Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / Why Do We Get Pleasure From Repetition In Music? [Episode 290]

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Why Do We Get Pleasure From Repetition In Music? [Episode 290] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Speaker 1: On this episode of Book Don Rock, Played Again and Again,
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Speaker 1: we take an in depth look at why we find
0:07
Speaker 1: pleasure in repetition when it comes to our favorite music.
0:10
Speaker 1: We're totally booked rock and roll.
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Speaker 2: I mean, I leave you you're reading.
0:15
Speaker 1: Little Hands says it's time.
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Speaker 3: To rock and roll up.
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Speaker 2: I totally booked.
0:25
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Book Don Rock, Americ Sanich. Samuel J.
0:28
Speaker 1: Kaiser is our guest. He is the author of Played Again,
0:31
Speaker 1: Sam Repetition in the Arts. Welcome to the podcast, Samuel,
0:35
Speaker 1: Thank you, j Thank you so much for being here.
0:38
Speaker 1: Let's give a little bit of background on you before
0:40
Speaker 1: we get into this book. You are the Peter Deflores
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Speaker 1: Emeritus Professor of the Linguistics and Philosophy Faculty and former
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Speaker 1: Associate provost at MIT. You've authored numerous books and scientific publications.
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Speaker 1: You're the editor in chief of the journal Linguistic Inquiry.
0:58
Speaker 1: You are a theoretical linguist. Tell us about theoretical linguistics
1:03
Speaker 1: and how does that relate to the arts, particularly music,
1:05
Speaker 1: because we're going to really talk a lot about this
1:07
Speaker 1: book in regards to music and repetition. How we get
1:11
Speaker 1: comfort and repetition.
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Speaker 2: Theoretical linguistics what it really is about. At its bottom line,
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Speaker 2: it's about the computational properties of neural networks. But the
1:22
Speaker 2: point is that we have the ability to produce an
1:26
Speaker 2: infinite number of sentences. The only reason why we can
1:30
Speaker 2: is because we're mortal. We don't live long enough, but
1:34
Speaker 2: if we did, there'd be no end to the number
1:37
Speaker 2: of sentences we can produce. But our brain is finite.
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Speaker 2: It's about thirteen hundred and fifty cubic centimeters, and so
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Speaker 2: how is it possible that this organ, which is the
1:50
Speaker 2: size of a honeydew melon, how is it possible that
1:54
Speaker 2: it can produce an infinite output? The question that was
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Speaker 2: actually posed in the last in the nighteenth century by
2:01
Speaker 2: a scholar somebody who was interested in these questions, and
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Speaker 2: the question was, how do you get an infinite output
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Speaker 2: from finite means? And that's basically what linguistics is about.
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Speaker 2: But the particular infinite output that we're looking at is language.
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Speaker 2: But you can also have an infinite output with respect
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Speaker 2: to music, for example, or with respect to numbers. So
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Speaker 2: the brain seems to be this piece of an organ,
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Speaker 2: a flesh and blood organ that has this ability to
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Speaker 2: produce an infinite output with finite means, and that's what
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Speaker 2: linguistics explores.
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Speaker 1: There was an experiment by Princeton University music professor Elizabeth
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Speaker 1: Margulis that sparked your curiosity ultimately led to this book.
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Speaker 1: What was that experiment?
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Speaker 2: That was really a very interesting experiment. I had come
2:53
Speaker 2: upon the notion of repetition when I wrote my first
2:57
Speaker 2: book about the arts, which was called The Mental Life
3:01
Speaker 2: of Modernism, and the point of that book was to
3:04
Speaker 2: show that what had happened to the arts at the
3:07
Speaker 2: turn of the twentieth century was essentially what had happened
3:10
Speaker 2: to science at the turn of the seventeenth century with
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Speaker 2: the introduction of Newtonian physics, a scientific revolution that Isaac
3:20
Speaker 2: Newton wrought when he said that it's possible for two
3:24
Speaker 2: objects to affect one another even though they're not touching,
3:29
Speaker 2: and that particular insight changed the way scientists had to
3:33
Speaker 2: look at the world. It was no longer the world
3:37
Speaker 2: that they were looking at, but theories about the world.
3:40
Speaker 2: And exactly the same thing happened in the arts. The
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Speaker 2: arts around the twentieth century abandoned natural predilections of the
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Speaker 2: brain in the sense that music, which was naturally total,
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Speaker 2: became a total poetry, which rhymed and had meeter, suddenly
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Speaker 2: became free verse, and painting, which was basically representations of
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Speaker 2: the real world, suddenly became abstract dark, and my meisis
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Speaker 2: or so called representational art was abandoned. And I think
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Speaker 2: that both of those events are in fact the same event.
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Speaker 2: It's an abandonment of a habit of thinking and looking
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Speaker 2: at the world in a different way. Well, at that time,
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Speaker 2: I had, of course thought about repetition, but it didn't
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Speaker 2: really sink in until I think I mentioned it in
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Speaker 2: a footnote that's all in the book. But then I
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Speaker 2: ran across this experiment that you just mentioned, and all
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Speaker 2: of a sudden, the penny dropped. Now, let me explain
4:39
Speaker 2: the experiment, because it's very simple to understand what Elizabeth
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Speaker 2: Helmuth Margoulis did. She's a professor of musicology at Princeton.
