How music rewires and impacts the human body | Michael Spitzer: Full Interview

A fellow student in college saw me in a parking area between classes. He was sitting in the back of a van, playing guitar. He asked if I played and I said yes. He said “you wanna be lab partners?” We ended up being chemistry graduates and started a lifelong friendship and musical journey. All retired now. The bond with him and the other musical folks we met was magical. Still is.

Music has literally saved my life. It has put my brain in a stasis bubble. The way I remember music helps me to stay sharp. What a blessing, to be able to talk as a human and make an awful sound, but also the ability to sing. Literally imitating the sounds you hear inside your head

Listening to music activates multiple parts of the brain at once — including memory, emotions, and focus. Music is more powerful than we realize.

Professor Spitzer’s point about music returning to participation is fascinating. For most of history, music was not locked inside professionals, labels or platforms. It belonged to ritual, memory, work, movement and shared human experience. That is why AI-generated music may be more historically significant than many people realise. It is not simply “machines making songs.” It may be technology reopening participation at scale, giving non-traditional creators access to sound, arrangement and production that once required expensive gatekeepers. As an experienced musician now using AI tools, I am exploring this through a new direction Timbaland called A-Pop, focused on using generative AI to create music, virtual personas, and visual content. The deeper question is not whether AI music is “real music.” The deeper question is whether music is entering another evolutionary phase, where human imagination, machine generation and listener identity start forming something genuinely new.

After 16 years of therapy failed to reduce my OCD from infant trauma - I used music - heavy metal - and began composing - Music is a non dangerous way to deal with horrifying panic - little by little - to morph the rage into beauty and soothing warmth - 30 years later - I am very fuctional - my life is my bliss - creating original music and videoizing them. I still weep when I compose and listen - and it still feels numinous....

I can't work anywhere where country music is played. Makes me sick and increases my stress level exponentially.

You couldn't have released this at a better time, about a month ago I watched the documentary from 2010 "My Music Brain" analyzing the brain while listening to and performing music. Then last week I listened to Startalk "scientists discuss music and the origins of language" with Niel Degrass Tyson. And now this!

Humans invented all the Fine Arts except music - music was discovered... it is a naturally occurring phenomena. I was composing a song on my acoustic guitar - so I would play a phrase - then stop pause - then refine the theme and try again - I would do this for hours . AS I was sitting in my living room with the door open - I noticed birds singing a short phrase - during my pause - then stopping as I played there next version of my phrase. I went outside, nearer the birds I could not see, and tested to if this was call and response with the birds. I had a conversation with these birds for about 20 minutes - then they left - I was paying more attention to the call and response - than to refining the theme toward more beauty - birds dont want chit-chat - they want authentic soul?

It is difficult to know where to begin when so many of the things he says are obviously incorrect. To begin with, science has known for quite a while that humans are not descended from apes but that both apes and humans descended from a common ancestor. Secondly, humans are innately musical and innately singers. Just as we are running machines and ideally suited to running we are singing machines and ideally suited to singing. Only in the western world in the 21st-century would someone come up with the idea that we are inferior musically in any way to any other creature on the planet. It is absurd on its face. Examine the Mozart queen of the night aria or the Samuel Barber violin concerto. Thirdly, to suggest that notation somehow freezes music into a cold and distant form is to forget that there is no way possible for improvisation to create the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, just to cite one example. A small group may improvise and create music in a simple and socially valuable way but there is no way that a large number of musicians, as in an orchestra plus chorus and soloists, could ever play music together of the highest caliber without notation. Even examples such as national anthems and Church congregational singing have notation that helps preserve and communicate them. One could go on but all of this to say, please do not take too much what he says seriously. Instead, don’t listen to those people that said you can’t sing. Sing anyway. It’s one of the things you’re uniquely suited to do as a human being.

Thanks!

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Tune your guitar to whatever frequency you want to.

This is way more than the title indicated. why wasn't the title the history of music, instead of something you don't talk about until the end of a one hour video?

Humanity proved mastery of music when Johann Pachelbel composed Canon in D in the 17th century.

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sounds like you're saying ledger. It is Lee_zJure (leisure)

Depression isnt an emotional disorder. It is your psyche healing itself and deepening your cup. So much music came to us via depression - and processing grief and rage turned inward instead of processed and expressed...

What an absolutely fascinating, informative, and wonderful presentation.

Dude, their is nothing more rhythmic then the clomping hoofs of a horse or zebra or the delicate tapping of an antelope. Fascinating subject and some interesting observations laced with complete speculation stated as fact.

20:00 that's actually the beauty of the bard on a ship... Someone completely useless to attack or defend the very safety they live in, but have the type of voice to boost morale and overall aptitude of the entire ship 😂😂😂