Is music a language?

[@erikbreathes]

1:30 "in the sense you probably mean: no, but also, strictly speaking: yes, in the least helpful and most complicated of technically correct ways" is a sentence i will actively be seeking out opportunities to say in a conversation thank you doctor language

[@betsyw4943]

"Short answer: yes, with an if. Long answer: no, with a but." --Rev. Lovejoy

[@jamessidebotham]

dude the linguist jazz musician combo is so dope

[@WhatSmada]

insanely maxed

[@kaniobal2]

True. He should add levels to both and prefix w/ "human".

[@blobberberry]

Getting my doctorate in mathematics - everyone tells me they "hate math" when they really mostly mean they hated math class. Which I understand.

[@Fyodor8261]

Why, in your opinion, should I not dislike math?

[@blobberberry]

@@Fyodor8261 You're presumably following a linguistics channel! That means you're interested in patterns that can be abstracted from multiple disparate contexts and woven into a unifying framework. Also deciding which labels are the right ones, and which ideas can be used more broadly than others. This is much closer to the heart of mathematics than rotely solving a quadratic equation. I can carry on if you like :)

[@PedroOhoe]

​@@blobberberry please do, now I got curious 🤔 I also hated math class but I always had an impression that it worked in a similar way as a language (I've even considered trying to learn it again now, years later after graduating)

[@blobberberry]

@@PedroOhoe It's a common opinion in STEM disciplines that math is the language of technical, quantitative, or logical information. That's part of it... except unlike human languages, mathematical statements really can be right or wrong! And they can surprise you as well. I would recommend Lockhart's Lament, or Gowers's "Mathematics: a Very Short Introduction"

[@Mathhead2000]

Read "A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart.

[@yuvalne]

people think music is a universal language for the same reason they think features of Indo-European are universal. they aren't aware of just how weird things can get out there.

[@nihilisticpuppy3799]

Okay... tell us of a cousin of musical communication? Music encapsulates essentially any form of structured vibrations or sounds. What, in your mind, is above that and more exotic? I would love some examples

[@SirDudeTheFourth]

I have several problems with this statement. You are discrediting the fact that other ways of writing music exists and that the current most widely used system for writing music is complex and versatile and can write almost things that one would need to. It is also implying that the only thing that matters is the way it is written down. I agree that music is not a universal language but for a different reason, it because it’s not really a language in the first place. It can’t convey what most of the that actual languages can and is not supposed to.

[@yuvalne]

@@SirDudeTheFourth there are universal ways of writing down music just like there are universal ways of writing down language (IPA). but it doesn't change the fact that musical grammar and musical vocabulary can vary wildly from one culture to another. every culture has music, and every culture has a language. but saying that music is a universal language is like saying language is a universal language. depending on what you mean it's either wrong or a pointless statement.

[@SirDudeTheFourth]

⁠​⁠@yuvalne You’re wrong I never said that music was a universal language in fact I said the opposite. My problem was your reasoning but you did make some good points. Also it seems as if you saying that other music from other cultures is like a different language, when I can enjoy and appreciate the music as it was intended.

[@ToastbackWhale]

I'm both a person who stutters, and have my Masters in Speech-Language Pathology. The shit I hear about stuttering to this day is mind boggling 😵

[@samgould8567]

Good on you. I was tempted to get into speech path, as well, based on my spotty experiences with speech paths throughout my life as a person who stutters. You are being the change you wish to see, and I’m glad there are more of “us” out there bringing a dose of reality to the profession and helping each other out.

[@ToastbackWhale]

@@samgould8567 It's a weird issue. A lot of SLPs don't feel comfortable treating us due to their inexperience with clients who stutter. Of those that do, only a portion know what they are doing, leaving a lot of people who stutter feeling burnt. And then you have a lot of research coming out showing that, basically, the less of a "deal" you make it, the better your stutter tends to be (increased fluency). That's not to say that it's all in your head, other research shows 100% that it's not...but the "solution" seems to primarily be Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which kinda falls outside the SLP scope of practice, with some fluency shaping techniques on top. But the Psychs who handle CBT often don't have any specialized training with people who stutter. And then there's a whole host of stutterers that basically refuse to believe that any kind of therapy, treatment, or research will help because we've been repeatedly, generation after generation, been sold snake oils and stones that turn out, to nobody's surprise, to be bullshit. r/stuttering was *filled* with this kinds of shit and I eventually had to stop going there because it was so unbelievably toxic and pessimistic. I'm applying to my PhD now and frankly stuttering isn't even one of my three main research topics. I'm way more interested in other neurolinguistic topics...but it's always in the back of my mind.

[@oakstrong1]

Is it generally true that stutterers tend to lose their stutter when they sing, or even rap to music?

[@deanwoodward8026]

35 years in IT, on the technical side. I loooooove when people explain computers to me.

[@JimCullen]

As a software engineer, I love when people complain about their printer not working and expect me to be able to fix it. I mean, I usually can, but not because it's got anything to do with my job or training: it doesn't. I literally just have basic troubleshooting skills.

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

I'm among the world's leading experts on the Convention clause of Article V of the US Constitution. People often tell me that it can rewrite the constitution. It cannot. It allows states to come together to propose an amendment on whatever limited subject the states agree upon, which must then be ratified by the same process as an amendment proposed by Congress. Recently, at a hearing in New Hampshire, a member of the John Birch Society (yes, they still exist) claimed there were no experts on Article V. When it was my turn to speak I said that I had heard many things, but I had never been told I don't exist before.

[@languagejones6784]

That's incredible. And I'm somehow not surprised to hear they still exist.

[@ryanpmcguire]

It is fun to be a leading expert on a very specific thing

[@NickFegley]

Can you please clarify this further or point to layperson accessible explanation? I don't understand the difference between "rewriting" the constitution and "amending" the constitution. Also, for what it's worth, I'm from New Hampshire, and I believe that you exist.

[@SpencerTwiddy]

Hey, I saw a video in my recommended about something related to this a week or two ago but didn’t watch it. You’ve piqued my interest to a point that now I’d like to, but I can’t remember the title or creator. All I remember is it mentioned something about Gödel’s loophole. Do you know what video I’m talking about, or at least the story it tries to tell?

