[Music]
hi my name is caroline olson and i am a
never thought of myself as a musician
all my life I’ve thought of myself as an
athlete and a student however as an
athlete on the student I’ve used music
to enhance my experiences so when I am
running I use music to pace myself I
listen to the beat of the song and when
I listen to that beat it helps me run in
time with the music so often I’ll listen
to a faster song and with that faster
song it makes it makes me push myself a
little bit harder while and running so
if I’m listening to a good playlist I
could be running for half an hour and it
might only feel like 10 minutes in team
sports before each game there’s a
warm-up CD and in that warm up CD their
songs to get the whole team pumped up
and not only does it get everyone pumped
up but it gets everyone synced up
together feeling the same because we’re
all listening to the same external
rhythm and that affects how we feel on
the inside whether we are talking to a
person on our team or not we are all
feeling on like we’re on the same pace
like we’re moving similarly and it makes
the whole team connect together as one
unit and it even connects the audience
to the team as a student I use
instrumental music to help myself focus
because instrumental music is slower
often it helps me absorb more in the
time I’m given so it helps me study so
the odds are not every single one of you
in this room considers yourself musician
either because when we think of a
musician we think of someone who’s
creating a rhythm and then sharing that
rhythm with an audience but whether we
realize it or not throughout the course
of our days we are creating rhythms and
by living when we walk there’s a rhythm
to our movement and usually refer to
that rhythm as our pace and so with that
pace we adjust based on who we’re with
and so if I’m walking with someone who
is moving a little bit faster than me
I’ll adjust my pace to keep up with them
and so we interact with people and our
movements show that and that creates our
rhythm in our dialogue there’s an
inherent rhythm to our communication and
that’s because there’s a cadence in the
way we speak and in our in our language
our languages universally have a rhythm
to them and so when we’re talking to
someone else we share that rhythm and
there’s a rhythm the conversation and
you can tell when there’s a good rhythm
to a conversation because there’s a flow
to the conversation it feels good if
there’s not rhythm to the conversation
you feel like it’s an uncomfortable
situation you leave it feeling a little
bit awkward and so we interact with so
many rhythms in our day but when it
comes down to it we’ve had this rhythm
literally every moment we’ve been a lot
and that rhythm is our heartbeat our
heartbeat even in silence gives our
lives rhythm and with that rhythm it’s
it’s almost as if it’s our internal
rhythm and when we are creating in
interacting with different rhythms
external rhythms it’s affecting our
internal rhythm and so if I’m walking
faster if I’m running my heartbeat and
Chris it increases with that if I am
talking slowly with someone and or maybe
meditating your breathing is slower and
your heartbeat decreases with that so
our internal rhythm is a reflection of
our external rhythms that we interact
with on a day-to-day basis and so we
interact and create so many rhythms
throughout the course of our days yet we
all measure our time at the steady beat
of a clock
so why is it that we all feel time
differently why is it that some days
feel so long and then others just seemed
to fly by well that brings me to my
question how does music affect our
perception of time so to quote Walt
Whitman that music always around me
unceasing on beginning yet long-run
thought I did not hear and so this poem
in itself by Walt Whitman is a
demonstration of the rhythm in our
language it’s a mastery of the rhythm in
our language and through this poem Walt
Whitman comes to the conclusion that
music is around us 24-7 he recognizes
the music and often we don’t always do
that well one character who does
recognize the rhythm and the music of
everyday is fictional character in body
and soul by Frank Conroy so Claude is a
six-year-old boy growing up in a city
and he’s a musical prodigy and they can
tell that he is inherently musical by
the way he feels each moment every
moment he absorbs more he feels the
world in sounds and rhythms and so when
he’s walking in the city he’s focusing
on people who are focused on going to
their next destination not really
looking around them he focuses on each
individual and he listens to the sounds
their steps make as they walk so whether
it’s heels or dress shoes he’s listening
to each rhythm and then as a whole he’s
listening to that rhythm and so while we
might just hear City noises he hears a
symphony Claude realized that all these
strangers were caught up in something
together that an unseen force had wiped
out all differences between them and
made them one so this unseen force is
rhythm it’s what connects us and sets
aside all of our differences and so we
can see this in this journey of a
musician but we can also see it
throughout history as a military tactic
in every military there’s a drummer and
what this drummer does is keep the pace
of the group and so while he plays beat
of the drum everyone else is marching to
the same rhythm so all the soldiers are
marching together it unifies them and so
they could be feeling completely
different things they could be dreading
the task ahead they could have
completely different backgrounds that
you could just be feeling different
emotions but it doesn’t matter because
the rhythm of the drum keeps them moving
together you know brother where art thou
