“Music is a world within itself
/With a language we all understand/With an equal opportunity/
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands.”

-from Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke”

May is here! It is time for spring, festivals, front porch picking, and cookouts. You may prefer to turn on your favorite radio station or get your favorite band to come play, but what is a gathering without good music? I think about how music affects our moods. Are there some moments where you just can’t help but start to wiggle and move? ‘Little’ Stevie Wonder does that to me. Just thinking about the song “Superstition” makes me want to uncontrollably show my lack of dance skills. At a wedding, “The Electric Slide” used to be the song that could get everybody on the dance floor, although recently “The Cupid Shuffle” has replaced it. The results are still the same; regardless of age or size people get out there and shake everything they’ve got, whether you like it or not. Your brain recognizes music and interprets the sound in many ways. One of which is the predictability of music. A rhythm settles into a tempo, you head starts to nod, toes tap, and the brain expects the beat to consistently fall at a certain point and then the shaking and wiggling kicks in… Believe it or not, but the little inconsistencies between the beat are what makes the music interesting. These variances in the music create the artistry that makes Stevie Wonder’s music a little more alive than that of the music programmed to be perfectly aligned with tempo. Musicians have trouble creating music that is exactly and consistently lined up with the set tempo. This is accomplished by playing a song to a click track (in a studio setting a click track is a metronome sound that clicks the exact beat to which the artist records). Our brains are tricked by these little variations, and our perception of beauty and enjoyment are increased. So get out there and feel the groove of spring.