Radiolab: "Musical Language"

Date: September 24, 2007
Hosts: Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich
Guests/Contributors: Diana Deutsch, Mark Jude Tramo, Ann Fernald, Jonah Lehrer, David Cope

Episode Overview

This episode explores the blurry, fascinating line between music and language. The hosts, using sound experiments, research, history, and personal stories, journey through how our brains process sound, why some music is pleasurable or painful, how culture and biology interact in musical understanding, and even what happens when computers learn to compose. Key guests include researchers in sound perception and musical psychology, with perspectives ranging from neuroscience to artificial intelligence.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. When Speech Becomes Song: Diana Deutsch’s Sticky Phrase

• [02:27–05:13]

  • Diana Deutsch, a professor of psychology at UC San Diego, recounts stumbling onto the “Speech-to-Song Illusion” while editing a research CD. Looping a spoken phrase, she realized it began to sound sung rather than spoken.
  • Memorable Moment: “Sometimes behave so strangely…” practically becomes a Radiolab office earworm.
  • Insight: Repetition can push spoken language into the realm of music, demonstrating how our brains can ‘flip’ the categorization of sound.

  “It continues to sound like singing for a very, very long time.” – Diana Deutsch [04:32]

2. The Building Blocks of Music: Language, Pitch, and Brain

• [07:14–19:06]
  • The show explores how language and music are more intertwined than we imagine. Mark Jude Tramo, neuroscientist, notes that everyday speech uses pitch to convey emotion and meaning—akin to melody.
  • Diana Deutsch’s research on “tone languages” (like Mandarin) shows that speakers, especially when trained in music early, display a dramatically higher rate of perfect pitch.
    • Experiment: Mandarin-speaking music students vs. American (non-tonal) counterparts: 74% of Chinese students (started music at age 4–5) had perfect pitch vs. only 14% of Americans.
    • Quote: “The Beijing group was nine times…more likely to show perfect pitch than the American.” – Diana Deutsch [15:13]
    • Insight: Early exposure to tone language may unlock, rather than predetermine, heightened musical ability—a testament to the plasticity of human perception.

3. Universal Melodies in Parenting

• [22:10–26:23]
  • Ann Fernald’s global research on how mothers speak to infants reveals universal melodic patterns for approval, prohibition, attention, and comfort—distinct from the semantics of speech.
  • Audio Samples: Multilingual parents praising, scolding, or comforting use similar melodic intonations.
  • Quote: “It feels to me more like touch…sound is kind of touch at a distance.” – Ann Fernald [26:02]
  • Insight: Some aspects of ‘musical language’ are deeper and more universal than the cultural layers of language itself.

4. How Sound Physically Becomes Feeling

• [27:00–34:00]
  • Jonah Lehrer describes sound as “touch at a distance,” breaking down the journey from vocal cords, through air, to vibrating the hair cells of our inner ear—which ultimately translate into electrical signals traveling to the brain.
  • Mark Jude Tramo plays the actual sound of neural signals.
  • Insight: Regular, orderly neural “meters” (like those produced by consonant musical intervals such as a “perfect fifth”) are processed as pleasing, while irregular, arrhythmic signals (from dissonances like a “minor second”) register as unpleasant or even agitating.
  • Quote: “When the meter of the electricity is regular and rhythmic…it will arrive in our mind and be heard…as a sound that we generally like.” – Host on Mark Jude Tramo’s findings [32:17]
  • Quote: “If a sound entering my brain is disorderly and unexpected…that would make me feel uncomfortable.” – Robert Krulwich [33:32]

5. The Rite of Spring Riot: How The Brain Handles the New

• [34:23–49:43]
  • Jonah Lehrer recounts the infamous 1913 premiere of Stravinsky’s "The Rite of Spring," during which the Parisian audience rioted at the piece’s dissonance and unfamiliar structure.
    • Scientific Explanation: Dissonant, unpredictable sounds agitate neurons in the auditory cortex that are tasked with deciphering new patterns—producing a storm of dopamine. Too much can cause feelings akin to madness.
    • Quote: “Dopamine makes you feel happy…a little too much…turns into literally schizophrenia.” – Jonah Lehrer [41:27]
  • One year later, the same piece is met with adulation as listeners have “learned” to find the hidden order, illustrating the adaptability (plasticity) of the brain.
    • Quote: “Our neurons literally adjust…if you’re letting your corticofugal network do its job, it can actually resculpt your brain and let you hear the patterns better.” – Jonah Lehrer [45:06]
    • Debate: Does the brain “rob” art of its newness, or is its ability to learn to love newness a triumph of culture over biology?

