Seeing Sounds and Neisserian Songwriting
- Ray Hargens Hire
- Jun 6, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Feb 4
The following short essays were assignments based learning journals I completed in my undergraduate degree in Psychology.
The Nature of Music: An Auditory Fractal Symphony
Music isn’t just noise arranged in a way that makes your foot tap. It’s a cosmic language, a pulsating beast that’s been howling through human history since the first caveman figured out that banging on a log felt good. As a musician, songwriter, and producer, I exist in a liminal space where the organic meets the synthetic. My attic studio is a shrine to this clash—guitars strewn about like fallen soldiers, microphones standing sentinel, and a laptop glowing with the eerie hum of infinite possibility. Every note I play, every sound I capture, is a piece of a grander puzzle, part of the unbroken lineage of sound that has shaped the human experience.
Psychology studies first turned me onto the idea that our brains are hardwired to crave patterns. Enter Eric Fromm and his take on biophilia—the love of natural forms. It hit me like a distortion pedal to the face: music isn’t just heard, it’s seen. Analogue soundwaves—vocals, guitars—are jagged, undulating like ocean swells. Digital waves, on the other hand, are boxed-in and sterile, rigid MIDI blocks sucking the life out of what should be a living, breathing entity. It’s a sonic battleground where nature clashes with artificiality, and the stakes are nothing less than the soul of music itself.
This isn’t just a nerdy observation—it’s a war. The human voice is a fractal phenomenon, as Benoit Mandelbrot would tell you, bursting with chaotic beauty. We crave these patterns in sound just like we crave rolling hills and tumbling waterfalls. Richard Knopf’s research backs it up: people prefer organic, fractal-loaded environments over the cold, dead sterility of urban grids and car engines. So what happens when pop music morphs into algorithmic sludge, stripped of its primal soul? Are we starving ourselves of the sonic nutrition we need? And if so, what are the consequences for the way we feel, the way we think, the way we live?
I’d wager that we are lacking something. Blues, jazz, folk—these aren’t just styles, they’re fractal landscapes in sonic form. Songs loop back on themselves, riffs spiral in mesmerising, hypnotic sequences. It’s why certain songs feel like home. And then there’s the flipside—modern radio pop, all quantised, pitch-corrected, auto-tuned into oblivion. It’s a sterile simulation of what music used to be. Maybe it’s the reason so many people feel disconnected, tuning out without realising why. Maybe it’s why we’re all restless, why we scroll endlessly through social media, seeking that same organic hit of authenticity we’ve stripped from our music.
Music isn’t just something you listen to. It’s something you live in. It’s nature, twisted into sound, looping in on itself like a Möbius strip. And maybe that’s why we should fight to keep it human. Because the moment we let go, the moment we let the machines take over, we lose something deeper than melody or harmony—we lose a connection to the oldest, wildest parts of ourselves.
The Harmonic Psychology of Neil Young: A Melodic Exploration of Self-Knowledge
Ulrich Neisser had a mind like a scalpel—cutting through the haze of cognitive science and laying bare the inner workings of selfhood. His theory of the "five kinds of self-knowledge" in 1988 put some serious weight behind the idea that we aren’t just one consciousness—we’re a swirling, messy cocktail of different identities interacting at once. And if any artist embodies that messy, fragmented self, it’s Neil Young.
Young is a sonic shapeshifter, a folk prophet with a grungy snarl, an outlaw crooner who never played by the rules. Through his music, you can map out Neisser’s five selves like a constellation. The ecological self? Young’s entire catalogue is steeped in nature, from "Harvest Moon" to "After the Gold Rush." His music breathes with the world around him, unfiltered, untamed. It’s not just an aesthetic choice—it’s a philosophical one, a belief that music should sound as wild and free as the landscapes it describes.
Then there’s the interpersonal self—the raw, bare-knuckle emotional honesty that defines his lyrics. "Old Man" isn’t just a song; it’s a conversation across generations, a gut-punch of perspective. When it comes to the private self, Young doesn’t hold back either. "The Needle and the Damage Done" is a haunting confessional, a window into addiction’s wreckage. There’s no varnish, no attempt to sugarcoat the ugliness of human suffering—just unflinching truth, sung in that wailing, unpolished voice that makes it feel real.
The extended self shows up in his nostalgia-laden anthems like "Long May You Run," where past and future collapse into one wistful chord progression. It’s a song that feels like an old road stretching into the horizon, a reminder that we’re all just passing through, trying to make sense of where we’ve been and where we’re going. And the conceptual self? That’s where Young rages. Whether he’s sneering through "Rockin’ in the Free World" or gutting the establishment with "Southern Man," his music is a manifesto, a sonic middle finger to anything trying to box him in.
Young’s music isn’t just self-expression—it’s self-exploration. He’s the sonic equivalent of a hall of mirrors, reflecting back at us the raw, uncomfortable, unfiltered human experience. He doesn’t care if it’s pretty. He doesn’t care if it fits neatly into industry standards. He plays what feels right, and in that brutal authenticity, we see ourselves. We see the beauty in imperfection, in voices that crack, in guitars that buzz, in notes that don’t quite land where they’re supposed to—but somehow still hit us exactly where they need to.
That’s the power of music. It’s not just sound—it’s identity, screaming back at us from the speakers. And in a world increasingly obsessed with polished, market-tested, algorithm-approved content, Neil Young remains a reminder of what music was always meant to be: raw, messy, imperfect, and, above all, human.
Comments