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Speaker 2: What she did was she took music written by two
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Speaker 2: atonal masters, Luciano Burio and Elliott Carter, and what she
5:00
Speaker 2: did was, using a computer and its group force cut
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Speaker 2: and paste functions, she cut and pasted a part of
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Speaker 2: the music, she copied it, and she pasted it in
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Speaker 2: a different part, so that what she did was she
5:15
Speaker 2: doctored the music. So imagine the music was divided into
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Speaker 2: five segments, and we'll number them one, two, three, four,
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Speaker 2: and five. She copied segment one, and she pasted it
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Speaker 2: after segment one, so the new piece of music was
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Speaker 2: now one one, two, three four five. She called that
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Speaker 2: immediate repetition. And then she did something which she called
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Speaker 2: delayed repetition. She copied one and she inserted it farther
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Speaker 2: down the line, so that the doctored piece of music
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Speaker 2: now was one, two, three, one four five. So she
5:54
Speaker 2: had four pieces of music, the original done by these
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Speaker 2: masters of atotal music, and pieces that she had doctored
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Speaker 2: without any esthetic considerations at all. She wasn't trying to
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Speaker 2: make anything sound better. She just and pasted where she
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Speaker 2: thought it would work. And then what she did was
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Speaker 2: she played them to a class of students whose interest
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Speaker 2: in music was what any young person's interest in music
6:20
Speaker 2: might be. They were not theorist or anything, just ordinary
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Speaker 2: music lovers, and she asked them which versions they liked best. Significantly,
6:31
Speaker 2: the kids liked the ones that had been doctored. So
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Speaker 2: then she took that same experiment to a conference where
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Speaker 2: the attendees were PhDs in music. These were people who
6:44
Speaker 2: were very familiar with music theory, with atonal music, with
6:48
Speaker 2: twelve tone variations, etc. And she ran the same experiment
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Speaker 2: and guess what, they also preferred the one that had
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Speaker 2: been docted. Wow, So what's the conclusion. It was the
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Speaker 2: one that she came to. That repetition just by itself
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Speaker 2: enhances the esthetic appreciation of a work of art. And
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Speaker 2: that's when I realized that this repetition is really something
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Speaker 2: more than just a way to adorn something.
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Speaker 1: We seem to be hardwired to find pleasure in repetition
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Speaker 1: when it comes to the arts. Why do you think
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Speaker 1: that is.
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Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple of interesting speculations. There is the
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Speaker 2: social psychologist by the name of Robert Zebunk, who, in
7:32
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty three, i think it was, ran a set
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Speaker 2: of experiments with children, infants really, in which he hypothesized
7:41
Speaker 2: mere exposure, the mere exposure phenomenon. And what he discovered
7:47
Speaker 2: was that the mere exposure to these infants of a
7:50
Speaker 2: particular face, in this case their mother's face, but the
7:55
Speaker 2: mere exposure of the child to the same phenomenon over
7:59
Speaker 2: and over and produce the kind of an affection in
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Speaker 2: the child. For that stimulus. Now you can ask yourself,
8:06
Speaker 2: is there an evolutionary advantage to this? Well, obviously there
8:11
Speaker 2: is with respect to the child and the mother, because
8:14
Speaker 2: if you have repetition of a familiar event in your life,
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Speaker 2: which in this case is going to be the mother,
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Speaker 2: and you say that it's a pleasurable event, it's something
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Speaker 2: that the child is not going to be afraid of,
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Speaker 2: but rather is going to move toward. And so one
8:31
Speaker 2: speculation is that repetition is a way in which you
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Speaker 2: bond a child to a parent. Reason why is it's
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Speaker 2: a step in the right direction toward ensuring the child's survival.
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Speaker 2: And all that evolution is really interested in is neither
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Speaker 2: the mother nor the child, but simply the passing on
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Speaker 2: of the genes. Wants to make sure that those genes
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Speaker 2: are passed on. And so what it does is it
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Speaker 2: selects for activities which are desirable to the people involved
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Speaker 2: in the individuals involved in the activity, and a way
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Speaker 2: to enhance that for the individuals is to make it pleasurable.
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Speaker 2: Notice the obvious case of that is just sex. I mean,
9:17
Speaker 2: sex doesn't have to be pleasurable, but it is. And
9:21
Speaker 2: Nature knew what she was doing when she made sex
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Speaker 2: pleasurable because that ensured that there would be a contribution
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Speaker 2: to the gene pool. You follow me. Yeah, well, there's
9:31
Speaker 2: another reason why it's sort of interesting repetition. And even
9:35
Speaker 2: though we're not talking about my book, you'll see in
9:38
Speaker 2: a minute why this is really what you're asking is
9:41
Speaker 2: exactly the right question. Another reason is that repetition enables
9:46
Speaker 2: you as a creature to determine whether the environment that
9:50
Speaker 2: you're in is safe or not. Because if you are
9:55
Speaker 2: in a particular environment and you repeat that environment over
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Speaker 2: and over again without mishap, then you know that that's safe.
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Speaker 2: But if you happen to be in the environment and
10:05
Speaker 2: all of a sudden there's something different, then you worry
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Speaker 2: and you look around. So repetition is a way of
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Speaker 2: determining whether or not your environment around you as safe.
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Speaker 2: Notice that in order for you to be able to
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Speaker 2: make that determination, not only do you have to be
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Speaker 2: hardwired to tell whether two things are alike, but you
10:29
Speaker 2: also have to be hardwired to tell whether things are different.
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Speaker 2: And this point was observed as far back as eighteen
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Speaker 2: ninety by William James and his Principles of Psychology. The
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Speaker 2: ability to tell whether something is a repetition or not
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Speaker 2: requires not only the ability to tell the two things
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Speaker 2: are alike, whether they're the same, but also to tell
10:49
Speaker 2: where they're different. And this accept relationship that something is
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Speaker 2: the same as that, except we're hardwired. And there's a
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Speaker 2: whole bunch of experiments which showed that that's true. Now,
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Speaker 2: what's the point of my book. My point of my
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Speaker 2: book is that we are hardwired to detect repetition, which
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Speaker 2: involved same accept judgments and as well as same judgments,
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Speaker 2: and artists co opted that in order to put pleasure
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Speaker 2: into their works of art.
