A conversation about what music means to us, and monkeys, with Dr. Charles (Chuck) Snowdon

This episode features distinguished primatologist Dr. Charles Snowdon, or Chuck Snowdon, as he’s maybe better known by.

Chuck is Hilldale Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and he’s widely known for his work on primate social development, communication and cognition. He ran the Snowdon Primate Center in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where so much was learned about the small Neotropical primates known as marmosets and tamarins. 

In the interview, we deep dive one specific topic that Chuck has worked on over the past couple of decades: musicality in nonhumans! 

Some of our topics of conversation include:

• the integration of art and science, STEAM, and collaborating with musicians
• how our appreciation of music evolves and affects our mood
• making music for monkeys... and why it matters
• and many more!

Here's a great quote from Chuck from a 2009 article published in the Guardian: “Why should a tamarin find our music comforting? I find the monkey music quite irritating.”

You can read the paper on which a lot of our conversation was based in an article published in the journal Biology Letters (Paywall). There's also more music for tamarins in the supplementary material of that article as well!

In the interview, Chuck also references Snowball, a cockatoo who became YouTube famous for its ability to dance to the beat of popular music. This bird was also the focal point of our conversation with Dr. John Iversen, another fascinating conversation I had when he visited Japan for the Japan Society for Animal Psychology conference back in 2014. He's the middle interview in The PrimateCast 22.

The PrimateCast is hosted and produced by Andrew MacIntosh. Artwork by Chris Martin. Music by Andre Goncalves. Credits by Kasia Majewski.

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Consider sending us an email or reaching out on social media to give us your thoughts on this and any other interview in the series. We're always happy to hear from you and hope to continue improving our podcast format based on your comments and suggestions.

A podcast from Kyoto University and CICASP.

Transcript

Andrew MacIntosh: 0:00

Thanks for tuning in to the Primate Cast. In just a moment, you'll hear an interview with Distinguished Primatologist, Dr. Charles Snowden, on what music means to monkeys Hello again. Welcome back to the Primate Cast. I'm your host, Andrew McIntosh from Kyoto University's Wildlife Research Center. This episode features Distinguished Primatologist, Dr. Charles Snowdon, or Chuck Snowden, as maybe he's better known by Chuck, is Hilldale Professor of Psychology Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin Madison. And he's widely known for his work on primate social development, communication, and cognition. He ran the Snowden Primate Center in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where so much was learned about small new Neotropical primates known as marmosets and tamarins. In the interview, we narrowed down on one specific topic that Chuck has worked on over the past couple of decades, and that's musicality in non-humans. Now. The interview was actually recorded on April 10th, 2018 when Chuck visited us at the Primate Research Institute and presented his work in our Ecology and behavior seminar. So it has been a while, but it was a really fun conversation then, and it remains one today, so it's a real pleasure to be able to share that with all of you. Uh, finally, the interview was also done with our very own Mike Huffman in the studio. So, uh, he goes way back with Chuck and pops up from time to time. During the conversation in the interview, we talk about how music invokes emotion in our lives with a little bit of, probably a little bit of oversharing, uh, by yours truly, and how he teamed up with cellist and composer David Ty, to look into how other primates like Tamarins respond emotionally and behaviorally to music. On the surface. That might sound a little odd, but it's interesting to note that a lot of animal caregivers actually play music or other sounds as a form of auditory enrichment for animals in their care. And Chuck even mentioned that this is pretty common for pet owners as well. And I should take, uh, an extra note here that David Ty went on to create some music for cats, but we're gonna leave that for another story. There's also some something known as the Mozart effect. We're playing Mozart to studying kids, or even listening ourselves when doing memorization tasks is supposed to somehow enhance skill development or memory retention check notes that the earlier studies of that were flawed and how important it is to actually understand not only whole pieces of music, but also how its components, some of which, um, would be shared across different genres affect us in different ways. So on that finding out using the scientific method what music animals actually like listening to probably has a lot of value. But even more than that, Chuck and his colleagues began creating music for the Tamarins themselves, uh, which he discusses as well in this interview. And we even do play a bit of it during the interview and get his commentary. So if you've ever wondered what music for monkeys might sound like you come to the right place. It's also funny that in an article published in The Guardian in 2009 after this, um, important study was published, Chuck is quoted as saying, Why should a tamarin find our music comforting? I find the monkey music quite irritating, and I think that's just a brilliant quote that leads to a lot of important questions. And it's also quite fascinating to think about why it is that we love music so much and how that love of music might have evolved over the years and what parts or components of it could be shared with other species as well. So I really think you're gonna enjoy this discussion. And on that note here is my interview with Dr. Chuck Snowdon. So when, when we, with as scientists, we often, well, we might not, but in the general pop, uh, population, people kind of separate the arts and science. science is quite, uh, deliberately and, and, you know, one doesn't necessarily funnel into the other, but here you come and you, you start tackling a topic such as music uh, and I guess trying to inject ideas from both perspectives. So, um, maybe you could start by just telling us like, what is music from your perspective here and how does that,