[@Sam_on_YouTube]

@@SpencerTwiddy Yes, I know what you're talking about. Godel apparently told Einstein a story about his citizenship interview. He said he told the interviewer he found a loophole in the Constitution. Einstein thought it was a mistake to tell the interviewer who apparently was a little apprehensive but still granted citizenship. Nobody knows what Godel's flaw was, but most of the speculation, given his area of interest, is that you can amend the amending process in order to change anything you want. This sounds like what he probably meant if I were to guess as someone who studied analytical philosophy including Godel as an undergraduate and studied law in, well, law school. But it also sounds like what often happens when a genius in one area talks about something unrelated... they sound like idiots. It isn't a flaw in the Constitution. There is a lot of subtlety missing from most people's guesses of what Godel thought. Now, in fairness to Godel, we don't know what he ACTUALLY thought, it is just speculation. He never told anyone beyond the vague story he told Einstein. There was a short video on it recently by a popular creator. Can't remember which one. It was a Hank Greene type guy, but I don't think it was Hank Greene.

[@josephdonaghy9325]

I teach world and Hawaiian music and ethnomusicology at UH Maui. When I first started, about half of the papers I received began with "Music is a universal language" or contained it somewhere in the paper. Now, before they even get to that point, I use a lot of these points - many of them from Susanne Langer's work. I appreciate the nuances you've added here in that it is not so black and white. It can't be clearly argued either way for all languages and all forms of music. Bravo. This video is now linked in my classes 😉

[@babujai1]

Not an expert, but I am a domestic violence survivor and I did a fair bit of therapy after escaping my last abusive relationship. People that have zero experience or exposure to either domestic violence or therapy love to tell me why I stayed as long as I did or how perfectly irrational it was that I did. Either way, they're never right, and generally refuse to consider that I might understand the situation better than they do.

[@ToNowHereShow]

I am not an expert in any mental illness but my own. I have severe maniac episodes that can become psychosis with vivid visual and audio hallucinations (and associated distorted thinking) requiring inpatient psychiatric treatment to stabilize. Over 40 years I have had numerous hospitalizations while being more-or-less productive 80% of my life. I get told a lot about severe mental illness and what my experience is like. It can be WebMD experts or Boomers who took LSD once. I am glad to talk it about because most of my life I hid my illness just to maintain employment. Social Security determined I am fully disabled years ago so now I am extremely open about my condition and surrounding struggles to raise awareness especially around voting season. People are mostly wrong about my internal experiences. Mostly.

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

I'm an expert on medieval literature (specifically early medieval Germanic literatures), and did my BA in archaeology. People often say the "Strong men create good times" meme at me - presenting it as a serious* historical argument - no matter what objections I raise. *this is often argued as basically Schrodinger's meme: if they're challenged about it and feel they can't offer a plausible defence, it's just a joke bro; if they're not challenge it gets invoked as a sincere historical analysis with no trace of humour.

[@amrojjeh]

No Schrodinger's meme here. I'm curious, what objections do you normally raise?

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

​@@amrojjeh So just to give a quick source as a jumping-off point: Colin Renfrew & Paul Bahn's textbook 'Archaeology' has a section about previous attempts by historians/archaeologists attempting to argue that history sees repeated cycles (none has been accepted by the academic community). Sorry I can't remember the specific part, I read it over five years ago. But my common objections to the 'strong good men times' memes are the following: * Oftentimes what exactly it means to be a 'strong man' is vaguely or inconsistently defined by the people making SMCGT arguments. And/or they aren't aware of how strength or masculinity was understood in the historical periods they're talking about. For instance, SMCGT folk usually point to the Fall of Rome, without realising that due to Graeco-Roman theories of ethnicity/medicine, the Goths who toppled them would have been seen as somewhat effeminate or at the very least not hegemonically masculine. I argue we can see this for instance in the poetry of Magnus Felix Ennodius, a Roman living through Ostrogothic rule in Italy. * The length of a 'time' in these accounts is often vaguely defined. Like by their logic, ten years of famine followed by one year of prosperity, followed by another ten years of famine could be explicable as SMCGT, though most of us looking from a zoomed-out perspective would probably just parse those twenty-one years as one mostly-continual period of misery. * There are many examples one can point to in history of bad times not creating strong men who create good times. Bear in mind that I'm not necessarily describing Graeco-Roman culture as objectively superior to 'barbarian' Germanic culture, but the logic inherent in pointing to the fall of Rome as an example of good times creating weak men DOES imply this judgement. So after the Rescript of Honorius withdrew Roman troops from Britain in 410CE, there was just a precipitous decline in Romanitas in Britain. It was very gradually revived as a consequence of Irish and Italian conversion missions over the next few centuries, but it never throughout the Anglo-Saxon period reached the same levels as it had in Roman Britain. And de-facto the quality of life for Roman Britains was probably better than for Anglo-Saxons on average (although I haven't looked into the data to check this one). SMCGT proponents often point to the barbarian Anglo-Saxons as examples of strong men, since they toppled the Brythons, but they failed to produce good times in their wake. * Similar to the previous objection, there are just numerous points where either good/bad times don't follow in the order predicted, or these times don't seem to have any incontestible association with the supposed strength or masculinty of men during that time period. When I point this out this is often where Schrodinger's meme comes in (thanks for not doing that and giving me a chance to procrastinate by writing this out lmao), where they'll say it's not super serious lol and is just a joke. And/or they'll say it's not a perfect rule but a general trend, or that SMCGT doesn't always go in order....which to me seems like it completely frustrates the utility of a cycle. When it's freezing cold in July we don't call that the cycle of the four seasons, we call it freak weather! Though idk unless Whatifalthist is just a whacky satirical parody of himself, I'd say at least some people take that 'meme' as a serious historical theory, even though it holds about as much water as a colander.

[@amrojjeh]

@@ThePhilologicalBell I appreciate you writing this out! Your objections are good, and upon reflecting, I've realized we can actually think of recent examples where SMCGT was not applicable. We can consider the current political divide we're in as bad times, or covid, or the 2009 crash, or the great depression, etc..., and I think few people would say those times created "strong men," probably due to the fact that since these things are more or less recent, they've not yet been romanticized. Or perhaps they'd say these events are too short, so then we can look at the history of Syria, or the Ottoman Empire, or most colonized countries today, and again we don't see the pattern to be applicable I don't think. Would you agree with this assessment?