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Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, so that you get a bigger audience, a
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Speaker 1: bigger fan base, more people that want to see your art,
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Speaker 1: listen to your music.
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Speaker 2: You'll notice that what happened at the twentieth century when
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Speaker 2: the artist abandoned the natural predilections of the mind to
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Speaker 2: tell whether something was tonal, to listen to tonality, to
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Speaker 2: tell whether something rhymed, for example, whether two words rhyme,
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Speaker 2: whether the same accept You'll notice that what happened was
11:51
Speaker 2: that one could simply say that art gave up pleasure
11:56
Speaker 2: and it produced it went in a different direction. But
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Speaker 2: one of the things that it gave up when it
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Speaker 2: gave up catering to the natural predilections of the brain
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Speaker 2: was pleasured, which is why the audience for art dropped.
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Speaker 1: And that also explains that with songs you have chorus, repeat, chorus, repeat,
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Speaker 1: chorus again.
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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, I mean look, that's so.
12:18
Speaker 3: Look.
12:19
Speaker 2: Let me give you an example from my book. Suppose
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Speaker 2: you and I meet and I say to you, Hello, Eric,
12:25
Speaker 2: have you ben? Hello? Eric, have you ben? I just
12:28
Speaker 2: got back from the store. I just got back from
12:30
Speaker 2: the store. I bought a quart of milk and a
12:33
Speaker 2: loaf of bread. I bought a quart of milk and
12:35
Speaker 2: a loaf of bread. You would say, wait a minute,
12:38
Speaker 2: why are you repeating yourself? The point is that as
12:42
Speaker 2: you have every right to be annoyed if my conversation
12:45
Speaker 2: with you was like that, because one of the sort
12:49
Speaker 2: of the rules of conversation is that when you talk,
12:52
Speaker 2: just get across what it is you have to say,
12:54
Speaker 2: and no more so my repeating the exact same thing
12:58
Speaker 2: is useless. But suppose what was I saying, well, hello,
13:02
Speaker 2: have you been today? Well, I'm saying hello, Eric, how
13:06
Speaker 2: you been today? Well, I've just been to the store,
13:10
Speaker 2: And this is what I got to say, I've been
13:13
Speaker 2: to the store and this is what I got to say,
13:17
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, this is pleasurable. You get it?
13:20
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, I was like, sang it.
13:23
Speaker 2: That's really interesting.
13:25
Speaker 1: Yeah. You cite a Robert Johnson song from nineteen thirty six,
13:28
Speaker 1: They're Red Hot, as an example of how we expect
13:32
Speaker 1: to encounter repetition.
13:34
Speaker 2: Hot Ta Mallins, she got him for sale. Hot Tamalins,
13:38
Speaker 2: she got him for sale.
13:40
Speaker 1: Book on rock podcast. We'll be back after this.
13:43
Speaker 2: It's intermission time.
13:46
Speaker 1: We should know you're a musician yourself, right, You playing
13:48
Speaker 1: a jazz band.
13:49
Speaker 2: I'm a jazz musician. Yeah, I played trombone. It's never
13:53
Speaker 2: very far from me, there it is. I was practicing
13:57
Speaker 2: just before we went I joined you. I'm in a
14:00
Speaker 2: wheelchair now because I had a what they call a
14:04
Speaker 2: catastrophic spinal cord injury about eleven years ago. But before then,
14:09
Speaker 2: I used to play in a Dixieland band on a firetruck.
14:13
Speaker 2: Who was cool. I mean, I did parades all over
14:15
Speaker 2: the place. I love that. But once I had this accident,
14:19
Speaker 2: I couldn't climb up on the fire truck anymore. So.
14:23
Speaker 2: But the musicians come to my house and we have sessions.
14:27
Speaker 2: I'm putting together another one. We just played Dixie Tunes.
14:30
Speaker 2: But I also play in a levant garde orchestra called Ardvark,
14:34
Speaker 2: which is the oldest uninterrupted orchestral organization in America, jazz
14:41
Speaker 2: ensemble in America. It's been going for fifty five years now.
14:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're out of Boston. We should have mentioned too.
14:47
Speaker 2: That's out of Boston. I've got a concert coming up
14:49
Speaker 2: in September and then one in December with them, and
14:53
Speaker 2: then I can go because the leader doesn't mind it.
14:56
Speaker 2: I show up in a wheelchair.
14:57
Speaker 1: That's great, though you're continuing to make music. You mentioned
15:00
Speaker 1: the term same accept. What that means same slash accept.
15:05
Speaker 2: That's in the book. That's exactly the judgment that you
15:09
Speaker 2: have to make when you tell whether two words rhyme.
15:13
Speaker 2: Take the word ham and spam. You know that they rhyme. Well,
15:19
Speaker 2: what judgment are you making that enables you to conclude, Oh, yes,
15:24
Speaker 2: they rhyme, whereas spam and foot don't. So ham and
15:30
Speaker 2: spam rhyme, and ham and foot don't. What the ham
15:34
Speaker 2: and spam have in common? Well, it's this. Everything from
15:38
Speaker 2: the stressed valve to the end has to be identical,
15:42
Speaker 2: and that in ham and spam that's the am part.
15:46
Speaker 2: Everything to the left of it has to be different.
15:52
Speaker 2: So in ham and spam, what's different is the huff
15:55
Speaker 2: of h and the spuk of spam. You get it.
16:00
Speaker 2: And so you tell you can tell whether two words
16:02
Speaker 2: rhyme or not, if in fact they are the same. Accept. Now,
16:07
Speaker 2: this same accept judgment is exactly what Duke Ellington did
16:11
Speaker 2: when he wrote Satin Down.
16:14
Speaker 1: By the way, you got me listening to Duke Ellington
16:16
Speaker 1: all day over the weekend I was reading this book.