Chuck Snowdon: 4:30

I guess at the most basic level, music is a series of notes that are put together, um, that have some sort of meaning to somebody, um, trying to be as, as general as possible in terms of defining music. Um, what we, what I think we think of music is much more specific, uh, as, as human beings, we think of music in terms of specific genres. So we might listen to, someone might listen to enjoy classical music. Someone else might enjoy bluegrass, someone else might enjoy heavy, heavy metal. But in all the cases there is some instrument involved. It could be a voice, it could be an obo, it could be a, a bass guitar. Uh, but there's a series of notes that are produced, and those notes are, have some, some value. And part of what scientific approach to music is saying is what is that value? Can we determine that there's a real value to these strings of notes that are produced? And why do people do them? And what is what, what is the effect of these strings of notes that people produce? And, uh, and does it have an effect? And then my other interest as a biological scientist is what's, what's the genetic history of, of a phenomenon? And so I think music is a really interesting thing to think about. Phylogenetically, where does it come from? Is it uniquely human? Uh, we know from all the other studies, many of which are done here at PRI, that chimpanzees are capable of some amazing cognitive feats tool creation feat. So we never extreme, uh, non-human would be capable of doing so, should we think about artistic competence in, in much the same way instead of cognitive competence, Is there an artistic competence that we can find existing in other species? So that's what my goal has been in this type of work.

Andrew MacIntosh: 6:19

And so I, I mean, the study of music is maybe not something, uh, for you historically or that, that that started early on maybe in your scientific career. So how, can you just tell us maybe how that that came about and how you got involved in, in the study

Chuck Snowdon: 6:33

Of music? Sure. Um, I, I actually went to a, to a university that had a music conservatory. And so some of my close friends were, were musicians. And, uh, I got, I became interested in, in music through them and, uh, in a variety of different genres. I did music myself as a singer and a big chorus. So I've, I've done music. I, uh, enjoy listening to music now. It's a really important part of our lives to, listen to music and, um, support live music when I can. Um, so music has been important to me. So when this guy David Ty wrote me out of the blue saying, uh, I have these ideas about the emotional effects of music, I was really intrigued. And, uh, he said, I'd like to test him on your monkeys. I said, I was, I guess I was intellectually and emotionally prepared to accept this invitation and start a collaboration with him. it sounded really intriguing. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>,

Andrew MacIntosh: 7:30

Do you, can you give a bit of background on how he came to that, uh, idea to contacting you? Sure.

Chuck Snowdon: 7:34

He's, he's been thinking, he, he's um, he's a cellist for the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC in the United States. And, um, he's also a composer. He's written a couple of cello concerto. Um, and he just, and along the lines of thinking about music in general was puzzled himself about how does music affect people emotionally and why does it affect people emotionally? And he started doing some reading and thinking on his own and came up with some basic principles. Um, for example, we know that quick, rapid notes tend to be arousing. We know that long, slow notes tend to be calming and, and can and relaxing. Um, we know that rock music has a lot of dissonance in it, but, and people hypothesize that we we're creating states of fear and threat just for stimulating ourselves. uh, calming music tends to be harmonic. We don't, we don't want to play rock music. You don't wanna play rock music to your baby to put it to sleep at night. So we, we use music in very different ways and we use it to regulate our own emotional state. So if I'm, if I'm sleepy and I have to write a paper, I might, uh, put on some Mozart or something quick and, and perky to keep me awake and functioning. If I'm, uh, if I'm wanting to go to sleep, I might wanna put on something that's much that's very different. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So we, we all use music in our daily lives as, as a way to manipulate ourselves, I mean, manipulate our own emotional states. And so what are those features? What is it that we're looking for mm-hmm.<affirmative> and how does a composer create music in a way that has this emotional effect on us? So, so those are the questions he was interested in. And then I see he was thinking some and he thought he had some answers.

