Coaxing Emotions
by Eddie Martin
June 2022
by Eddie Martin
June 2022
Sometimes I think of myself as a second-generation educator. Both my parents taught, and I grew up accessing the secret learning environments of ‘other schools’ alongside my own.
The soundscapes of these institutions reverberate in my memory: long echoing waxed-hardwood corridors, sharp frictions of local-authority furniture on parquet floors, and the dull knocks of furnace-hot radiators under thirty layers of beige paint. Our classes bore bizarre mixtures of audio technology. Smartboard speakers silenced for trolly-mounted tape deck Deutsches sprechen exercises. Electronic music production lessons followed by geometry soundtracked with the radial groove of a Pink Floyd LP. The imprint of these memories sways the music I seek while studying and teaching.
When I think of the sounds of my own education, I think of examinations. I wonder if my entire learning experience was optimised to perform best in sports halls, surrounded by the air of seriousness and the incidental noises of hundreds of pairs of trainers fidgeting on a varnished wooden floor. This was my audio war paint for more than a decade - a colosseum composed of cavernous roofs, exposed ventilation pipes, and the gentle but constant clip of the invigilators’ heels as they ambled through a matrix of collapsible single-seater desks.
For a decade this was the domain in which I lived or died, more than a hundred times. I finished a Masters degree three years ago and I hope to now be free of examinations, no longer expected to perform in that controlled audio-environment. The years I didn’t sit exams, I took work invigilating them instead. I reappraised these soundscapes in which I’d spent so much of my life – where the tracks of my future were laid down like the vibrant contour lines of five different sports below my feet, amongst the patter of hundreds of writhing pens.
When invigilating you are forced to notice sound. An echoing cough. A dropped pencil case. Eased open soft-close doors. The sequential procession of escorted bathroom breaks. Extra sheets of paper meted out with the essential treasury tag. Oversized clocks. Perhaps I can take a surreptitious seat in the exam hall in May so I can concentrate – I can never seem to find that same spirit.
Parts of my sound environment are still beyond my control. Sitting now I can hear a ticking clock, my washing machine gently surging, children playing in the nearby nursery, the boiler at work, a train passing by the window, and late-winter birds chattering. There are also the sounds of my keyboard, my creaking chair, and my own breath. Muted by my office door, my partner enters the flat serenading the cats.
The portion of my sound environment I can influence, is the music. I use it to invoke emotions. Engineering the atmosphere to alter my state of mind. The process is alchemy, blending songs with my emotional state to create the desired tincture. Some genres always ally with certain sentiments. Death metal gives a provocative intensity. Plainsong raises an inquisitive clarity. On occasion, it is the memories attached to the music which conjure the mood.
The accompanying mix contains songs I use to coax emotions in myself while I study or teach. Spotify assures me these are among my most used tools. I will try to share how they affect my mindframe, and how this relates to learning.
O Successores – Hildegard von Bingen, Stevie Wishart, Sinfonye, Guy Sigsworth
This expressive vocal piece makes me feel sincere. The song was written in the 12th century and it makes me see the act of learning as rooted in deep human time.
A Case of You – James Blake
This is a piece expressing vulnerability; it brings to my mind the feeling of exposure to which we submit whenever we enter a learning environment.
Promises Movement 1 – Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, London Symphony Orchestra
This music blesses you by removing any sense of urgency. From an unhurried foundation a gorgeous melody is allowed to rise – a metaphor for thriving in our working lives.
La donna è mobile (Rigoletto Act 3) – Giuseppe Verdi, Luciano Pavarotti
This is music swelled with mastery. After a lifetime acquiring skills, we can now perform with panache! The ovation, the adoration, and the acknowledgement that what you do is special. Bravissimo!
O Cessate Di Piagarmi (Arr. Voice & Electric Guitar) – Alessandro Scarlatti, Nora Fisher, Marnix Dorrestein
Operatic mastery without the bombast – a masterwork refined. Feeling skilful is important when learning and teaching, and this is music of confidence. There is a lovely synchronicity in the way this classical song has, like many of our educational methods, been digitally reimagined as a new thing of beauty.
Clay Pigeons - Blaze Foley
Teaching and learning are not always performed with the feeling of prowess. Often we need to do just enough to get by, just enough to manage for the day. This song speaks of exhaustion, of the glimmering hope we can see if we really try during a day of depression. The hope is the guitar riff, which never stops going despite it all.
Tàladh Chrìosda – Marit and Rona
The intense application of thought is devotional; it’s why we bow our heads to our laptops as we type. This Scots Gaelic carol is performed by a teacher of mine. In a moment of pandemic-classroom beauty, she sang this song to us over Zoom. Tapadh leat, a’Rona.
Puirt-À-Beul Set: Fodor Dha Na Gamhna Beaga – Julie Fowlis
Fun, rhythmic music developed for doing – dancing, waulking, and now typing. Like many of the songs here, I don’t understand the lyrics. Foreign tongues alter my sound atmosphere subtly. They bring companionship and contribute emotional flavour without sequestering my attention.
Swingin’ Spathiphyllums - Mort Garson
This music was composed to help plants thrive: a comforting thought. Its sense of mid-century technological optimism cultivates a growth mindset.
Addis – OM
This song is built around the Mahāmrityunjaya Mantra, a Sanskrit hymn. Another sacred piece of devotional music; it is uncomfortable to admit, but the otherness and mysticism that I feel listening to this brings me equanimity.