[@ThePhilologicalBell]

@@amrojjeh Thank you for reading with an open mind friend :) I don't know enough about the Ottoman Empire or Syria to speak to those but yes, post-colonial countries are a great example of very bad times not creating strong men. Although - and I poorly articulated this with my length-of-time objection - SMCGT proponents can here fall back on the unfalsifiable defense of timescale: they could argue that these bad times haven't YET produced strong men but they will eventually. But the problem there is, because the more visible of the two axes (good/bad times; strong/weak men) is undeniably the 'good/bad' times. We can prove if there was a famine in history, the strength of their men is much more contestible. So de-facto the visible conditions which would prove SMCGT is...the fact that good times are followed by bad times. Which, is definitionally true: if you're only classifying times as 'good' or 'bad', then good times will always be followed by bad and vice versa unless one believes we've reached the end of history. And therefore SMCGT proponents can use almost any region and period of history to buttress the argument, so long as their interlocutors are willing to adopt a very vague or generous rationale for deeming the men preceding good times to be strong and vice versa. The men preceding any period of economic or cultural boon can be described as 'strong'. And, that boon will inevitably decline, at which point it can be blamed on 'weak' men corrupted by that very prosperity itself. This blame is especially easy to achieve with sample bias: there will inevitably some weak and/or effeminate men in every time period, so all the SMCGT advocate needs to do is highlight them and ignore/downplay evidence for men of that same time period being strong (and vice versa when the times are good). So ultimately SMCGT at its most defensible literally is just saying that good times don't last forever, that history involves change. Which, is true but also isn't useful as a predictive model like it's claimed to be. For instance it's often evoked in arguments about the alleged feminisation of western men in the present day, arguing that this supposed demasculinisation will bring about a collapse of our society just like it - again, supposedly - did for the Roman empire. Because weak men create bad times and so on and so on... Invoking SMCGT/GTCWM/WMCBT/BTCSM as a warning about how we should conduct our present-day society to avoid future calamity (the implication being that if we implement practices to maintain the masculinity/strength of men we can prolong the good times part of the cycle) only makes sense if the SMCGT argument reliably works as a cycle. Otherwise the threat is extremely pathetic. "We must prevent femininity in men otherwise bad times will happen soon. Or hundred years later. Or not at all. Or soon but then they'll create good men who will fix things. Or they won't and things will just suck forever. Or they will but the good times will only last a year before another hundred years of misery. So on the basis of this we should definitely upend our present attitudes towards gender norms and return to those values held at a times when the men were definitely strong (they were just trust me bro) as a consequence of living in bad times." This is also why I don't buy it when STCGM advocates claim it's just a meme or that they know it's not a perfect cycle or whatever, because it's usually brought up in contexts where it would only make sense if assumed to be useful as a predictive model for history.

[@amrojjeh]

​@@ThePhilologicalBell Yes that makes sense, and I think as you mentioned earlier, it's a fact that what one considers strong or weak is different from culture to culture and from time to time, and therefore one must be even more cautious when extrapolating what is strong/weak from past eras. Actually quite interesting that it was considered masculine for early Christians and Muslims for men to weep, for instance. It's also interesting that much of the economic certainty we've been experiencing in the US has not been due to strong or weak men. How could one, for instance, blame weak men for ignorantly investing into high reward high risk shares and eventually causing a market crash? If anything that's due to misinformation campaigns and manipulative rich guys looking to make more money. Far from weak, they're quite powerful in terms of political and economic influence. One could say the "weak" are still to blame as they fell for those campaigns, but do we now say strong men are educated men? That's quite the jump lol

[@vytah]

I think what (some) people mean when saying "music is a universal language" is that if one person expresses something musically, then another person will always be able to figure at least the vibes of what the first person wanted to convey. Which from what I've heard is not true, as a lot of this feel for music is culturally transmitted, so different cultures will interpret the same piece completely differently.

[@languagejones6784]

That's exactly right! The melodies and harmonies that evoke a sense of comfort and home for me might evoke foreboding for others. That's why I used the example of Ahava Raba, which has a minor second and minor third, and evokes the diminished scale -- for most Westerners, that scale is basically what my wife used to call "uh-oh music" when she was a child.

[@Aaron-xq6hv]

I agree with you, and I will go further that people who say this very rarely know much about music beyond western popular music of the 20th century. Even if we stick to the west, the way we perceive certain things in music is different than someone 200 years ago. Something like the Tristan chord may be a good example, a very big deal at the time that most people hearing it now wouldn't even think twice about. And going back to the Baroque period, it's not uncommon to hear music in minor keys that don't sound "sad" to us.

[@thescowlingschnauzer]

​@Aaron-xq6hv I will go further further to say that western cinema has actually encoded a very specific kind of Bulgarian women's vocal music as "alien". So when Westerners hear things foreign to modern Western culture, such as the Ahava Raba, instead of thinking "This is different" the thought is "This is wrong." It's very limiting, which is helpful for brain processing...and damaging for society.

[@SiKedek]

Yeah, I can easily provide a counterargument about someone from an outside culture understanding the "fundamental vibes" of a given melody. In Balinese music, there is a 4 or 5-toned gamelan ensemble known as angklung that has a "major" (in the Western classical sense) tonality feeling. However, and this is the big "well, actually...", the angklung is associated with funerary music, as it's the music most associated with cremations, the standard Balinese Hindu way of returning deceased humans to the earth. So, to most non-Balinese, angklung music sounds "happy", but for most Balinese, when they hear that music in a village context, they know that someone has died recently. This is further reinforced by the medium "kempur" which marks the main gong cycles, as this particular type of gong seems "out of tune" with the rest of the angklung ensemble. In fact, this dissonance is supposed to reflect intense crying and grief.

[@OlivierDALET]

​@@languagejones6784technically speaking, the minor third is rather an augmented second (or close enough if you take into account 'quarter-tones') and is what gives this oriental feeling to us westerners, especially in an ascending movement. After listening and trying to play a lot of klezmer and/balkan music, I came to not automatically associate this mode with sadness, but still, even in the most entertaining of, say, Bulgars or freilakhs, I can't help but feel melancholy at times... On the other side, the main mode of doinas and some horas (the augmented second is one note upper on the scale) always evokes much more 'minority' to me when technically both are equally similar to an occidental (descending) minor scale

[@mastoner20]

Master plumber with an expertise and over a decade in water treatment. People love to tell me how much better bottled water (Spring water) is over tap water. And I can only hold back a giggle and must resist the urge to tell them it's literally just dechlorinated town tap water for the majority of bottled water. Or a runner up is "just how awful Dasani is" when, as a general statement for most national brands, it's actually technically one of the best and most pure you can purchase on the market in America without getting into Distilled Water territory. (Also hi algorithm gods.)