Andrew MacIntosh: 9:21

Okay. So before getting into that, just just to take a bit of attention here, uh, you mentioned that you sometimes listen to specific music to put you in mood for, for certain things. Have you, I mean, as a primatologist, have you talked to other primatologists to see if there are any, uh, variation in that? Just as a kind of anecdotal thing?

Chuck Snowdon: 9:37

I haven't actually, so I don't really know, Mike?

Andrew MacIntosh: 9:39

Yeah, I was gonna bring Mike into the conversation here.

Chuck Snowdon: 9:42

Do You listen to music to manufacture your moods?

Mike Huffman: 9:44

Sometimes I do. And, and what, what I'll often do if I, if I'm doing something, um, like entering data, what I don't really have to think so much, it's just the manual process. Then I'll listen to something that doesn't have a language that I'm familiar with. Yeah. Um, cuz when when I hear music and it's singing, if it's something in a language that I understand, then I get distracted, then I

Chuck Snowdon: 10:08

Yeah.

Mike Huffman: 10:09

Can't do something else at the same time,

Chuck Snowdon: 10:10

I, I, I would, I can't listen to vocal music and try to work. It has to be instrumental music. Right. So, vocal music is, is very distracting cuz I'm paying attention to, to the words. And, and I have a friend who's a composer, not, not the one I collaborated with, but another colleague at my university who's a composer who says he finds that he finds he can only listen to half of a concert because for him, the act of listening as a, as a musician and composer is so intense. Right. Okay. That he can't listen for more than about 20 minutes at a time before he gets completely exhausted. And I think we all listen in different ways and he would be appalled to find out that I'm, that I'm trying to work while I'm listening to music and he might be composing for me because that would be Sacrilege from his perspective. Right. So, Andrew, do you use music in your life?

Andrew MacIntosh: 11:02

Uh, a lot. Um, yeah. I don't know how much I want get into it.

Mike Huffman: 11:06

Before He came to Primatology, he was a rock star.

Andrew MacIntosh: 11:08

Yeah. Right. Budding or a non budding, I guess the reason I'm a primatologist is it didn't bud as much as... Okay. No, no, no. But, uh, yeah, music has always been a really important part of my life and, and interestingly, well, I dunno if it's interesting to anyone else but me, is that in terms of affecting emotional states, I, when I first started dating my wife, now some of, I had a, a recurring theme for gifts, uh, every once in a while, which was my own kind of musical, uh, uh, soundtrack starting from when I was in elementary school. So I would put together these years worth of soundtracks and it just from recollection but I remember the process of that was so powerful. You know, music has such an influence on us at different stages of our lives. Um, and I think she kind of got a kick out of it and, helped, I mean, maybe I like to believe it helped us connect a little bit based on that to give her a different perspective of my life before meeting her.

Chuck Snowdon: 11:58

So do the two of you share similar interest in music?

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:01

Um, we have some overlaps, but we come from very different places.

Chuck Snowdon: 12:03

Ah, okay.

Mike Huffman: 12:05

I was thinking when you, when you gave your talk today and how that music has the bonding effect, often you're ah, they're playing our song. That's what gets two people together is something bonding. Where you hear the music and

Chuck Snowdon: 12:18

And I would think that someone who loves Hard Rock is not gonna be compatible with someone who likes Debussy or, Bach. And I think those two people would be like the incompatible with one of us, I think, I think shared some shared common interest in music. May play a really important role in pair bonding

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:36

And also tolerance, because I'm pretty sure my wife just simply tolerated my band's music while we started dating<laugh>. She turned up to a lot of our shows, but I don't think, I don't think it was for the, uh, you know, the aesthetic, the cheesecake factor of the, of the music.

