When Does Speech Become Music?
CrowdScience
BBC
4.8 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Most of us instinctively know when someone’s singing and when they’re talking. But since music and speech are both just sounds, how do our brains tell them apart? This week’s question comes from Eugene, a music teacher in Northern Ireland, who often hears music in people’s speech, and wonders why.
Step forward, the ‘speech-to-song illusion’. This curious phenomenon means that when certain spoken phrases are repeated, they turn into music as if by magic. We talk to the Diana Deutsch, the scientist who discovered this illusion, and find out what it reveals about how the brain is adapted to understand both music and speech.
But are some languages more musical than others? Many people around the world speak tone languages, where the pitch of a word affects its meaning. One such language is Dinka, spoken in South Sudan; we meet a Dinka speaker and hear how respecting the melody of the language is essential when writing songs.
Presenter: Datshiane Navanayagam Producer: Cathy Edwards
Dinka recordings courtesy of Elizabeth Achol and Anyang Malual
(Photo:Young woman listening to music on yellow headphones. Credit Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.5 | Let me just check this first. There we go. |
| 0:34.0 | So he said, this is today. |
| 0:38.0 | Have you ever been struck by someone speaking in a really musical way? |
| 0:45.0 | Or listen to a phrase so many times it seemed to somehow transform in your mind? |
| 0:51.0 | Crowd science listener Eugene Dunphy certainly has. Back in 2007 on a |
| 0:57.3 | historic day for his native Northern Ireland he was listening to politicians |
| 1:01.9 | making speeches about a new era of peace. |
| 1:05.0 | That was yesterday, generations this is today. |
| 1:09.0 | He heard the music in their voices so strongly that he made it into a song. |
| 1:15.0 | It was a momentous day, so I remember recording that and I watched it taking little notes of |
| 1:21.2 | key phrases. |
| 1:22.2 | This and future generations. taking little phrases. I've |
| 1:25.0 | I notated musically what they were speaking |
| 1:28.0 | and then put all the little phrases |
| 1:30.0 | onto a musical track. |
... |
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