[@atrumluminarium]

For musical languages, I think Yoruba takes the cake. It can be both whistled and drummed. Their traditional instrument is infact called the talking drum. Given how the drum works, I have a suspicion that it can very be easily be spoken through slap bass in a similar manner.

[@margedtrumper9325]

I'm a singer trained in Indian classical music and traditional art music in India is exactly taught like a native language. You are not taught rules but you have to repeat patterns, a teacher will tell you how to perfect it through example. You are taught by ear and orally and you are encouraged to make your own phrases based on that. There is a sort of grammar and syntax and you will imbibe it that way. You are not supposed to perform 'by heart' or reading, you have to make your own music... the output should be as natural as possible.

[@fiskfisk33]

You remind me a bit of Adam Neely, and now I learn you are both jazz musicians!

[@languagejones6784]

We never crossed paths because I walked away from music as vocation (instead of avocation) right around the time I think he was just getting to NYC. But I definitely appreciate his channel, and love seeing others have success with it!

[@catalystcomet]

You have a very unique and kind of calming way of speaking. I feel like I've heard it somewhere before but I want to say it also feels unique amongst everything here. It's a much more relaxed almost kind of a cool- the jazz makes sense. Honestly I was looking for a decent etymology channel, but I'm happy to be here. This comment is pretty much for the algorithm gods.

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you so much! I'm not sure how many people would agree that I'm calming, but I'm glad to hear that's the effect I have on you!

[@idoshulman6379]

​@@languagejones6784 Nah he's right (at least I agree with him)

[@thothrax5621]

I'm a chesemonger. It's my job to research, buy, study, sell, educate on, and probably more than anything else: taste cheese. Working in an industry that is so niche, and yet whose product is so ubiquitous, I've heard millions of opinions on cheese from people who walk through the front door of the shop I work in. Probably my favorite is "I don't like sheep cheese" To which my internal monologue is "Oh really? Or have you tried goat cheese, didn't like it, and then assumed that because goats and sheep kinda look similar their cheeses are the same? When in reality they are polar opposites." Every single time I've ever confronted someone on this and had them actually try a sheep milk cheese, I've been right.

[@WhatSmada]

maybe they just saying 'cheap cheese'

[@sasha-taylor]

as a jazz musician, I (also a jazz musician) thought you'd go deeper into the improvisational side of music. It's made up on the spot, but follows a set of rules one could compare to a grammar, and is often conversational with the other musicians of the band itself. Maybe you're holding off on that for its own separate video? love your content man! you're helping me keep going on my language-learning journey

[@krofp]

Same here. I have the same kind of interest in Music Theory as in Linguistics, which makes sense, because they are equivalent in their respective fields for all intents and purposes. My youtube recommendations are evenly split between The first thing he says in the body of the video is "Language is a combination of Vocabulary and Grammar" (2:00). The realm of Improvisation has its own form of both of those concepts. "Grammar" has a similar counterpart in music. Form, Motivic Development, Chord Progression, or really just melodic structure as a whole. "Vocabulary" has an exact counterpart in music, which describes a performer's fills, licks, quotes, articulations, scales, patterns, etc. which they can perform at any moment and discern from what they hear in their surroundings. When you mention how different cultures could interpret the same music to mean different emotions, that is the exact same thing as when speakers of different dialects of the same language use the same word differently. A "rubber" in some regions of the uk (and australia/nz probably) is what an american/canadian would call an "eraser". If you were in the middle of a jazz solo during a wedding gig, and you quoted 'The Lick', many people wouldn't understand the humor. If you told a joke in bulgarian at a comedy show in Sydney, many people ALSO would not understand the humor. To me, communicating through music is like communicating through very limited, very abstract poetry. You can express more complex emotions, but conveying specific detail that could be useful in a conversation is incredibly difficult. Communicating through music is possible to the extent of compressing a whole sentence or paragraph into one or two key words. Music has the same potential of communication as other forms of art, like illustration. (Maybe slightly more applicable because it is produced in real-time, like spoken word) When listening to a caster in professional sports, I can understand the energy of the match like I can with an ensemble pushing the tempo of a song faster and faster. TLDR: Music is significantly more of a "language" than Math or Science, but less of a "language" than French or Bengali. I'd put it in a ranking below Poetry and above Illustration.

[@Gilburrito]

Also, there's a study which found that piano improv lights up the same parts of the brain that improv rap (read: speaking language...) does. If I remember correctly, it was the parts of the brain that usually process spacial problem solving? Something along those lines. To my layman view, it makes sense. Both require you to place sound in temporal relation to past and future sounds. While also PRODUCING what sound you want to make rather than following a memorized sequence. I'd recommend looking up the study, there's even a video on KZbin covering it. Really cool stuff!

[@CourtneyAnneMcNally]

i’m an expert on drum set notation; i’ve written the only book on drum set notation this century (last one was 1998)-thoroughly researched, of course the most common is people will tell me there’s no standard for drum set notation, that hi hat and ride cymbal should be swapped, or other places, or that toms should be somewhere else, etc. two more recent have been regarding half notes (basically don’t use them! there’s so few exceptions!) and offbeat quarter notes (don’t write grooves with them, use 8ths/8th rests) also hi, fellow jazz musician! (and iirc you live in nyc too? not that there’s many other places you can do jazz full time)

[@t_ylr]

Reminds me of the opening line from Sir Duke " Music is a world within itself. With a language we all understand..." Which always makes me chuckle cause like sure, but i think Stevie Wonder is A LOT more fluent than the rest of us 😂

[@jjdevoe3321]

I have a degree in vocal performance. People always say “I can’t sing” or “some people just can’t sing”. And, Not. True. (except in the least helpful and most inane of technically correct ways). If you can hear the difference between a high pitch and a low pitch, and you are able to sustain a high pitch and a low pitch, you CAN learn to sing. Beautifully. It just takes time and an environment you are willing to practice in. Unfortunately lots of us live surrounded by people who like to tear us down. Even in my first semester of my voice degree, I had two girlfriends in a row that would stop me any time I started singing because I couldn’t “sing in tune” (I hate it when people say that it is almost always a very different problem than when an instrument like a piano is out of tune). Now, only five years later, I regularly get paid $60 an hour to sing. People who say you shouldn’t sing are wrong. And they should learn a lot more about how their voice works before they go telling people that they can’t do something our bodies are specially evolved to do.