16:19
Speaker 1: So thank you for that reminding me of how great
16:21
Speaker 1: his music is.
16:22
Speaker 2: Oh, Duke Ellington is I have on my bookcase behind it.
16:27
Speaker 2: You can't see it very well, I don't think. But
16:29
Speaker 2: I have busts of four people who are my heroes.
16:33
Speaker 2: The first one is Leo Tolstoy, the second one is
16:37
Speaker 2: Miguel de Chavantes, the third one is J. R. R. Tolkien,
16:42
Speaker 2: and the fourth one is Duke Ellington.
16:44
Speaker 1: Ah, that's great.
16:46
Speaker 2: I wake up in the morning. I got them set
16:49
Speaker 2: up so that we make eye contact, and so in
16:52
Speaker 2: the morning I say good morning, guys. I love it.
16:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned Satin Down the book because you say,
17:00
Speaker 1: a lot of grouping is the key to lyric placement.
17:03
Speaker 1: Explain that this is also really interesting.
17:06
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about musical notation is that it combines
17:11
Speaker 2: two dimensions of music in a single notation. It combines
17:16
Speaker 2: so when you look at a note on a stage,
17:18
Speaker 2: you not only know about the pitch, but you also
17:21
Speaker 2: know about the rhythm. Okay, so now let's take the
17:25
Speaker 2: first four bars of SATNDN. The first two go bah
17:30
Speaker 2: Buddha Buddha bah rudd.
17:34
Speaker 3: The next two go bah Buddha Buddha bah dudda.
17:39
Speaker 2: And now let's break them apart. Let's look at their rhythm,
17:43
Speaker 2: the rhythm without any pitch information at all. In other words,
17:48
Speaker 2: what a drummer's music might look like. It's like this
17:52
Speaker 2: bah but da bot dah bah dot bah but da
17:57
Speaker 2: bot dah bah up. Now, when you sing it, the
18:02
Speaker 2: first two bars are bad bae dude up. The second
18:09
Speaker 2: two bars are the same as the first two bars,
18:12
Speaker 2: except it's a step higher.
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Speaker 3: So it goes ba ba ba dude bye ba bad.
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Speaker 3: That's the same.
18:25
Speaker 2: Accept. That's the musical version of.
18:29
Speaker 1: Rye booked on rock Podcast. We'll be back after this.
18:34
Speaker 2: This is heavy. There's that word again, heavy why I
18:37
Speaker 2: think so heavy in that future?
18:38
Speaker 1: Is there a problem with yours gravitational pull? Hey guys,
18:43
Speaker 1: thanks so much for checking out the book down Rock podcast.
18:46
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18:50
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19:16
Speaker 1: at Booked on Rock. Thanks again for listening. Now back
19:20
Speaker 1: to the show. Samuel J. Kaiser is our guest. We
19:24
Speaker 1: call him Jay. He's the author of Played Again Sam
19:27
Speaker 1: Repetition in the arts, there's something alluring about the number three.
19:32
Speaker 1: What is the rule of three and why is it
19:35
Speaker 1: so alluring specifically in music?
19:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, it's really interesting in music because you'll notice
19:40
Speaker 2: that the rule of three is a governing principle on repetition. Now,
19:48
Speaker 2: in language, there is this sort of rhetorical device called beckins,
19:54
Speaker 2: the sort of thing where you have three things in
19:56
Speaker 2: a row. Three things plays a big role in the
19:59
Speaker 2: little subsections of language. For example, lockstock and barrel, life,
20:05
Speaker 2: liberty and the pursuit of happiness, a ready aim fire,
20:09
Speaker 2: the big, the bad, and the ugly red, yellow, green,
20:13
Speaker 2: the sort of thing for stoplights. Those are things in
20:17
Speaker 2: which you'll notice that the repetition of those things what's
20:21
Speaker 2: being repeated there. What's the same is that they're all
20:25
Speaker 2: of the same part of speech lockstock and barrel, ready,
20:30
Speaker 2: aim fire. But what's different is the meaning that's rhyme
20:36
Speaker 2: and that particular rhetorical device. Okay, Now, in music, you
20:42
Speaker 2: don't have meaning to separate things out. And it's a
20:47
Speaker 2: fact about music that if you take a look at
20:50
Speaker 2: jazz standards typically, and also you find this in classical
20:53
Speaker 2: music as well. I noticed from the title of your
20:56
Speaker 2: show that you're a rock fan, right.
20:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I was going to mention all of this
21:00
Speaker 1: applies to rock and roll music. Yeah, our audience loves
21:03
Speaker 1: rock and roll. This is no different in rock and roll.
21:05
Speaker 2: Right. Well, you can tell me now, because I don't
21:09
Speaker 2: I really don't know rock. Okay, somehow or other, I
21:12
Speaker 2: missed rock when I grew up. I don't know how
21:15
Speaker 2: I did. And one of the things that amazes me
21:19
Speaker 2: is how did I learn all those jazz tunes. I mean,
21:22
Speaker 2: I have no memory of listening to them or trying
21:26
Speaker 2: to learn them the way people do today with rock.
21:29
Speaker 2: But somehow or other I listened to a streaming program
21:34
Speaker 2: for music every morning. I can recognize the tune in
21:37
Speaker 2: three notes, you know, I just but I couldn't do
21:40
Speaker 2: that with a rock tune.
21:42
Speaker 1: Talk about the Beatles though, right, I mean the Beatles.
21:45
Speaker 2: Beatles, I know, like yesterday those guys were I.
21:48
Speaker 1: Want to hold your hand repetition, I want to hold
21:51
Speaker 1: your hand.
21:52
Speaker 2: I look, I'll tell you what I know about jazz.