Chuck Snowdon: 12:49

Not For the m ake c hoice factor either.

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:50

Well, there might have been something there, so<laugh>

Chuck Snowdon: 12:53

Okay. we won't go, we won't pursue that.

Andrew MacIntosh: 12:54

Yeah. Right. But, so one of the things you talked about and we all hear about often in the media is that, uh, this idea of playing music for animals, uh, in a kind of enrichment or welfare, uh, perspective or just in, you know, changing emotional states and it's often Mozart that comes up. So what is the kind of validity of this or, what kind of did you guys do differently, um, to kind of ask these questions?

Chuck Snowdon: 13:18

It's a really good question and I've been puzzled by why everybody picks Mozart or something, something universal that everyone thinks Mozart is somehow the, the ideal composer for, for animals to want to listen to. And it's just, it's, it's strange. Um, there, I think part of it dates back to a, series of flawed studies on the boat artifact where people thought if you play boat art to your kids, they'll become smarter. And the data analyses are, completely flawed i n those studies. And they've been discredited, but they're still in the popular, um, imagination. The idea that Mozart is somehow good for you. U m, I think people just haven't thought seriously or deeply enough about music and about what music can do, uh, to a ffect ourselves f or, let alone other species t hat we really haven't thought carefully enough about why we're playing music to animals. and what the purpose is. Um, so I'm, I'm, I'm really trying to be an evangelist to say we need to be really much more cognizant of what music is about. And then it's not just a simple, even a genre like heavy rock still can have some melodic components to it and can have some very harmonic aspects to it. U m, to treat all music as, o r one genre of music as as u niform is just incorrect. And then to think that animals we have to, one is really asking the question, I think about what do we want an imal, How do we want animals to change as a result of playing music for them. Do we want them to be happier? Do we want them to be more active? Do w e want th em t o be more aggressive? Do we want th em t o be more fearful? All those are things that we can manipulate with the right type of music. But if we don't think about those questions ahead of time, then the type of music we play for them may be very bad for th em. Ma y m a y d o them more harm than go od o r ma y h ave unintended consequences that we're not aware of.

Andrew MacIntosh: 15:20

Mm. So how did you guys, so you're working in your studies with a first, with a colony of Tamarins at the, uh, Wisconsin Madison Primate Center, correct?

Chuck Snowdon: 15:29

No, it was that the Snowdon Primate Center and Department of Psychology. We had, I did not, I had a separate colony.

Andrew MacIntosh: 15:35

Perfect. Thank you for correcting me.<laugh>. So, but so you had the, the, the cotton top Tamarins there. And so how did you approach this study? What were you kind of interested going in and why, why that's so

Chuck Snowdon: 15:44

Part of what we did was to, was David had to become familiar with my collaborator. David Tie had to become familiar with the vocalizations that the tain were producing. And so I would send him some sound files and he would, and I, and I wouldn't label them and he would tell me what he thought the context would be based on his theories. And he was correct a lot of the time. So it meant that his, his theoretical ideas were predictive of what the, what the, the function of the context of a particular call was. And he came and visited and recorded, made a lot of his own recordings of the monkeys over the course of several days. So he would have a good appreciation of their vocal repertoire and what their range of vocalizations would be. And he went home and, and then taking his principles, which have to do with things like rapid short, stacato, like notes were long, notes, h armony versus dissonance noise versus not noise. Um, uh, those sorts of things would put those together and create the different types of music that he produced. So he, he, he listened to the calls. We wanted to avoid mimicking TA calls cause we, cuz that would be, it would be a no brainer to say, Oh, we play a monkey vocalization back to it and it behaves this way. Well that's, people have done that for ages now. What really w anted to do i s t o say here's something totally unusual, something novel they've not heard before, but h as some of the principles of their own natural vocalization. T he principles that we think a re music universals. And then, a nd then we could show that if they responded the way we predicted that they, t hat they are, that those universals actually are working in a completely novel piece of, sound that they've never heard before.

