Thoughts from the Adele NBC Special

1)  Adele's audience can sing!  I don't know if the soundtrack for the TV special was enhanced, but when they sang along, the audience sounded like a choir.  They had internalized nuances of pitch, tone, timbre and inflection and reproduced them with stunning cohesion.  Remember, this was an unrehearsed, unconducted performance.  The human mind has an amazing ability to record and reproduce music.  And this ability is very normal and common.  Adele's audience was not a trained choir.  They were just a group of music lovers who were able to get tickets to the show.

2)  I'm always looking for music that unites, rather than divides.  While my wife and I were watching the show she commented that "Everybody likes Adele."  While I know that this is not completely true, it is true enough.  The interesting part is that, at least in our household, Adele's appeal is multigenerational.  My wife, daughter, and granddaughter all like it.  It does not, however, appeal to both genders equally.  Neither I nor my sons are big fans.

How is the "Everybody likes Adele" affect achieved.  The Wall Street journal published an interesting article on the formula for producing music with emotional appeal.  There are several techniques including appogiaturas, harmonic tension and release, and controlling expectation and surprise.

"When the music suddenly breaks from its expected pattern, our sympathetic nervous system goes on high alert; our hearts race and we start to sweat. Depending on the context, we interpret this state of arousal as positive or negative, happy or sad.emotionally intense music releases dopamine in the pleasure and reward centers of the brain, similar to the effects of food, sex and drugs. This makes us feel good and motivates us to repeat the behavior.

Measuring listeners' responses, Dr. Zatorre's team found that the number of goose bumps observed correlated with the amount of dopamine released, even when the music was extremely sad. The results suggest that the more emotions a song provokes—whether depressing or uplifting—the more we crave the song."

To read the article click here.