Anirban Bandyopadhyay is an MIT researcher studying how music is perceived in the brain. His study includes the molecular vibrations within the brain and his research goes into exceptional detail. The research has similarity to explorations by John Cage as to the nature of music and even Cage might be stunned by this one.
Warning: his accent makes following his thought more difficult to follow and the presentation is lacking in the linkage with graphics he was presenting. After listening to it once, I know I need another review of it since he presents deep science and it's a difficult listen. Hopefully you will agree on the value of it.
Note: Anirban Bandyopadhyay is a research fellow at MIT and definitely not an aluminum hat. As you will hear, he is one seriously bright guy.
His purpose was not beautiful speech but he turned a lovely expression in saying 'the mind is music' and that has meaning in terms of the mind's clocking mechanisms. Through a logical process of observation and deduction, he concludes there must be clocking in the mind and in our bodies in general. His case for the vibrational basis for existence comes from hard science and it's a fascinating, although difficult, talk.
(Ed: so what?)
My mind doesn't consciously clock anything when I play but the beat is there without difficulty. The surest way to miss the beat is to think about it and then you will be too fast or too slow in hitting it. The idea of so many levels of clocking in the mind from Bandyopadhyay doesn't so much explain how it works to play without thinking about it but his idea is an extraordinary representation of it. As he says, the mind is music.
I've said many times I don't know what I'm going to play and, despite the compositional aspects of "The Sanctuary Song," I don't. When I play one note, it leads to another one rather than being dictated by something memorized. The process in my mind which does that is not conscious except insofar as it has a mathematical aspect in terms of which notes are possible within the current key from the current note. It's not that the process is fascinating in me since I suspect it's similar with anyone who has shaken free from playing music from a chart.
So, the mind is music. That really doesn't explain anything but it's eminently believable.
His purpose was not beautiful speech but he turned a lovely expression in saying 'the mind is music' and that has meaning in terms of the mind's clocking mechanisms. Through a logical process of observation and deduction, he concludes there must be clocking in the mind and in our bodies in general. His case for the vibrational basis for existence comes from hard science and it's a fascinating, although difficult, talk.
(Ed: so what?)
My mind doesn't consciously clock anything when I play but the beat is there without difficulty. The surest way to miss the beat is to think about it and then you will be too fast or too slow in hitting it. The idea of so many levels of clocking in the mind from Bandyopadhyay doesn't so much explain how it works to play without thinking about it but his idea is an extraordinary representation of it. As he says, the mind is music.
I've said many times I don't know what I'm going to play and, despite the compositional aspects of "The Sanctuary Song," I don't. When I play one note, it leads to another one rather than being dictated by something memorized. The process in my mind which does that is not conscious except insofar as it has a mathematical aspect in terms of which notes are possible within the current key from the current note. It's not that the process is fascinating in me since I suspect it's similar with anyone who has shaken free from playing music from a chart.
So, the mind is music. That really doesn't explain anything but it's eminently believable.
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