Andrew MacIntosh: 17:26

Okay. So just for the, the listeners here, do you mind if I play one of these? These pieces just give us a, we'll do for a couple of seconds and then I'll put the longer version on, uh Later. But. So can you maybe just run us through that really quickly? Like what is happening in this? So

Chuck Snowdon: 17:55

That's actually a piece of calming music. Uh, it may not sound like that to us. In fact, it's a very fast tempo. Um, cuz the animal, we actually hypothesized that resting heart rate is, is a good calm tempo. So if my resting heart rate is about 60 beats per minute, then, which is a typical adagio, uh, time signature for, music. It's a very, it's a relatively calm slope piece. Uh, from the tamarin perspective, this is a calm piece of music even though the tempo you heard in the background is about 200 beats per minute. So you're getting a very rapid tempo from our perspective, but it's a very calming tempo from the monkey's perspective. The pitch range that you heard, you heard a lot of long, relatively long notes given that rapid tempo. They may sound short to us, but they're long relative to tamarin vocalizations. And they were high pitched because the tamarin voice range is three to four octaves higher than ours. So their calls are in the range of six to eight kilohertz. And so you were hearing sounds that were very high pitched from our perspective, but in the normal voice range for the tamarin.

Andrew MacIntosh: 19:06

And so when you were playing these, uh, these pieces back to the tamarinds in your experimental setup, what, what kind of thing did you see as a result?

Chuck Snowdon: 19:14

So we would take a five minute baseline just to make sure that the animals were relaxed and calm before we did anything. And then we'd play a 30 second piece of music like the piece we just played. And then we'd monitor their behavior for the five minutes following the termination of the music. And so at the end of that they are, they're then, we're then watching them for five minutes. And what we discovered is that they would be much more agitated in terms of locomotor behavior, move a lot more after they heard a more equivalent of tamarin rock music compared to Tamarin Serenade, which is what we just played. Uh, they would also, um, uh, show more, uh, anxiety related behavior after the Rapid Rock music, the dissonant music. And they also showed more social cohesion with each other, we think because they were somewhat distressed and so they were seeking each other out for comfort compared to what they would do after the other piece. And these are the same monkeys being played both pieces. So that we're doing, we're comparing the same animal in condition A and condition B and looking at their behavior there.

Andrew MacIntosh: 20:21

And so what kind of, um, so I think you mentioned in, and it's maybe practiced quite often in different, uh, primate housed settings that people will play either music or put on the radio or things like that as a, I don't know, a form of enrichment or having white noise or even, uh, habituating the animals to the sounds of human voices I heard is why they do it at PRI actually Okay. Which is why they use the radio. But, uh, so what kind of, you know, ultimate applications are things do you see, see this going towards?

Chuck Snowdon: 20:48

So, so one of the things to that we, that listeners can ask themselves, did you enjoy listening to that little bit of music? If you didn't then think about what would happen if you were a monkey and someone played music that you didn't like and they played it all day long. So I think a first fundamental question we need to ask is, do animals actually like the music? Is it gonna do, is it neutral? Is it beneficial? Is it harmful? And that would be a first principle that every animal care facility and every pet owner should be aware of. Cuz we've also discovered pet owners also play music for their animals in their own preferred music in the idea that their pets will like the same music they do. Right. So, uh, I think we all need to ask ourselves a very deep question about, um, are we doing something positive? Are we doing something negative? Is it having no effect whatsoever? If it's having no effect, then I might as well save electricity and, and energy and do something else. Uh, with that, with that power. Uh, if it's negative, I should know about that early on. I should not just make the assumption that playing music is going to be beneficial to the animals. And I think that's, that's a mistake. Uh, it's an assumption that everyone makes virtual, everyone makes, I hope not to, uh, but virtually everyone else is making. And I think we need to kind of counter that assumption. Have people being much more concerned about what they're playing and why they're playing it.

