All this and brains too.

So the 30-day song thingie I’ve been doing wants to know what song makes me sad. I could easily post a song that evokes painful memories, but I’m more interested at the moment in what makes a song sad.

Here’s a little experiment for all you would-be thespians out there. I’m going to give you a single line to say, and I want you to say it out loud as though you’ve got great news you’re dying to share with someone.

The line is, “We need to talk.”

Go ‘head. Say it again. Repeat it a few times. More excitement. Think of the best news you could possibly receive right now. Method act by winning the lottery if you have to. Ignore your roommates’ cries of, “What? What? What the fuck do we need to talk about? I’m listening. Oh, for Christ’s sake just tell me!”

Now I’m going to give you a little more direction. Say the same line as if you’re about to deliver bad news. You’re about to tell someone her mother died.

So naturally your voice softens, and maybe you talk a bit slower. Maybe you take a slight pause first. The actual pitch is different. Most people lower their pitch ever so slightly, usually at the word “talk.”

It makes sense that we would use changes of pitch in language to convey emotion, but what really puts the zap on my head is how it translates to music. You remember the old, “do-re-me-fa-so-la-ti-do” scale that kinda hot woman taught you in elementary school music class? Turns out that’s not the only scale out there.

If you sing the “me”, “la” and “ti” just semitone lower, you’re switching from a major to a minor scale. It’s the scale that mimics what our voices do when we’re sad. Music betrays is roots as a cousin of language.

Cool, huh?

So here's David Gilmour playing guitar in the key of A minor to make us all sad. Enjoy.

And if you're interested in this sort of thing and you've got an hour to spare, here's the raw footage of Richard Dawkins interviewing Steven Pinker on the origins of music, language and other weirdness. If you need a human brain in a jar at a moment's notice, Pinker's always got one handy.