(upbeat electronic music)
(piano tinkling)
- Wait.
(piano music)
Wait.
(piano music)
- Okay, thank you.
- Wait.
- Thank you. - Wait.
- [Professor] Thank you, thank you.
- [Piano Player] Wait.
- Thank you, thank you.
(dissonant piano music)
(clapping)
- Yeah, you did a thing.
- Thanks, it's just a work in progress,
but I think it's pretty good.
- I thought it was great.
It was so much better than I've ever seen Professor Rich do.
You just threw a cymbal at me.
- It's a fucking tambourine, okay?
So, as we're talking about music today,
who can tell me where music comes from?
(laughing)
Oh, well, well, well, well.
If it isn't the two late guys.
I would've come up with something funnier
if I had more time.
- We were at Professor Leafminder's class.
That guy's amazing.
You know he speaks forty different
Native American languages?
Yeah and he lets us go into his sweat lodge.
- Oh, you mean a sauna and anybody can make up languages.
(speaks gibberish)
That's a language.
Anyway, let's get back to music, okay?
So, who can tell me where music comes from?
- Professor Leafminder plays 23 instruments.
- Yeah and he's got this eagle's claw in his man bag.
- Oh wow, I didn't know that.
He's the greatest guy ever.
I'm gonna go over there right now and suck his balls.
Yeah, he's the greatest!
- Check please.
- I'm Professor Rich, expert in science.
These are my devoted students.
Together, with the aid of harmless drugs,
we explore science's greatest hypothetical questions.
(upbeat electronic music)
What if music dictates evolution, underline.
What does that mean?
Is there music which actually dictates
how we adapt and survive?
For example, what if the prevalence of baroque music
made us more smart
or rap music brought about more violence?
What do you think?
(sighs)
(mystical music)
What's this, a bird?
Native American Studies: Your Kick Ass Spirit Guide
by Prof. Carmen Leafminder.
(sighs)
Son of a bitch.
(drumming)
- Let us be one with coyote and roam the earth
on our paws.
(chanting)
(howling)
- Coyote!
(chanting)
- What a dick.
I had to examine the roots of music
with an expert who knew his shit.
How does the brain affect music?
I mean, you know, the music affect brain?
How does music affect the brain?
You know what I mean.
- Uh, wow, okay.
Your ear, of course, basically filters out
a bunch of vibrations and produces a series of,
I guess, neuron, you know, impulses.
- Right, like that song, I'm Picking Up Good Vibrations.
- Yeah.
- What kind of behavioral aspects does certain types
of music have?
- Well, I think at a very primal level
music with a steady beat, a regular steady beat,
there's a phenomenon that, yes, like that.
There's a phenomenon where we are, it appears,
predisposed to get in sync with a regular beat.
You can think back to, you know, working on the railroad,
right, you know.
- [Together] I've been working on the railroad.
- Right.
- All the live long day.
I've been working on the railroad
just to pass the time away.
Can't you hear the whistle blowing.
That one.
- Right, it's a song you sang while you were
working on the railroad.
What you were doing was hammering spikes in
and it needed to be done rhythmically.
- So, if you're saying that that primordial beat
caused us to work and sort of dictates our behavior,
would you say that music actually dictates our evolution?
- Oh, I don't know.
I mean, most of the hypotheses go the other way.
Music is what you might call auditory cheesecake.
We need food to survive, but nobody needs cheesecake
to survive.
- Perhaps music is cheese.
- Just cheese?
- We all need a slice of cheese.
I know I do before I go to bed
with a cheese.
(upbeat electronic music)
(mystical music)
- Sitting Bull turned to the great skies
and said, "Give me a home where the buffalo roam."
It is the call of the ancient Sioux
when we ruled the earth and played in the grass.
When we were just two.
(breathes deeply)
(chanting)
- Bullshit.
- Who said that?
- I did.
(gasps)
- Professor, this isn't your class.
This is a different class.
I'm sorry noble one.
- I'll have you know I am 1/75th Chippewa.
So, let's dance the dance of the buffalo.
Tatonka, tatonka!
- [Group] Tatonka, tatonka, tatonka.
- That's from Dances with Wolves.
- [Group] Tatonka, tatonka, tatonka, tatonka,
tatonka, tatonka, tatonka, tatonka.
(creepy music)
- He's fine.
Just a few scratches.
- No, he's dead.
- Hey, did you see Empire last night?
(guitar rock music)
- Now, first of all, I want to congratulate you
on being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
- Thank you.
- When you look at Deep Purple now,
do you feel that music has changed considerably?
- I think, technically, it's changed from, you know,
let's just, for instance, take--
- Nickleback.
- Look at those chaps.
How good have they done?
- So, would you say in many respects
that music dictates evolution?
- It won't change evolution, but I think
it definitely has some purpose.
Glad to be a part of that.
For me, I was playing trombone, nine and 10 years old.
I came home--
- Short pants.
- Short pants, black and white TV in the corner of the room,
turn the TV on and I saw four little chaps from Liverpool.
And I got the trombone out--
- Herman's Hermits.
- They're playing guitars and I've got the trombone
and I'm going, what if I held it down here?
And that moment, unknowingly for me,
that was the moment that the switch went on.
- This is even more special
because you turned a trombone into a guitar
and that's magic.
(upbeat electronic music)
- I can't believe he's really gone.
- I was gonna have his baby.
- Guys, I'm really.
What?
Guys, I'm really sorry about this.
I guess if I were to put it into a teaching moment,
I'd say, music dictated his evolution
and he didn't survive.
(electronic music)
- Professor, while you were undergoing
psychiatric evaluation, the class got together
and made this music video.
- It sorta just says how we feel.
- That's great.
Let's have a look.
Shall we?
♪ Fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fuck is music
♪ What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck is music
♪ What the fuck is music
♪ Note notes notes notes notes notes notes
♪ A B F G B D flat
♪ Peanut butter jelly
♪ Peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly
♪ Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat
♪ Peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly
♪ Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat
♪ Peanut butter jelly peanut butter jelly
♪ Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat
- Wow, that sucked.
Bye for now.
(upbeat electronic music)
(rhythmic tapping)