[@sarahbailey6723]

So true. The same is true of drawing. If you can write using your hand, you have everything you need to draw. When I show people my art, and they are impressed, I try to point out that it's really just dots and lines and basic shapes (because that is all there is in what I'm showing them) and they don't believe me. Not seeing the trees for the forest, I guess. Sometimes they ask if I ever mess up and I say yes--in fact, I messed up multiple times in what I'm showing you. Messing up in art you are making for the fun of it is an illusion. My works are pattern-based, so "errors" just get repeated and become a piece of the new narrative. Usually, the best ones are the ones I've messed up because my "plan" would actually have been fairly dull if I had achieved robotic perfection.

[@67Dragonball]

My high school music teacher held the same sentiment. The vocal cords are an instrument of themselves that you have to hone with practice like any other instrument. I use to only like classical because it had no lyrics, but getting into rappers like Kendrick and Eminem really opened my eyes to how fun and stimulating it can be to write and have enticing lyrics which can convey great emotional range. Singing came second nature to me and while I won’t promote myself as a singer I can hold and guide myself between a tricky phrase or two. Since I would do voicing and hums while learning a piece on piano as well, pitch came naturally to me so I always tell someone it comes down to confidence in how you naturally sound (inner and outer voice and all that) and practice truly making perfect.

[@AJeziorski1967]

Fascinating stuff, coinciding in a bunch of different ways with things that have been on my mind these past few days. I had no idea that there were “whistled languages”, let alone that one of them was derived from Spanish … As it happens I just wrote a short essay for my on-line Spanish teacher this week where I argued that music WAS a language. I knew it was more complicated than that, but my Spanish isn’t sophisticated enough for that level of nuance and I have no expertise in linguistics, so … I guess I just went with my gut. But this is great, thanks!

[@Blyfh]

The way I understood it, it's not a "language" t at is derived from Spanish, it's just a different way of expressing language. Like writing is not a new language, just a different modality from speaking. Whistling would be another modality.

[@eosborne6495]

I think music as language is a useful metaphor, like in jazz when we talk about “bebop vocabulary” or “harmonic grammar.” Are those things actually vocabulary and grammar? No. But those concepts are difficult to express without mapping them onto linguistic terminology.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

Yes. Useful metaphor. But that's as far as the comparison really goes.

[@mckinnon42]

1:33 you are technically correct, the best kind of correct!

[@languagejones6784]

Exactly!

[@KAZVorpal]

Some animals are described as having language, because they can convey certain symbol specific meanings with certain sounds. Which sounds a lot like what you described with music, where you can convey certain moods or ideas. In this sense, it does not require grammar, just the communication of information in specific units.

[@jonschaller]

Holy cow. I’m a music teacher educator and my job is to teach people how to teach music. There is a lot of theory of music learning that is loosely tied to language learning theory. It’s obviously problematic but many will just go with it for sake of simplification. I was watching a video you did on universal grammar and Chomsky which triggered thoughts about music and language. This led me to talking to a retired linguist from my university two weeks ago and doing some research of my own to find critiques about music as a language. A few weeks later and here we are and you’re doing a simplified and helpful version of music as a language. Soooo grateful for this. Also everyone thinks they know how to teach and most teachers think they know how to teach other teachers. Teacher education is a doubly exasperating field of expertise.

[@Speechbound]

Loved the deep dive into music and language! 🤯 The whistle languages part blew my mind-so cool how sound and communication can intertwine like that!

[@sjm42]

I am not anywhere close to being an expert in/on/about anything at all, and I love being reminded of that by the breadth and depth of your videos. This one was a really fun and challenging ride, thank you. The bit on silbo gomero was bith the most challenging and the most fun. I also enjoyed the reminder of the fallibility of algorithms at the very end when "if you liked this video, youtube thinks you'll like this one based on your personal history" suggested the last video you uploaded before this one, which I'd already watched and "Like"d.

[@EdoFrenkel]

I am a composer and conductor. I was very interested to hear your take on this. I particularly enjoyed the discussion around formants.. For some time I have worked with various kinds of "clusters" or other techniques which I was often told "aren't pitched" but to me clearly were. In one case, I had to simultaneously play an electronic sound file that would match the sound the performer just to prove that yes, the notes do matter. Needless to say, it's been eye-opening to learn over time the way different people attune to sound and what those sounds are. Moreover, it's gratifying to know of the 80 or so languages that are designed around this way of listening.

[@michaelvcelentano]

1:00 I have a doctorate in music performance and…yeah…people like to tell me a lot about music

[@hglundahl]

A Danish composer, born on Fuen, Carl Nielsen, answered a resounding NO. He gave the example of a very dramatic "no" in an opera getting very dramatic music, and some would conclude the music was really expressing that no. He answered such that the same tones could have underscored an equally dramatic "yes" in another context.

[@catalystcomet]

I have no expertise

[@jonahl6447]

Same 😭

[@scaredyfish]

That just means you have potential

[@WhatSmada]

yet

[@josed.vargas3961]

​​@@scaredyfish bro just explained inexperience to an exoert on inexperience

[@JamesChangViolin]

As a fellow musician, I found this video to be amazingly insightful!

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you! I had fun digging into this stuff

[@chelseahelsinki]

Did not expect to hear about fourier transforms in a video about language haha

[@robetheridge6999]

I don't like the word expert, but I do have expertise in horticulture and landscape design. I'm living in Eastern Europe at a center where many hundreds of trees have been planted incorrectly. I have been trying to change the culture of planting trees way too deep so they can 'have stability' instead of using staking. The first time I was explaining what was wrong with the way plants had been planted there, one friend said, "Well, maybe that's the American way." It's actually just the whole world way. Ok, now that I did your homework, I now have Blink 182 - All the Small Things - in my head because of your thumb nail. I know it's na na na, but when I saw the thumbnail, that popped into my head.

[@yossarian4047]

I'm working on my PhD in psychology. A lot of people seem to think they can get away with spouting whatever bs they want to claim by just saying "Psychology says..." and then not actually providing any citations.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

Sure. That happens in a lot of fields. But we need to be about to accept that the general public - including our many former undergraduate students - aren't going to have citations engraved in their neurons for instant recall on demand. Let's keep the focus on those who spread misinformation and not lump them together with people who have an undergraduate level of knowledge of a subject and are doing their best.

