Shayne Kelly
Professor Wielgos
College Writing II
15 February 2014
The
Beauty of Sound
The
title prompts a question that could be answered in a plethora of ways, so why
music? Music has been procedure of recreation and life since the dawn of time.
Whether it be just listening to it, playing it or even finding a mate with your
song, music finds a way to sneak into our lives. The Economist writes this article to shed some light on the reason
why music isn’t just an object. Music is a process that fuels life. This
appetite must be fueled by as the article states “singing on”. The argument The Economist is attempting to present that
music is just more than noise, it gives living organisms emotion, and it fuels
an extreme number of processes that make life livable.
The Economist
is geared toward highly educated readers and is published by Pearson: a company
that makes many textbooks we use for school. The audience could go even farther
than that. The average person will listen to thirty-thousand songs in a given
year, and that adds up when the average human is about seventy years. Humans
will hear more songs than that, because of nature. For instance: Birds chirping
on a nice spring day, or even mating calls by many other species. The article
also ties to many social and physical sciences such as psychology, and biology.
The article could spike many interests in the reader by just reading the first
line; a Shakespearean quote: “If music be the food of love, play on, give me
excess of it”. The intended audience could be determined as anyone who has a
strong or weak connection to music and enjoys other topics of research. Along
with finding a distinct audience, there are strategies to convince the intended
and other audiences to see the side to see the writer’s point of view.
The incredible use of ethos in the article is sure to
convince the reader to approve this article. The article is crawling with
doctors of various professions. Such as, Dr. Geoffrey Miller of the University
of New Mexico who revived Charles Darwin’s idea that music has a role in
survival and reproduction. As well as, Dr. Robin Dunbar of Oxford University
who believes music has gone on to be socially beneficial but has evolved into
being sexually beneficial. Both claims
by the respective doctors make an enormous statement. They show that music
isn’t just something that us as people sit down and listen to. It has more
value than that: it helps figure out whom our future mates will be, along with
deciding how we will react to one another. Music can also lead to the
manipulation of emotions, which is a common theme between Miller and Dunbar. The
article also uses Dr. Steven Pinker and Dr. Aniruddh Patel to generate logos
with figurative examples.
Dr. Steven Pinker makes a fascinating comparison about
music: “music is like an auditory cheesecake”. The writer of the article gives
a brief, but well-rounded explanation of what that exactly means:
Dr.
Pinker's point is that, like real cheesecake, music sates an appetite that
nature cannot. Human appetites
for food evolved at a time when the sugar and fat which are the main
ingredients of cheesecake were scarce. In the past, no one would ever have
found enough of either of these energy-rich foods to become obese, so a strong
desire to eat them evolved, together with little limit beyond a full stomach to
stop people eating too much(“Why Music?”).
Using this figurative
comparison of music to a cheesecake gives some insight on what music actually
does. This appetite is beyond biological need, but it has become a necessity to
quench it. It requires the brain to turn
sound into meaning. Singing is described as an auditory masturbation to settle
the craving. This explains Dunbar’s statement on how music is sexually
beneficial. Dr. Patel on the other hand compares music to writing. He explains
reading and writing must be taught by specialists at a critical time in a
person’s life. He refers to this as a “transformative technology” because both
will transform a life. Patel reasons learning music is somewhere between
learning to read or write. This leads him to believe music just like reading
and writing is a “transformative technology”. This ties back to Dr. Miller and
favors his opinion about music and it being a part of natural selection. The
ethos assists the logos because all four doctor’s ideas tie together. Small
appeals to emotion are made but can be crucial in deciding whether to believe
in this article or not!
An article isn’t needed to describe the felling music
gives an individual. According to the article, “Around 40% of the lyrics of
popular songs speak of romance, sexual relationships and sexual behavior” (“why
music?”). Almost half of the music anyone
will listen to deals with love: an emotion any person cherishes. The other 60%
could be a variety of other emotions or feelings. For instance: Know Hope, an album by The Color Morale
is about the struggles we find every day in believing in spiritual or personal
hope. Even the album title gives a neat portrayal on words. The Economist’s article gives us
reminder that we all react to music completely differently. It is up to the
listener or viewer to decide how they feel. The piece offers visual aid to go
with the textual piece.
The Economist
uses two illustrations to portray that music is a creative process. Just as it
writing a song, it requires a process. The illustrations depict very intricate designs
(see Fig. 1).
