I never could imagine

You left me a memory of who I am And every decision that I ever made Grows and undergoes a transformation like a crystal in a cave like a crystal in a cave just like a crystal in a cave And I can see myself Looking from the future And I smile upon All the mistakes I've made And this DNA

Spirals everlasting And I realize that all I have to do Is remember the way Is remember the way Is remember the way Oh! Molecules and particles and everyone and nothing hurts Well I got love from you

I got a brand new thing You're the hero You're the hero You're the hero You're the hero Well, I've got a land, got a land, got a land for you Got a plan, got a plan, I'm through You're the hero You're the hero

You're the hero Uy, lo. Uy, lo. Cheers. Have a good weekend. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart, only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey, and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply.

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts.