Turning Sound Into Music—Why Do We Do It? | Short Film Showcase

What is sound? Uh, what is sound? Sound is just a cross-modal version of touch in a way, and that there are these waves that sort of move through the air, and they get in your ear and they actually hit the eardrum, and they push it back and forth. And so it's vibration, really.

So what is music? Organized sound? Maybe it's a way of ordering the sort of chaotic sounds of the world into something that involves structure and, um, time. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4.

Why do we organize sound into music? Some people think that music was there before speech, and so the original function of music was a kind of emotional communication system. Like, things fall on your toe, and you go, "Ah!" Maybe music used to be proto-speech.

I'm going to play you some music. I'm going to play some music. I'm going to play you some music, and I want you to tell me how it makes you [Music] feel.

How does that make me feel? That makes me feel like I'm doomed. Yeah. Fierce. Maybe you want to like run out and storm the streets? That feels very comfortable to me. I love that.

Hate the sound of whistling. Felt a good bad. Is that possible to feel good bad? I—I don't know. I don't know what that means. You just experienced a wide range of emotions. Why did all that happen?

I think of it in terms of like we're living our lives up here on the surface of the ocean, where these little boats, and there's all this underneath stuff that we'll never have access to. But somehow music can get down into those depths. I don't know what that is.

Is it because it's major, and it's kind of in a certain scale? Because it reminds me of a certain time of my life? Got a certain tempo? All those things. But somehow the combination of it just gets around your rational defenses and just moves you.

What then, having said what you just said, what is the function of music? Um, what is the function of music? I think—I feel like I should have a really good answer for this, but somehow I also feel like the question is wrong.

What is the function of music? Maybe it doesn't have a function. Words are um, codes. It's just an agreement. There's nothing innate about it. But like, music doesn't mean anything; it just is the thing.

And I'm not sure it has a function other than the fact that it is inevitable and it just comes out of us. I don't know if that's avoiding the question or if that's actually what I think. I think it's what I think.

We would just not be who we are unless we had music, so it makes us who we are. [Music]