 Many people think originality is necessary for music to affect a large number of people, but we have to remember how familiarity and music works to make music feel resonant to listeners. There's a balance of using cues that people understand emotionally and making new cues that make songs feel more emotionally intense. In this video, I'm gonna talk about that balance. Hi, I'm Jesse Cannon and this is Muse Formation. Our brains are wired to respond to repetition and familiarity, which actually gives originality a disadvantage. When songs employ samples, this is usually a hack to give familiarity to a listener since an audience is more likely to enjoy what's already familiar with a small new twist. When T-Heartthrob's Five Seconds of Summer took Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf vocal melody and put new words to it, most music nerd's first reaction is to yell rip off. But in the demanding world of major label record sales, they see this as a hack to getting a hit that's worth paying a royalty for, especially since it comes at the expense of the songwriter's royalty instead of the record label's bottom line. Since most of the Five Seconds of Summer fans have probably heard their parents playing the Duran Duran classic in their car, this allows the hook to seep into their brains faster. Originality doesn't pay when it comes to hooks as long as they're done with authenticity. We actually deride music that's too original. If a song sounds too unfamiliar, containing little cues for emotions we've grown to understand, it's hard for us to have an emotional reaction to it. Our brains are often unable to feel the emotions attached to the sounds we hear in world or experimental music. They give us little to no familiar emotional guides so the music doesn't resonate within us. Music is only resonant to us when we understand the emotional cues that are communicated. So the only emotion expressed is sound manipulation or from a culture that we don't have commonality with, it will sound foreign and unrelatable to us. For evidence of this, look to the countless artists who are too ahead of their time or who make their music we perceive as original, yet we have no urge to hear their work ever again. In psychology, there's a concept called schemas, which are mental structures of preconceived ideas or a framework representing some aspect of the word or a system of organizing and perceiving new information. It's difficult to find resonance unless a work has familiar schemas but has small deviations that exceed our expectations. Record producer turned neuroscientist Daniel Levitan did a study that showed our brains respond to a sweet spot of musical familiarity and complexity. To make music resonant within ourselves as well as others, we have to follow what's expected and deviated small ways that increase resonance. Musically, to feel resonance with a song, we must hear emotional cues we're familiar with along with a few new cues that up the emotional ante to give us more resonance. Note that for these new cues to be effective, they must augment the resonance of the song since new for new sake doesn't hold emotional currency. That's it, am I missing anything? Is there any way you would have done this? I need to know your questions and what no one else is telling you since I wanna answer them, so leave them in the comments. I hope you liked this video and if you did, please like and subscribe and get notified for my future videos since I'm gonna be breaking down the concepts in this video along with tons of others on promoting your music and how to make music you're more happy with. As well, I have a Facebook group that's linked below that has only helpful information. No one tried to sell you anything, playlist or con artist, only helpful information for musicians looking to be better themselves. If you wanna learn more about me, make a record with me or check out any of my books, podcasts or anything else I do, head to jessecanon.com or at jessecanon.com on any of the socials. Thanks for watching. One last thing, if you liked this video, there's two playlists here with tons more videos that you'll probably enjoy. One's about how you promote your music and the other's about how you make songs you're happy with. Otherwise, you can hit the subscribe button here to see the rest of my videos. Thanks so much for watching.