[@NengNow]

I speak a musical speech surrogate language! I'm somewhat of an expert on it and people always try to educate me :P

[@andremachadolinguistica]

I think part of the confusion comes from the fact that, unlike some languages, English doesn't really have a lexical distinction between "natural human language" (such as English and Arabic) and "language in a broader sense" (such as music, painting and so on). We do have it in Portuguese (and I believe in Spanish and other romance languages too) and it makes it somewhat easier, as we can say that music is a "linguagem", but not a "língua". On an unrelated note, I'm always bemused, if not always amused, at lay people who come to me and say confidently how they can't "really" speak their own native language, which sounds ludicrous for a linguist. Brilliant video, doc!

[@kierstynsharrow1266]

You used "stuff" and "things" to assist in your explanation!!! 👏👏👏YAY!

[@off_key88]

The only aspect of "Music is a Language" I can clearly agree with is that it has "the ability" to convey emotion. As you went over, that can vary greatly depending on your culture, upbringing, etc. As a musician, my favorite phrase is "Music is the language of the soul". But, it's really just fun to say. "Playing what I feel" while improv'ing at the piano is fun to do, but the listener may not 'get' the same feeling as the consumer rather than creator of said music/language. Fascinating video, thank you for this!

[@languagejones6784]

@@off_key88 one of the areas I always think about here is swing and rhythmic feel more generally in jazz. The greater social distance from familiarity with English spoken by black Americans, the worse the rhythmic feel, in general.

[@redwithblackstripes]

@@languagejones6784i think indians are doing fine

[@cairneoleander8130]

I’m an expert on singing. Full professional background as a classically trained singer. The ignorant and blatantly incorrect things people say about it are just…seemingly endless.

[@PopLadd]

2:47 I feel like the best perk of being a legit professional in a field is that you can absolutely get away with talking like this and still being totally correct

[@rcseefeldt]

Fascinating as always, but the section on el silbo broke my brain. And not just the Broca’s, Wernicke’s and Hanka’s areas

[@CarlosAugustoScalassaraPrando]

I´m a composer and free improviser, my expertise is Experimental Music, I always answer this question, "Is music a language?", with: "It can be, but, in general, it is not a language. Because what is the meaning (or definition) of the term language that you are refering? Some music can be understand that way, but not all music." Normally my short answer is: "No, and yes."

[@PopeKingJoe]

This was such an interesting video. Good stuff man. Looking forward to more from you. :)

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

[@HubrisInc]

7:00 i'd also suggest Farya Faraji, he has a ton of expertise in both middle-eastern and western music theory and performance

[@LeeCarlson]

I love hearing what you have to say about anything having to do with language.

[@languagejones6784]

Thank you!

[@KAZVorpal]

Western tonal music is specifically considered a sort of language. In the sense that it is a form of internally consistent encoding of information for delivery to other people.

[@chris5706]

Absolutely fascinating thank you

[@jasonremy1627]

0:48 I've been an educator for almost a quarter century. I could write volumes about people who know nothing about my job trying to tell me how to do my job. Most of them are my bosses.

[@elainebelzDetroit]

This is a fantastic video. I appreciate the idea behind calling music a language, but I've always had the same questions about music not being able to communicate specific information, or about how music is so different in different cultures (although that can be mitigated by pointing to different cultures using language differently in the first place). So I've always thought of it more as a metaphor. This video gave me more to think about on the subject, & I'll revisit it, I'm sure. As for what I'm an expert in? Well, my PhD was really interdisciplinary, so I rarely feel like an expert in anything, but I know a fair amount about Detroit history, & in particular about its boom & decline in the 20th century. People (especially when I was in San Francisco) like to give me their version which usually is something like "Democrats run it" or like a guy in SF said, "We're smart enough to have more than one industrty." Uh huh, with logic like that, "smart" might not be a word you want to just throw around, sir. Also, I'm a theologian. I get a whole lot of, "Yeah, don't you think religion is a scam?" type comments - in school, I got those on the bus when people would ask what I was reading & I'd show them, & I get it now mostly on social media but sometimes in person. People seem to really think I'm going to agree with them that there's no point to my academic discipline.

[@sherrrainbow]

I am learning fundamental and applied linguistics at uni and music at home, so happy to find out that you're also a musician haha, love ur stuff

[@batya7]

Your topics always interest me, on schedule or off!

[@linuslauterbach2975]

I would LOVE a video that dives deeper into whistled languages!

[@tommyhuffman7499]

Very much appreciated the answer to this question.

[@davidintokyo]

You've heard this one, I;'d think... What, is this thing called love? What is this thing, called love? What is this thing called, love? As a past expert on AI (passed the quals and dropped out), people would tell me that the current round of AI isn't the complete dead end it actually is if they knew I thought that. But I introduce myself as a retired translator.

[@stramashbeatbox2798]

Fascinating!

[@shalvahmbmacdonald8487]

Love this. Keep posting.

[@Red1Revival]

all your content slaps well done Dr J

[@hazelgene7613]

Guitar teacher, and Spanish student (for fun!). Guilty of saying music is a language. There are notable similarities that are useful when teaching music, for example, the way we interpret sounds by a combination of harmony, rhythm and dynamic, you can do the same when speaking a phrase to make it sound very different, or even impossible to understand.

[@hip_af]

I’ve seen a few of your videos before, and how am i not surprised you been around the block😅 bro is hip!

[@tedc9682]

I am an expert on how computer programs work: AI, chess-playing programs, the "Y2K bug", and so on. I often hear laymen talk about computers thinking. A computer can think as much as a pencil and paper can think. Humans use both to store ideas. "Artificial Intellgence" is "fake intelligence": it is imitating intelligent actions using other methods (such as very fast computers).

[@djb903]

Yes please do a full video about whistling Spanish!! So interesting

[@pasqualetto_bass]

Very interesting video, thanks!

[@Demurralable]

"I'm laugh I sorried" with the motorcycles in the forest.