in the opening scene men are prisoners
are working on the railroad and they use
the music to make their work go by
faster and so if you could listen
carefully all right so if you notice the
rhythm of the song is longer and so what
they’ve done is they’ve created the work
or they’ve used what they’re doing in
their work and the rhythm of the hammer
to kind of extend the length they feel
in a second and so their perception of
each second is a little bit longer and
then it feels almost like time moves
faster so they have a tedious task at
hand they’re working all day on the
railroad in the burning heat but they
use this rhythm to connect them make
time go a little bit faster and it
boosts morale in the documentary music
on the brain it explores that one
the reasons this is is because we are
when we listen to music all of our brain
or most parts of it are stimulated by
the rhythm and so a man with Parkinson’s
so severe that he can barely walk when
he hears music all of a sudden he can
dance flawlessly a woman with
Alzheimer’s so severe that she can
barely speak in complete sentences when
she hears music she can sing and so
music captivates us so much in the
present moment so much of our mind in
this present moment that it actually has
the power to take us back in time in the
future so this Thanksgiving my grandma
came over and my grandma suffers from
something called macular degeneration
which means that her eyesight is slowly
deteriorating and with that some of her
favorite hobbies she’s unable to do so
she likes to cook she likes to read she
likes to make tapestries and since she
was unable to help us cook during our
Thanksgiving meal my mom turned on a CD
by the classical composer Chopin and she
drifted to the music she went to the
music and she closed her eyes and
relaxed after I Thanksgiving meal she
talked with me and said that she was so
happy that we played Chopin because it
reminded her of her favorite movie that
she went to go see when she was in
Sweden with her best friend and
coincidentally that movie is called a
song to remember and so she was able to
share this memory with me so vividly and
so clearly and she would have been able
to do that if the song hadn’t reminded
her of the movie so that brings me to my
next point because music helps tell
stories like hers music actually helps
tell some of our favorite stories in our
favorite films in the way it does that
is by linking together the story and so
that’s called a light motif that’s when
music is strategically used in a movie
to link the movie together
to make it make sense so the definition
is a reoccurring short melodic phrase or
theme strategically used in films to
indicate someone something or a feeling
that is present in the scene but not
visible in the frame so a classic
so none of us are watching that movie
right now but you all know what was
happening there was when when you hear
that music you know that a shark attack
is going to happen because previously in
the film or maybe even when you saw the
film before you know what happens so
that song connects you’d of earlier
parts of the film and so it holds the
story together and so in our own lives
music and do the same thing if we hear a
song it can take us back to our
childhood it can take us back to a
particular feeling other movies that use
this include double-oh-seven Indiana
Jones lalaland if you’ve seen at hunger
games so all these movies use this and
it’s something that we can use and we
can have certain songs that take us back
and for me that song is you’re my
sunshine so when I was a sophomore I was
feeling stressed and overwhelmed from
school in my sports and so I needed a
non-competitive outlet and I picked up
the ukulele because it’s simple enough i
figured i can learn in my free time and
as I learned it I kind of got more in
touch with my own rhythm it helped me to
relax and with that relaxation I wanted
to share that with my community so I
brought it to the local Boys and Girls
Club and in my junior year I started
teaching classes I went to the classes
and would sit with these kids and it was
incredible because I got to see them
find their own rhythm and this was a
rhythm they had all along all they
needed was an instrument and they turned
it into music and so on the day of the
final performance they got up on stage
in front of 250 people and played you
are my sunshine and so not only in that
moment we’re individually they were
finding their own rhythm they were
sharing it with those on stage with them
to create music and then sharing that
with the audience and so it created one
big moment that I was lucky enough to be
a part of and I I thought I was so
interesting that
this did it for me for them as well they
had the rhythm inside of them all along
all it took was an instrument for them
to turn that into music and so that
brought me to another question I had was
that we create we think that we are the
ones that create the music but maybe in
a sense music creates us and maybe it
doesn’t take an instrument for us to
turn that into music maybe it’s in
different things maybe it’s playing a
sport going on a run speaking we can
turn our rhythm into music so this
brings me to my final quote it’s one of
my favorite quotes by henry david
thoreau if a man does not keep pace with
his companions perhaps it is because he
hears a different drummer let him step
to the music which he hears however far
measured or far away so as I said I
didn’t consider myself a musician but
why shouldn’t I when it’s the rhythm in
music that connects me to others that
connects me to the past and connects me
to the present so rather than letting a
clock measure my life I strive to make music of my life thank