21:56
Speaker 2: You tell me if it works with rock. There is
21:58
Speaker 2: a program that I use when I play when I'm practicing.
22:02
Speaker 2: It's called I reel Pro. And what i reel Pro
22:06
Speaker 2: does is it has the cords of twelve hundred tunes
22:08
Speaker 2: in its database, and I can pick a tone, I
22:12
Speaker 2: can play the background, then I can play the melody,
22:14
Speaker 2: and then I can improvise, and in that way I
22:16
Speaker 2: practice the trombone. Okay, So now the point is that
22:22
Speaker 2: there was a guy by the name of Shanahan who
22:25
Speaker 2: I reference in my book, who actually looked at the
22:30
Speaker 2: entire database of twelve hundred of the jazz standards, and
22:33
Speaker 2: I reel pro from the point of view of form.
22:37
Speaker 2: Now here's the form of a jazz tube. It's typically
22:41
Speaker 2: aa ba. Now what do I mean by that? Well,
22:46
Speaker 2: let's take Satndal as an example. The first eight bars
22:50
Speaker 2: are bah bah.
22:52
Speaker 3: Dah Buddha, bahudah, bah bah Dah Buddha, bah du Dah,
22:57
Speaker 3: bah Duda.
22:58
Speaker 2: Baha duda long. Okay. Then it's repeated. Typically there's a
23:04
Speaker 2: repeat sign and you play it again. But you don't
23:07
Speaker 2: play it three times. What do you do? You introduce
23:12
Speaker 2: something which is called a bridge. So after you have
23:15
Speaker 2: done bad bad, after you repeated that the first eight twice,
23:21
Speaker 2: at sixteen bars, incomes the bridge, and the bridge is
23:26
Speaker 2: eight bars. And what's the bridge like? It's bah bah
23:30
Speaker 2: uh bah bah bah uh bah.
23:34
Speaker 4: And then bah bah uh bah bah uh bah switcher rudy,
23:41
Speaker 4: and so you can see that what he's done there
23:44
Speaker 4: is the same thing you did in the first four bars.
23:46
Speaker 2: The melody line here is four bars long. The rhythm
23:51
Speaker 2: is identical, but the pitch is up a step, you
23:54
Speaker 2: get it. Sure. As soon as he's.
23:56
Speaker 3: Done that, he goes back to uh bah bruh up
24:01
Speaker 3: bah bah bah dah brude uh.
24:04
Speaker 2: So the form of that jazz tune is a repeated again.
24:10
Speaker 2: You can't repeat it a third time until you've introduced
24:12
Speaker 2: something different, and then you can repeat it again typically
24:16
Speaker 2: aa ba. So when Shanahan analyzed the twelve hundred pieces
24:22
Speaker 2: of the twelve hundred tunes in ival pro, he didn't
24:26
Speaker 2: find a single tune that had AAA, or a single
24:32
Speaker 2: tune that had BBB. Always the sequence of a's were
24:36
Speaker 2: interrupted by something or else. It was just just repeated.
24:41
Speaker 2: There would be a tune which would do sixteen bars
24:43
Speaker 2: of A followed by sixteen bars of A. In music,
24:47
Speaker 2: if you have an idea, you can repeat it once,
24:51
Speaker 2: but you can't repeat it again until you've introduced something different.
24:55
Speaker 1: Interesting.
24:56
Speaker 2: That's because music doesn't have the property of me. So
25:01
Speaker 2: to my way of thinking, that is a defect of music.
25:05
Speaker 2: But in fact it's what makes music interesting, because music
25:09
Speaker 2: you can concentrate strictly on the repetition aspect of the notes.
25:15
Speaker 2: Now in rock music, is it like that age.
25:18
Speaker 1: Well, it depends on the artists, and yes, it can be,
25:20
Speaker 1: it depends. I'd be curious to have you listen to
25:23
Speaker 1: a band like Steely Dan who's rooted in jazz. It's
25:26
Speaker 1: they call it jazz rock. There are a lot of musicians,
25:29
Speaker 1: rock and roll musicians who came from a jazz background.
25:32
Speaker 1: Sting from the Police a lot of his solo work.
25:35
Speaker 2: Well, they'll know that. I mean these guys, I mean,
25:37
Speaker 2: these musicians are really good musicians.
25:39
Speaker 1: Sure, well, like Branford Marsalis you know of yeah, right, yes,
25:45
Speaker 1: he's been with Sting again. Very jazzy. Yeah, it's really interesting.
25:49
Speaker 1: Although this philosopher Emmanuel can't well, I don't know if
25:53
Speaker 1: I like this guy, because he said, this is chapter six,
25:57
Speaker 1: it's titled is music Wallpaper? And he said at the
25:59
Speaker 1: end of the eighteenth century, essentially says the repetition as
26:03
Speaker 1: a rule of music is why he ranked it so
26:06
Speaker 1: low among the arts? Why did he feel that way?
26:09
Speaker 2: And he called it wallpaper? Remember right? Reasonable? And he
26:13
Speaker 2: thought that poetry was the highest form of art. And
26:16
Speaker 2: the reason why was that music had no intellectual content.
26:22
Speaker 2: There was no semantics of music. Therefore he saw but
26:26
Speaker 2: he didn't understand that music. What he saw in its
26:30
Speaker 2: greatest weakness was it's in fact its greatest strength, namely
26:34
Speaker 2: that it could focus exclusively on patterns of repetition. And
26:41
Speaker 2: that's why people who in later centuries, people who wrote
26:44
Speaker 2: in defense of music, called music really the only abstract art,
26:49
Speaker 2: because you didn't have to worry about like in poetry.