[@RMS_Azad]

🎶 I'm working late 'cause I'm a linguist 🎶

[@miniman6565]

Jewish musician here and I definitely appreciate you bringing up your examples about our cultural connotations with “minor” tonalities. Also wanted to share an idea that I’ve found fascinating since exposed to it. Music may not be a language, but music theory is. Not in the sense that it can be used particularly broadly, but that it exists to help allow musicians to quickly communicate complex ideas as quickly as possible to one another. Obviously this is closer to technical vocabulary or jargon, but I’ve always found it interesting. All the more so due to the relative lack of English words to describe sound without equating it to another sense. And on that note as my area of somewhat expertise as an audio engineer, don’t get me started on people trying to tell me about “analog” and “warm” sounds

[@toasty9670]

im a big fan of the victor wooten (idk if it started with him but he’s where i heard it) that music and particularly jazz and improvisation are learned like natural language, through listening to those more experienced than you, repeating what they say, and stringing together your own sentences starting with babbling . also music language moment one time John McWhorter told me that the double bass (which i play) all like instruments that can change the lowest note in a chord and thus often it’s function is an analogy for grammaticalization where functions change of lexical words

[@danmurray2210]

Speaking of Silbo Gomero, there's probably an interesting rabbit hole that someone could go down to investigate whether there's any connection between it and the "talking guitar" trick that some old blues musicians used to do. Now, I don't mean talk boxes, I mean bending strings or using a slide to imitate speech like all that whistling they do in the Canary Islands. Maybe they just figured out how to do it as a neat trick, or maybe all the speakers of Isleno Spanish in Louisiana who were descended from people who came over from the Canary Islands brought the idea with them. After all, an awful lot of cowboy music and what became country was borrowed from the Cajuns, so who knows?

[@renatomotta2252]

Never thought I would hear about time-frequency domain transforms on a video about linguistics. I mean, I hoped I would, but didn't think it would materialize.

[@zoeolsson5683]

My take on music is that it serves many of the features of spoken language.... Consider some of music's abilities to connect people emotionally, to create a shared social construct, to display identity, to regulate emotions. When words fail music does speak .... Think of the Germans and allies singing the same christmas carole in different languages on the battlefields.

[@cadr003]

awooga, indeed.

[@SiKedek]

You should seriously consider Balinese gamelan pedagogy, as there are *two* complex solfege systems, one from the melodic side, and the other from drumming solfege - and musicians rattle off long stretches of these syllables to convey either a tonal or rhythmic melody. Furthermore, the melodic solfege, known as "ding-dong-deng-dung-dang", can be affixed with an actor-trigger verbal prefix N-, resulting in "ning-nong-neng-nung-nang", which basically means 'play "ding-dong-deng-dung-dang"'.

[@sjoerdglaser2794]

I know a lot about social science research and statistics. People tell me both that all psychological research is obvious and that all research being done is wrong.

[@alokinrainborn]

I'm not an expert on anything... More of a jack of all trades

[@ShanevsDCsniperr]

Leonard Bernstein gave an interesting (if highly ethnocentric and not especially academically rigorous) series of Harvard lectures attempting to bring then-recent Chomskyian ideas about deep structure to bear on analysis of "Western" "classical" music. They are not of any linguistic value I'm sure, but highly enjoyable and for a musician, a fun and creativity-inspiring train of thought to follow. The series was titled "The Unanswered Question" in reference to the Ives piece of the same name.

[@JayFolipurba]

I'm currently failing at creating a naturalistic sung language, so this video helps a little. My main problems were getting consonants to be audible and distinguishable, as well as the grammar being agglutinative. For the consonants, I made a list of those that I could distinguish well in gregorian, orthodox and other religious chants. For the grammar I took inspiration from Turkish, Finnish and others. But now my problem is consistency! I can't reliably distinguish how much higher or lower a note is from the base tone, neither when singing nor when listening to words. Very frustrating

[@Salsmachev]

I studied history, and I get a lot of "those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it", "I love World War Two" (wtf?) and something or other about ancient Rome. When I try to explain that history isn't really about collecting facts and is more about a toolbox or framework for interpreting sources and creating meanings they look at me like I'm speaking Turkish (even when I'm NOT speaking Turkish)

[@ssolomon999]

On further reflection, would it be fair to say “Jazz” is a domain specific language that enables Jazz “speakers” (i.e., musicians) to have conversations about jazz, while “English” is a general purpose language that enables English speakers (or signers, or writers) to have conversations about anything?

[@veggiehamb8666]

No, theory allows musicians to have conversations about jazz.

[@poozlius]

My keyboard doesn't support whistles .. but here's my algorithm-boosting comment, regardless 🙂

[@mybachhertzbaud3074]

Speaks to me. Especially the works of Debussy.😁🎶🎹🎶Play on

[@deadman746]

This is very good, giood enough for me to put on my computational cognitive linguist hat to muddy the waters. Asking whether music _is_ a language is like asking whether I am actually wearing a hat or muddying waters. Language uses what CL types call _metaphor,_ which is deep in cognition, so the term _metaphor_ is a metaphor of what it is. The Chomsky hierarchy describes _formal_ grammars. Music is only a Chomsky 4 grammar in the sense that all computation, including all mathis equivalent to a Chomsky 4 grammar.So is language. The lower levels , refgular expressions, CFGs, and CSGs, are sometimes useful but only as gross generalizations of actual language. I baldly assert that trying to explain all or most grammar by transformations was always a pipe dream and has failed miserably, except as a coarse generator of diversity in Broca's area. but Wernicke's area doesn't know about it and only tests hypotheses using the arcuate fasciculus as an interface. Wernicke's area is close enough o auditory processing I don't think it's totally different, and there is likely some overlap. Back in the day, there was a pipe dream called the Universal Modelling Language, or maybe it was Uniform. I don't remember, because everyone seems to have decided it was more trouble than it was worth. It's a set of formal rules for drawing pictures. Many argued it wasn't a language because it wasn't experienced sequentially. I agree. At least music doesn't have that problem. Music is highly parallel, a partially ordered graph rather than a linear sequence, but so is language. Your "I like linguistics more than most people" is an example of how two parallel parsings produce two conflicting meanings, but there are cases where multiple parsings produce a consistent set of meanings. Consider the strange there-construct, "There's a man been shot." See Lakoff's analysis calling it the _strange existential,_ but Lakoff is wrong. It works because _there's_ is simultaneously _there is_ and _there has,_ and each is used to conform with different parts of the utterance. Thus, the impression is that it has higher grammaticality than either _there is a man been shot_ or _there has a man been shot._ The same is true of music. Consider the Scissor Sisters' version of _Comfortably Numb,_ which transforms a song about opiate addiction into a journey through the Jungian subconscious, in a way quote like how Shakespeare can be interpreted in different ways without changing a word.