6. Machines That Compose: David Cope and Experiments in Musical Intelligence

• [51:33–61:05]
  • David Cope, UC Santa Cruz, introduces "Emmy,” a computer program (Experiments in Musical Intelligence) that analyzes scores of composers for patterns, then recombines the “DNA” to create new pieces “in the style of” various masters.
  • Emmy's output—sometimes indistinguishable from actual Bach, Mahler, or Joplin—draws both praise and outrage from musicians and scholars.
    • Memorable Anecdote: Cope’s computer-composed Bach is loved by an elderly fan who doesn’t know it’s not “authentic.”
    • Quote: “There is nothing intelligent about my program in the slightest… I could do everything it did if you gave me ten years. I just don’t have that amount of time.” – David Cope [59:16]
    • Insight: The machine exposes how much of what we define as musical genius is pattern and recombination—inviting us to reconsider the boundary between “art” and “craft.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Diana Deutsch’s Looping Phrase (“Sometimes behave so strangely…”) becomes the key motif and office earworm, exemplifying the speech-to-song shift. [02:56–05:13]
• On perfect pitch:
  “Perfect pitch…like having a tuning fork in your brain.” [11:31]
• On sound as touch:
  “Sound is kind of touch at a distance.” – Ann Fernald [26:02–26:23]
• On the brain’s plasticity:
  “The Rite of Spring is perfect evidence of the brain’s astonishing plasticity.” – Jonah Lehrer [44:19]
• On Emmy's artificial compositions:
  “If by some weird fluke, this stuff hangs around… 100 years from now, I hope we can put aside all this machine-trapping stuff, and really just deal with the music itself.” – David Cope [60:33]

Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 02:27 | Diana Deutsch: Speech-to-Song Illusion | | 07:14 | Language and Music – Mark Jude Tramo | | 08:22 | Tone Languages: Pitch meanings in Mandarin | | 15:13 | Perfect pitch prevalence: Chinese vs. American students | | 22:10 | Ann Fernald: Universal melodies in parenting | | 27:00 | Sound as physical touch, journey to the brain | | 32:00 | Regular vs. irregular sound processing (consonance/dissonance) | | 34:23 | The Rite of Spring riot and neuroscience of dissonance | | 44:19 | Brain plasticity: Learning to hear new music | | 51:33 | David Cope & Emmy: Computers composing music | | 59:16 | Cope on Emmy's lack of intelligence | | 61:39 | Emmy takes us out: machine Mahler performance |

Tone & Style

• Playful, deeply curious, sometimes irreverent.
• Hosts blend science with storytelling and hands-on audio demonstrations.
• Willing to embrace ambiguity and wonder, skeptical of simplistic answers.
• Brings in the voices and lived experiences of scientists, musicians, and even “machines.”

Summary Takeaways

Music and language aren’t just close siblings—they may, in fact, be twins.

• The brain’s boundaries between speech and song are easily crossed; culture influences biology, and vice versa.
• What’s considered “music” is shaped both by ancient universal melodies and by what our brains learn to recognize as pattern or order—even when that order is originally perceived as chaos (as in the Rite of Spring).
• Technology like Emmy shows us that, under the hood, musical genius is not magic, but recursiveness and creativity—dispelling and complicating the myth of the singular human artist.

Radiolab’s episode leaves listeners with a sense of awe for the brain’s adaptability, the messiness of artistic value, and the endlessly surprising ways that music (and language) connect us.