26:53
Speaker 2: You didn't have to worry about what it said. You
26:55
Speaker 2: could just sort of make it repetitive patterns. And of
26:59
Speaker 2: course that's interesting enough. Of reason why I called it
27:02
Speaker 2: wallpaper was because if you take a look at a
27:05
Speaker 2: Persian rug, or if you go to the Alhambra in Spain,
27:09
Speaker 2: those are nothing but repetitions. All of those patterns are
27:13
Speaker 2: just repetitive patterns. But repetition is a source of pleasure anyway,
27:19
Speaker 2: from the point of view of enjoying. Repetition meaning gets
27:23
Speaker 2: in the way. I'm happy to have both poetry and music.
27:27
Speaker 2: We haven't talked about visual art.
27:30
Speaker 1: No, No, we should talk about that as well. You
27:32
Speaker 1: cover Andy Warhol's campbell soup cans painting from nineteen sixty two.
27:37
Speaker 2: Isn't that interesting?
27:39
Speaker 1: I mean, thirty two cans. They're all identical, but it's
27:42
Speaker 1: just that they have a different.
27:43
Speaker 2: It was a different kind of soup, I mean soup.
27:45
Speaker 2: That's the whole point. They were the same. The Campbell
27:48
Speaker 2: soup cans were the same, except so they were rhyming.
27:52
Speaker 2: It's visual rhyme. And what was the accept was Scotch
27:57
Speaker 2: broth noodle soup, right, tomato soup. That's why I had
28:03
Speaker 2: thirty two of them, each one with a different name.
28:06
Speaker 2: So it's the same, except that's visual rhyme. I don't
28:09
Speaker 2: know if it's true or not. I've tried to find
28:12
Speaker 2: out that. I never succeeded in getting a satisfactory answer anywhere.
28:18
Speaker 2: But you know, Warhol did that in sixty two sixty three.
28:22
Speaker 2: But in nineteen sixty a guy by the name of
28:25
Speaker 2: Ormond Jdnya did a photograph called Girls and Windows, and
28:33
Speaker 2: that photograph is one of the highest money making photographs
28:38
Speaker 2: ever taken. At the time, I think about the last year,
28:42
Speaker 2: it had earned as much as twelve million dollars. And basically,
28:47
Speaker 2: what that photograph is about, it's the Campbell soup cans,
28:51
Speaker 2: except that for the soup cans they're empty windows, and
28:55
Speaker 2: for the Scotch broth, the kinds of soup. There were
28:58
Speaker 2: models wearing colorful dresses standing at different poses in the windows.
29:04
Speaker 2: That's visual art.
29:06
Speaker 1: That's perfect visual same accept rhyme.
29:09
Speaker 2: Precisely so same accept It dominates music, it dominates poetry,
29:15
Speaker 2: it dominates painting. Well, I wouldn't say it dominates, but
29:19
Speaker 2: it certainly pervades it now.
29:21
Speaker 1: But that wasn't received well by other artists, right because
29:23
Speaker 1: that was, like, you say, a poke in the eye
29:25
Speaker 1: of abstract expressionism'.
29:28
Speaker 2: That's why Andy Warhol did it, because what the height
29:31
Speaker 2: of art at the time was people like the Kuoning
29:35
Speaker 2: and Pollock, and he was sort of poking a finger
29:38
Speaker 2: in the eye of these guys by taking a can
29:42
Speaker 2: of soup from a supermarket and turning it into an
29:46
Speaker 2: artistic object like that. He was making fun of abstract Now.
29:50
Speaker 2: I think he sort of actually put the kibosh on
29:54
Speaker 2: abstract dart when he did that. As a kind of
29:57
Speaker 2: a dominant media, all of a sudden open the floodgates
30:01
Speaker 2: for all kinds of other forms of art. It's interesting,
30:05
Speaker 2: just as a footnote, I don't know how many of
30:07
Speaker 2: your listeners are interested in art, but exactly one hundred
30:11
Speaker 2: years before, in eighteen sixty two, Edward Manett did a
30:18
Speaker 2: painting called Dejane Serleo Lunch on the Grass, And it's
30:22
Speaker 2: a famous painting because it has these French guys sitting
30:26
Speaker 2: on a lawn having lunch with a woman and the
30:29
Speaker 2: woman they're fully dressed and the woman is completely nude.
30:33
Speaker 2: And what's interesting about this is that the pose that
30:36
Speaker 2: he put them in is exactly the pose that Raphael
30:41
Speaker 2: used in a painting of his that was recorded in
30:45
Speaker 2: a etching by an artist who worked in Rafael studio,
30:49
Speaker 2: a guy by the name of Michelangelo Raymondo. And essentially,
30:55
Speaker 2: Manette was doing to classical art what Warhol was doing
31:00
Speaker 2: to abstract art.
31:02
Speaker 1: Do you think Warhol was aware of the pleasurable experience
31:06
Speaker 1: of repetition? Is that why he did it?
31:08
Speaker 2: Well? Look look how much he made his reputation on repetation.
31:12
Speaker 2: Look at all of the Marilyn Monroe things, the silk
31:15
Speaker 2: screens of Marilyn Monroe. Sure, all the same face, but
31:19
Speaker 2: different colories. I knew I'll tell you this. I don't
31:23
Speaker 2: know if he knew it consciously, but it certainly must
31:26
Speaker 2: have given him pleasure or he wouldn't have done it right.
31:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, he did a lot of albums, a lot of
31:31
Speaker 1: work for artists, rock and roll bands like the Rolling Stones,
31:34
Speaker 1: and there's one famous one for a band Velvet Underground,
31:37
Speaker 1: which is the banana very simple.
31:39
Speaker 2: That's not repetition.
31:41
Speaker 1: No, it's not. That's a more of a you know
31:44
Speaker 1: what that.
