Eli5: What’s the psychology behind becoming uncontrollably emotional during live music? Is there a trauma connection?
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Music is specifically crafted to emotionally manipulate us. Our brains love the patterns, the familiarity, and the anticipation. The manipulation is magnified when surrounded by like-minded people, as it normalizes the feeling.
This is exactly why music is such a big part of most church services. The music starts softly to invite you in and prime your emotions. Then everyone is encouraged to sing along to something simple and familiar, thus lowering your inhibitions. After that, they play something more emotional and personal, which opens you up to introspection in the coming sermon.
This is a really clunky ‘answer’….wrote it as a pre-abstract fer a paper when in a bar. I’m posting it ‘cause it *kinda* gets into depression/trauma stuff ur post hinted at.
Please be advised, this is anecdotal stuff, with some mushy “science” behind it. At least this. Hope it helps in some capacity!
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Transformative Abstraction Song-Writing
Taken into consideration, writ-modular systemic processing contingent upon the individual, is arrival space.
I’ve thought about writing a book:
“how to write songs”
“how to compose”, that’s dumb. It cannot be taught(ology).
….What I could write a book about…(keep reading)
The vocabulary of music/song writing can be taught, the forward analogy is thus:
One can be taught vocabulary, punctuation and concepts such as form, grammar, past participle this and thats, iambic meter, efficacy of language, so on, so forth (structure) in writing. This is annoying myself!
Creating a song, absolute/programme music and all that jazz (wah wah, bad punny), no teacha-bueno.
Peeps can learn I-IV-V, in 3/4 4, so called odd times, e.g., open chords on a guitar CCCC FFFF GGGG FFFF CCCC, but that’s not song writing. Skill.
Something I could write about? (?)
…a broad, general way, presenting how to get in that head space, the abstractions, the gestalt, as it were, of creating music.
Writing songs for 37 years, a dearth of songwriting, protracted or not, is attributable to Emotional States:
**depression, grief, PTSD, and the inverse of the former three modes.***
“spiritual” p values, (1.0+)
where n~ (v)alue = (M)orphology, what/where/why = “VAD” (vagueness, absence and dreaminess).
The goal being mushy directional <-> the reader to (ala) reliable, leaning assurance of self-credit, (gentle, harsh, beholden/individual) explaining process-of-way to a means, or, “expression of self in the language of what is song.”
Recently went thru Schoenbergs’ Theory of Harmony, last I read that was when I was 18, 19, (such a tome is flanked by Hobbes, Nietzsche or a Heidegger).
I.E., most, if not all “how to write a song” books (and classes) be-it-may book ended on shelf, as it were.
______ writes excellent music, but (even) he feels the same way, as does ______ and _____, more exemplarily posh.
______, for example, writes a song. Well, about 3 songs, the 30ish songs he has written are variations on 3 motifs-
______ & ______, (______ band) the songs = 3 things ______ written since ______ was a lad.
This is a Music Technician, same as most doctors are technicians, hospitalists and other skill settled <-> endeavours.
Joseph Campbell, Call To Adventure.
Masters of the medical field, the pioneers, use the same (similar, kind of) processes as songwriters. VAD, being one (1) perspective to pull from, for creation. As I often say, “create your own”. Same concept as ___, some gait particular to the individual.
-Gadding About the Town-
The modular model (MM) is applicable to all things, it’s no theory, is not a theory.
Systems [hahaha] to point preclude designation, implied, set upon the mantle of airy space.
That’s about it in a nutshell. I am aware of how this reads:
A distressing, sticky clack of conviction; the serious joke of cageyness. Verbosity reads a flurry of contradiction of contravention of incongruity, which is point on point.
And that’s the point, prescient and sappy as it is.
Ding dong the witch is dead!
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