Andrew MacIntosh: 22:14

This, this sounds like, so I know from the Tamarin stuff you also moved and did a little bit of research with cats. So this is a much more, uh, closer to what the average person would be maybe involved with having cats as pets and things and cats are all over social media and everything, so a kind of craze, but, so what was the, what was going on in that, uh, in that aspect?

Chuck Snowdon: 22:33

So, part of what stimulated that was that, um, first of all, we were interviewed by many people after, by many reporters after we did the, the tamarin paper and almost everyone volunteered something to the effect of, I play this for my pet. And, and that's why. And so the guy from the classical music station said, I know my, my dog really likes to listen to classical music, so that's what I put on all day. And a guy from a rock station said, Oh, I know my dog really likes to listen to heavy Metal. And so everyone was, it turned out as we were being interviewed that our interviewers were in fact listening using music for their pets and hadn't thought about what the effects might be, but they were sure that their pets, whatever they were like the music they did. So, uh, that was one of the stimuli, second stimulus was that we wanted to come up with something that would be more, more relevant and in David's case, more perhaps more marketable.

Mike Huffman: 23:34

You could download these on ITunes?

Chuck Snowdon: 23:36

Uh, so we went to the cats in part because cats are more homogeneous in size and voice than all the different breeds of dogs might be. So we chose cats as a starting point. And, um, we composed a few, David composed a few pieces of music that we tested on cats, and then he's subsequently gone on to make a recording. And, um, I, I'm, I'm a neutral scientist, so I have no financial stake in this, so I'm not gonna say much more than that. He has, um, he did do a Kickstarter campaign to, to get money. His goal was$10,000 to raise money to do a recording of cat music that he could distribute to others. Ended up in a month getting a quarter of a million dollars through Kickstarter. So it just says how many cat fan are out in the world and who want to have some music for their cats.

Andrew MacIntosh: 24:26

We Need that kind of support for the tamarins and other primates

Chuck Snowdon: 24:28

I know it's just, it was just stunning how, how many cat lovers there were and how much they're willing to, to support him in this, in this idea. The, um, one of the possible benefits that I've discovered and emails from people that have just, and conversations with people is that it may not work for all cats, may not be beneficial for every cat, but we've found several people have told us that their shelter cat, or their feral cat that they have adopted has become much more interactive with them once they started playing the cat music. And so several people described, um, my cat hasn't touched us at all. We've takes our food and drinks our water, but that's, that's all she does. But once I started playing this music, she jumped into our lap or rubbed her face against my leg for the first time. So it may be, have something of therapeutic value, um, may not be necessary for a normal cat in a normal household with a good family condition and a good rearing history. But for cats that have had a bad rearing history this maybe something very beneficial for them. So, And,

Mike Huffman: 25:32

Sounds like that cats meow. Along with pets, uh, I'm sure, Many people have seen on, um, YouTube when you play music to one of these white birds, white parrots, and they, they, the rock to the music, the cockatoo, What's your take on that? How is that, is that beneficial or is it just...

Chuck Snowdon: 25:55

I think it's what, what that study does, there's a famous YouTube, several YouTube videos of, a cockatoo named Snowball. So you can Google snowball. Um, snowball is interesting because she or he is able to track the tempo of music. So he's dancing to the tempo of the music. It's not that music is beneficial to him, although it's getting a lot of exercise, but what he's able to do is track the beat. And something that people have not been able to show in mammalian species to date, except for one sea lion, is that mammals are able to track the beat and follow the beat. So there may be something fundamentally different between the ability to track the beat of a music versus the emotional aspects of signals, which is what I've been working with.

Mike Huffman: 26:45

What do you think the evolutionary significance of tracking a beat for a bird could be?

Chuck Snowdon: 26:49

People have hypothesized if this is an important thing for vocal learners to do, because part of what you have to learn is the tempo as well as the pitches. So when you're a vocal learner, you have to learn pitch and, and tempo. Now I'm not, I don't buy that exactly because I think there's a lot more involved. And I think monkeys are capable of some aspects of vocal learning that have been ignored till now. Um, but to date, we only have one mammal example of a single sea lion that's able to track changes in tempo. It's not just keeping to a beat, but if I change the beat, can you keep up? Can I track the tempo change? And that's what birds are able to do and one sea lion is able to do. And we don't have any other examples from mammals to this date.