31:44
Speaker 2: Reminds me Vienali the Venice Biennale, the art show that
31:50
Speaker 2: happens once a year. Remember the guy nailed the banana
31:53
Speaker 2: to a wall. No he didn't hear about that. No,
31:58
Speaker 2: I mean he nailed the banana to well, and somebody
32:00
Speaker 2: bought it. I think they paid some I mean some
32:04
Speaker 2: huge sum for it. Like I don't know what it is.
32:06
Speaker 2: I don't want to even guess, but it's it's north
32:09
Speaker 2: of fifty thousand dollars. The guy bought the banana made it.
32:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's But you bring up a point that makes
32:17
Speaker 1: me wonder about how much of these artists consciously or
32:19
Speaker 1: subconsciously were aware of the repetition thing. Because like the
32:22
Speaker 1: Beatles and a song like Hey Jude, the song ends
32:27
Speaker 1: over four minutes of Paul McCartney repeating the same phrase,
32:31
Speaker 1: and you would think that would work against the song,
32:34
Speaker 1: but yet it worked to the song's advantage.
32:37
Speaker 2: I were going to look at that song, you see
32:40
Speaker 2: what I would say to myself, is it a counter
32:42
Speaker 2: example to what I said about Aaba? It's hey Jude aaa,
32:49
Speaker 2: And my guess is it's not. My guess is that
32:52
Speaker 2: if you were to look at the rhythm, you'd find
32:55
Speaker 2: rhythm changes, or if you looked at the chords, you'd
32:58
Speaker 2: find chordal changes, So there would be a change teach
33:01
Speaker 2: time he repeatched the phrase, I mean, I can see
33:04
Speaker 2: him repeating it identically twice, but the third time, I
33:07
Speaker 2: would guess there's a change.
33:10
Speaker 1: Booked on Rock podcasts, We'll be back after this. Now
33:13
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33:17
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33:21
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33:23
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33:53
Speaker 1: You went into this project with a curiosity which led
33:56
Speaker 1: you to carefully look at how repetition appears in the arts,
34:00
Speaker 1: and I'm curious as to how you felt about the
34:02
Speaker 1: topic when you completed the book.
34:04
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I developed a theory about how it
34:08
Speaker 2: works as I wrote the book, and I ended the
34:12
Speaker 2: book with that theory. I'm not sure that that theory
34:15
Speaker 2: is right, but I'm hoping that people will test it
34:18
Speaker 2: and find out where it fails. But the idea is
34:22
Speaker 2: that basically all art. Well, let me explain it like this.
34:27
Speaker 2: There was an experiment done by some psychologists in the Netherlands,
34:33
Speaker 2: and what days people did was they discovered that when
34:39
Speaker 2: you ask somebody a question, they tend to answer it
34:44
Speaker 2: using the same syntactic constructions that you used in formulating
34:49
Speaker 2: the question. So you go into a shop and you
34:52
Speaker 2: say to somebody, at what time do you close? The
34:56
Speaker 2: shop keeper will answer at five o'clock. You go into
34:59
Speaker 2: it different shop and you say when do you close?
35:03
Speaker 2: They won't say at five o'clock, they'll say five o'clock.
35:07
Speaker 2: So they sort of pick up your syntactic structure. So
35:11
Speaker 2: that kind of parallelism, structural parallelism. You'll notice that it's
35:15
Speaker 2: a familiar rhetorical device. We shall fight on the landing grounds,
35:20
Speaker 2: we shall fight in the streets, we shall fight on
35:22
Speaker 2: the shores, that sort of thing. From Churchill's speech to
35:26
Speaker 2: Parliament in June fourth, nineteen forty. I think it was
35:31
Speaker 2: I think that art is essentially works like that. That
35:35
Speaker 2: what essentially is happening is that when you make these
35:39
Speaker 2: judgments of repetition, what is happening is that the artist
35:44
Speaker 2: gives you a structure and he sets up a problem
35:46
Speaker 2: for you, and the problem is to find out if
35:49
Speaker 2: that structure is repeated. And when you do that, that
35:52
Speaker 2: gives you pleasure. It's a problem solving event. And so
35:57
Speaker 2: that's why when you hear Ham and you you are
36:00
Speaker 2: in an end rhyme environment, what you the reader wants
36:04
Speaker 2: to do is to find the word that's the same
36:07
Speaker 2: accept and when you find it, bingo, it's a pleasurable event,
36:12
Speaker 2: tiny little joke, the pleasure.
36:15
Speaker 1: That leads into the word hardwired.
36:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, that way you find this repetition everywhere. So far
36:22
Speaker 2: we've only talked about same accept But if you take
36:25
Speaker 2: a look at things like say Homer's epics. Those are
36:29
Speaker 2: identical repetitions. Homer's epics are built on formulas, like they're
36:34
Speaker 2: built out of fixed phrases, like little blocks of lego.
36:38
Speaker 2: And these identical blocks of lego are what the poet used,
36:42
Speaker 2: the oral poets used when they constructed the poem, which
36:46
Speaker 2: ultimately was written down as the Odyssey or the Ilien.
36:50
Speaker 1: Yeah. This book it looks into the arts, which is music, poetry,
36:55
Speaker 1: and painting.
36:57
Speaker 2: Yes, also photography and photography. Yeah. Yeah. I have an
37:02
Speaker 2: analysis of a photograph by A Lee Friedlander, which on
37:08
Speaker 2: first glance it looks like a lousy photograph. I mean,
37:12
Speaker 2: it's nothing, but I think it's I think it's really something,
37:15
Speaker 2: but you have to look for the same accept in it.