[@Schwarzenpooh]

I'd say that music is not a language per se, but still a great communication device in a sense of bringing people together through a collective act. An orgy of sorts :)

[@SamothIorio]

We need a video collab with languagejones and Adam Neely I teach English as a foreign language. Of course people have strong opinions about teaching, learning, education, school, and particularly how much they either hated or loved English at school and/or how important motivation is. The issue is that apart from some fundamentals of applied linguistics and language acquisition, a lot of what happens in schools is very specific to that environment, and it is frowned upon for teachers to comment on what other teachers do, as this is often the result of contextual factors. Oh, and students often just can't believe and won't accept the things you teach. I've felt this myself while learning many different languages. Sometimes a concept is hard to understand, and sometimes it is just baffling and hard to accept. What do you mean there are languages with more than five vowels? Literally I had a student tell me the other day "well yeah, but vowel sounds can't just disappear, and all dialects of Spanish have five vowels". We did not have enough class time nor study material to explore that any further, so she had to take my word for it, and believe me that she didn't. So yeah, language learning is sometimes outrageous. Someone should make a video on that!

[@vib80]

Solresol is a conlang with only 7 syllables which are those from the solfege scale (as the name sol-re-sol suggests). Any ordered group of 7 things can be used to express it though... playing the notes on an instrument or using the colours of the rainbow. But to do that wouldn't really be music... but you can embed messages in music with this.

[@pranavnair2616]

I've learnt a lot of Punjabi by listening to their songs, memorising the lyrics and also looking up on the internet on what the songs actually mean. Some of them are pretty cheap and vulgar, but I do it to get a hang of the language. It has worked a lot for me.

[@Aaron-xq6hv]

I see Betteridge's law of headlines is in full effect here.

[@MarlonOwnsYourCake]

I'm not an expert on reggae (i never even listen to it voluntarily) but i do have dreadlocks so people talk at me about it a lot like it's my favorite thing and they just know I'll be impressed, if that counts.

[@KalebPeters99]

my best guess is that language is better described as a kind of complex and precise music, not the other way around i think we learned music first, and then *exapted* it into the language areas of the brain there are real differences ofc, but when you get into both the physics of formant production, and the social construction of associated meanings, then I think the main differences between singing the imperial march and saying "darth vader" are ones of degree, not kind

[@RobespierreThePoof]

Maybe. But it's probably more concrete to speak first about pattern recognition in the human mind. We are really good at it. We rely on it. And without it, creating both language and music would never have happened in the Upper Paleolithic. Evidence for music in the upper paleolithic is moderate to weak but percussive rock gongs have been found in southern Africa. That's enough to convince me.

[@icelaenl]

Chemistry! And that “it sucks” and “it made me cry in med school” :’)

[@newcreation1cor517]

The thing about linguists at the beginning is way too true 😂 I love studying linguistics, but since I am definitely in the applied linguistics group, I really enjoy actually using my language knowledge. People think I'm extroverted as soon as they get me talking about other languages and cultures (or in other languages about various cultures... ) But, even then I get worn out and want to go home, curl up in a ball, and do one of the following: work on my Chinese flashcards, attempt to read that one novel in Spanish again, watch a Chinese TV show, start reading a Chinese book with my Chinese dictionary at hand, listen to deep poetic Chinese music (or Spanish), go back to working on biblical Hebrew/Greek... And I could go on. My work involves languages, but I still need to follow a schedule and interact with people almost every day. 😢 Can't it be two or three times a week for like an hour or two?? I have yet to find that, but we'll see 😂

[@kattkatt744]

3:09 Both? Both? Both. Both is good!

[@dstinnettmusic]

Language in the sense of conveying information that can be understood later? Sure. That is the entire point of writing music down vs just noodling over scales I have memorized but don’t have names for the notes that was learned from plucking around the pentatonic for 15+ years. In the sense that it can convey _any_ information in the same way written language can? No…at least not currently because nobody has agreed to assign shared meaning to musical tones.

[@nickstu2355]

I am an expert in robotics but no one tells me their theories on robotics, I would love if they did to be honest

[@mrflipmrflip]

Would you consider tossing some links to papers or another jumping off point in the description for videos. I want to know more about the whistled language but am busy guessing at the spelling, and it also helps bolster credibility

[@melgross122]

😢 that is exactly what i mean when i ask that question

[@GrizikYugno-ku2zs]

I've some good ones. I'm a retired cannabis grower. The amount of pothead dude-bros who can only talk about how they wish they were still in college would really, really try to change my mind on such things as: 1. soil is better than hydro (there are relevant arguments for this, but "because its nyaaaaaaaaachrulllllllll myyyaaaaaaaaannnn" and "WHAT YOU PUT CHEMICALS IN IT?" are insultingly ignorant to even bring up to a professional.) 2. "All you NEED is a seed, a pot, some dirt (dirt it neither soil nor a suitable hydroponic medium, so right there - no), some water, and a light bulb (they would refer to the ones that light up, say, a closet." Yes, I'm so incompetent and lazy that what I dedicated many years of my life to progress at is something any idiot can do. Not to mention, it would blow my mind these people would think it's so fast and easy and yet spend so much money buying it. 3. Most people would ask me how many leaves it takes to get high. PEOPLE HOW CAN YOU BE SO STUPID? YOU LITERALLY BUY FLOWERS (technically not flowers, but this rabbit hole is deep enough) AND CALL IT FLOWER AND BUD YET ASK ME HoW mAnY lEaVeS?!?!?!? That would always give me a seizure, like, how disrespectful can you be to argue with an active practicing professional when you DONT EVEN THINK ENOUGH ABOUT ANY PLANTS AT ALL SUCH THAT THE 3 TYPES OF PHYSICAL FORMATIONS OF PLANT MATERIAL WHICH EXISTS ABOVE GROUND IS SOMETHING YOU ARE OBLIVIOUS TO??? If anyone reading this can't tell the difference between A LEAF, stem, and a bud then I feel very bad for you. Plants are the most fascinating thing in existence. Their asymmetrical symmetry creates beauty and wonder for which there are no words to describe. Especially when you learn that the rootzone is where all the real action happens.

[@ramonido]

Oh this is so interesting!

[@qwqeqrqtqz]

It is interesting to hear you say, that music and language are processed by different parts of the brain, because for me it is almost impossible to answer a question with something more complicated than yes or no while playing piano, but I don't have any trouble doing that while drawing