Andrew MacIntosh: 27:42

So just, just before I close here, I just, a couple of things I wanted to follow. One which is interesting to me is going back to the original question, I not quite original, but I posed earlier about why people pick Mozart to play for animals. In your studies, you've used a range of different kinds of music to compare with the music that you've created as well and you see the responses and uh, I noticed some of them were, so for the kind of heavier music, you had Metallica, you have tool, you have nine Inch Nails, and I kind of wonder whose input is that or where does the, decision happen of which kinds of music to play?

Chuck Snowdon: 28:15

Well, That was, that was something we, David and I talked about a lot and I had to educate myself a lot more about music than I had been before. He had to educate himself a lot about experimental design. Um, there's been a mutual trade off there. Um, but one of the things we were trying to find was, was music that would have, if we're trying to write calming music, what would be calming music for humans. And so Barbara's adagio for strings as a famous one that has all the components that David predicted would be important. a series of long notes or harmonic relate harmonically related to each other, descend in frequency over time. Uh, Nine Inch Nails was actually a piece of a piano solo. it had some of the same components to it, even though it's by ostensibly rock group. It had, it actually was a, a piece of music that just to say it wasn't just classical versus rock, we wanted to have a, a rock music piece. It also had some of the long slow legato notes that descended in frequency. So we're trying to come up with the same things that we felt were really important in human music. And then we used the rock music clearly as something that people would dance to and get aroused to and tried to use that for the tamarins as a control.

Andrew MacIntosh: 29:28

So on a more personal side, I'm just kind of curious in having, you know, done these studies over a number of years, um, what, and then not coming out of, you know, kind of a music environment or a music background to doing it. what do you kind of think is the most important thing you've learned about music from these studies or anything that stands out for you that you've connected to or, or been surprised by?

Chuck Snowdon: 29:51

Well, I think to connected back to something you brought up at the very beginning, we talk about STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and I think we now need to, we should be talking about steam fields instead: science, technology, uh, engineering arts and mathematics. And I think there's a very close relationship. So I think one of the things that's come out of this is a collaboration that I never would've been involved with before, that I really have learned a lot from. So it's, I've taught me a lot to collaborate with someone who's a musician and to think about how music might be important in the lives, not only of our of ourselves, but in terms of other species and where it might have come from. So it's been, it's been very educational when I like this idea of steam disciplines now. And we should be talking about not stem, but steam and building up steam, uh, with more connection between arts and science.

Andrew MacIntosh: 30:45

And, uh, Mike, maybe just one for you, at the beginning of, uh, the talk, um, that Dr. Snowdon just gave you had a very melodious introduction with full of embarrassment and riches of compliment. And so you guys have known each other for quite some time. Right. And, uh, I just wonder if music has ever, uh, interfaced over these years. You guys share any kind of, you can think of?

Chuck Snowdon: 31:11

Not through music until today. Maybe next time we meet, we'll have to exchange Tunes from our iPods or something, but We'll have to get your wife to play Debussy for us

Mike Huffman: 31:21

And, and see how all the different monkey species respond.

Andrew MacIntosh: 31:26

But you have looked a bit at, uh, monkey's making music, in a way

Mike Huffman: 31:28

With stone handling. There's a very strong attraction to making noise. Yeah. Um, whether they were with stone on a metal rooftop or on a bumpy gradient or on against other stones or stone on metal, it seems to be something very attractive to them.

Chuck Snowdon: 31:45

That's something a two to four year old toddler would also enjoy doing, rubbing. I mean, I still enjoy rubbing a stick across a fence and, you know, sing to the sound in base

Mike Huffman: 31:55

Yeah. Yeah.

Andrew MacIntosh: 31:57

As a, as the father of a two year old, I know very well range of sounds. They like to produce directly and indirectly. So

Chuck Snowdon: 32:04

Thank you Andrew for inviting me to participate. I really appreciate it

Andrew MacIntosh: 32:08

It's a pleasure to have you. Thank you for joining the PrimateCast.