37:18
Speaker 2: And then there's this great painting by Gustav Kaibot, who
37:23
Speaker 2: was a nineteenth century French impressionist, the one that nobody
37:28
Speaker 2: ever heard of, who, in my opinion, was as good
37:31
Speaker 2: as all of them, you know. And you can see
37:33
Speaker 2: that one of his paintings that I analyze in the
37:36
Speaker 2: book is nothing but same except it's called Rainy Day
37:40
Speaker 2: in Paris, and it's just made up of a whole
37:46
Speaker 2: variety of triangles which are all the same, accept And
37:50
Speaker 2: I think when you look at it, you subliminally see
37:53
Speaker 2: the triangles. And that's why you were attracted to this painting.
37:56
Speaker 2: Why you think, Jesus, that's a good painting, It's because
38:00
Speaker 2: had set up a whole bunch of little problems for
38:02
Speaker 2: you to solve, and you solve.
38:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, this book is really going to help us when
38:05
Speaker 1: we listen to or look at a painting or a photograph,
38:10
Speaker 1: we're going to think about it a whole different way.
38:12
Speaker 1: After reading this book, you're going to ask yourself or
38:14
Speaker 1: you may have the answer now as to why you're
38:17
Speaker 1: seeking or why you find pleasure in it.
38:19
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you said that, Eric, because most of
38:23
Speaker 2: the commentary on art is not about the mechanisms that
38:28
Speaker 2: it initiates in you, not about the neural networks that
38:32
Speaker 2: it causes the fire in you. Most of it is
38:35
Speaker 2: about the sensitivity of the critic who's talking about it. So,
38:39
Speaker 2: for example, in this Good Stuff Kibok painting, there's a
38:43
Speaker 2: critic that I quote and basically when you read his
38:46
Speaker 2: comment on the painting, it's nothing but a description of
38:49
Speaker 2: what the painting is about. But you know, I mean,
38:52
Speaker 2: you don't need a critic to say, no, it's two guys.
38:55
Speaker 2: It's a man and a woman with an umbrella, and
38:57
Speaker 2: there's a bunch of other guys with umbrellas and they're
38:59
Speaker 2: all walking are out on the training. Thanks a lot,
39:02
Speaker 2: I can see that. Yeah, but that's what most critics do.
39:06
Speaker 2: They talk about it, but they talk about it because
39:08
Speaker 2: they're very good at talking about it. They have pleasant
39:12
Speaker 2: styles and in some cases their sensibilities are really worth
39:15
Speaker 2: listening to. It's interesting to see what that painting book
39:20
Speaker 2: or poem evokes in them, but that doesn't say anything
39:23
Speaker 2: about the level below it, which is why it works
39:26
Speaker 2: as the work of art. And that's what my book
39:29
Speaker 2: tries to uncover.
39:31
Speaker 1: And it's called Played against sam Repetition in the Arts
39:34
Speaker 1: by Samuel J. Kaiser. It's out now. You can find
39:36
Speaker 1: out wherever books are sold. Look forward at your nearest bookstore.
39:40
Speaker 1: If it's not, they're asking to get a copy of it.
39:43
Speaker 1: And you can also go to booked on rock dot
39:44
Speaker 1: com to find your nearest independent bookstore. Jay, thank you
39:47
Speaker 1: so much. Where can people find out more about you?
39:50
Speaker 1: Do you have a website? People can reach out to you.
39:53
Speaker 2: No, I don't have a website. I'm on Facebook.
39:55
Speaker 1: Okay, we could put a link up to your Facebook
39:58
Speaker 1: page in the show so people can reach out to
40:02
Speaker 1: you if you like.
40:03
Speaker 2: I just did a CD. By the way, it just
40:05
Speaker 2: came out, which might interest you, because before I got
40:09
Speaker 2: off on the art business, I was writing poetry myself,
40:13
Speaker 2: and I wrote twenty two poems which a friend of
40:15
Speaker 2: mine who's a composer in Paris, like, so he sent
40:19
Speaker 2: them to music and those just came out two weeks ago.
40:23
Speaker 1: Oh, that's brilliant.
40:24
Speaker 2: It's on Amazon.
40:26
Speaker 1: It is on Amazon.
40:27
Speaker 2: Okay, here's an interesting thing. Can you imagine this? All
40:30
Speaker 2: my life, I've been a scholar and I write articles
40:34
Speaker 2: that nobody reads, or these very few people read, compared
40:38
Speaker 2: to say, Beyonce or Taylor's.
40:43
Speaker 1: It's Taylor Swift, right, Taylor Swift?
40:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, Swift Taylor.
40:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be funny though. I think that's going
40:52
Speaker 1: to be my new name, Swift Taylor.
40:54
Speaker 3: Yeah.
40:55
Speaker 2: Anyway, what I was going to say is that when
40:58
Speaker 2: this CD came out two weeks ago, Asscap. You know
41:01
Speaker 2: what Ashcap is. They have a million members and they
41:05
Speaker 2: chose the track from the CD to put on their
41:08
Speaker 2: Friday playlist. Really, yeah, can you imagine.
41:12
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
41:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I thought. I mean, you know, who
41:17
Speaker 2: would ever thought that Peter Stevens and I would have
41:20
Speaker 2: a track on a on a Ashcat playlist right up
41:25
Speaker 2: there with Steely. Dan. There you go. Where's it, Dan Steely?
41:29
Speaker 1: There's a Dan Steely.
41:32
Speaker 2: I love it. I love it. Jay.
41:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, you are on a roll. You got the book out,
41:37
Speaker 1: the music out. I love this. Thanks so much for
41:38
Speaker 1: coming on.
41:39
Speaker 2: You have.
41:39
Speaker 1: You have most certainly raised the IQ in this room.
41:42
Speaker 1: Let me tell you, I feel a little smarter just
41:45
Speaker 1: by talking to you.
41:47
Speaker 2: You're supposed to do.
41:49
Speaker 1: That's right, Thank you, Thank you so much. Jay.
41:52
Speaker 2: How as you're talking to you, I hope I see
41:54
Speaker 2: you again. That's it. It's in the books.