Both Sides the Tweed – Dick Gaughan
A song of reconciliatory beauty. England and Scotland are two sides of my identity felt intensely, and sometimes at odds. My academic identity has been forged entirely north of the Tweed, yet my entire childhood was spent in Yorkshire. This song twinkles with hope while also affirming difference. The swelling emotion of the song allows a level of sincerity in my work which otherwise can be hard to find – it is a song to elicit love.
Moon View – Emily A. Sprague
This music is a timeless bubble, like a video-game loading screen which allows me to drift into thought. It is not compelling, but gently reconfigures your audio surroundings so you cannot set your internal clock. Any sense of ‘when’ is obliterated.
Anti War Dub – Mala, Spen G
Some of my early transgressive forays into live music ended up at the iconic Subdub and Exodus nights at the West Indian Centre in Harehills. Listening helps me keep a grasp on my roots – the edge that I’m afeared of losing.
Run Outs – Alfa Mist
Jazz drumming is initiates and maintains ‘flow’ for me. I listen to a lot of albums in this vein to maintain headspace when the body is weak.
Here's To My Old Friends – Dancing Years
This haunting song gives catharsis through sadness. The fragility of the sound and the specificity of the lyrics produce nostalgia to rinse stress from my mind. The band went to my school, and the shared history between us heightens the song’s potency.
Organ Sonata No. 4, BWV 528: II. Andante [Adagio] (Transcribed by August Stradal) – Vikingur Ólafsson, Johann Sebastian Bach
Solo piano music inhabits the pitch range of the human voice. We are evolved to resonate more with those frequencies. It makes for lyrical compositions without words, and music that can be emotive while our attention is divided. Solo piano music doesn’t leave much sonic space for human voices, so it is ideal for subtly tuning out others’ conversations.
Piano Joint (This Kind of Love) – Michael Kiwanuka
A feeling of momentum is built from a sparse opening, with the resonant intonation: don’t let the pressure get to me.
Lady and Man – Khruangbin
As the meme states: Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.
SpottieOttieDopaliscious – Outkast
I end my selections with a fanfare. If I could feel like this song at the end of each day, each project, each term, I’d die a happy man.
Eddie Martin is PhD student within the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh, where he is researching sonification of biological sequences.
The soundscapes of these institutions reverberate in my memory: long echoing waxed-hardwood corridors, sharp frictions of local-authority furniture on parquet floors, and the dull knocks of furnace-hot radiators under thirty layers of beige paint. Our classes bore bizarre mixtures of audio technology. Smartboard speakers silenced for trolly-mounted tape deck Deutsches sprechen exercises. Electronic music production lessons followed by geometry soundtracked with the radial groove of a Pink Floyd LP. The imprint of these memories sways the music I seek while studying and teaching.
When I think of the sounds of my own education, I think of examinations. I wonder if my entire learning experience was optimised to perform best in sports halls, surrounded by the air of seriousness and the incidental noises of hundreds of pairs of trainers fidgeting on a varnished wooden floor. This was my audio war paint for more than a decade - a colosseum composed of cavernous roofs, exposed ventilation pipes, and the gentle but constant clip of the invigilators’ heels as they ambled through a matrix of collapsible single-seater desks.
For a decade this was the domain in which I lived or died, more than a hundred times. I finished a Masters degree three years ago and I hope to now be free of examinations, no longer expected to perform in that controlled audio-environment. The years I didn’t sit exams, I took work invigilating them instead. I reappraised these soundscapes in which I’d spent so much of my life – where the tracks of my future were laid down like the vibrant contour lines of five different sports below my feet, amongst the patter of hundreds of writhing pens.
When invigilating you are forced to notice sound. An echoing cough. A dropped pencil case. Eased open soft-close doors. The sequential procession of escorted bathroom breaks. Extra sheets of paper meted out with the essential treasury tag. Oversized clocks. Perhaps I can take a surreptitious seat in the exam hall in May so I can concentrate – I can never seem to find that same spirit.
Parts of my sound environment are still beyond my control. Sitting now I can hear a ticking clock, my washing machine gently surging, children playing in the nearby nursery, the boiler at work, a train passing by the window, and late-winter birds chattering. There are also the sounds of my keyboard, my creaking chair, and my own breath. Muted by my office door, my partner enters the flat serenading the cats.
The portion of my sound environment I can influence, is the music. I use it to invoke emotions. Engineering the atmosphere to alter my state of mind. The process is alchemy, blending songs with my emotional state to create the desired tincture. Some genres always ally with certain sentiments. Death metal gives a provocative intensity. Plainsong raises an inquisitive clarity. On occasion, it is the memories attached to the music which conjure the mood.
The accompanying mix contains songs I use to coax emotions in myself while I study or teach. Spotify assures me these are among my most used tools. I will try to share how they affect my mindframe, and how this relates to learning.
O Successores – Hildegard von Bingen, Stevie Wishart, Sinfonye, Guy Sigsworth
This expressive vocal piece makes me feel sincere. The song was written in the 12th century and it makes me see the act of learning as rooted in deep human time.
A Case of You – James Blake
This is a piece expressing vulnerability; it brings to my mind the feeling of exposure to which we submit whenever we enter a learning environment.
Promises Movement 1 – Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders, London Symphony Orchestra
This music blesses you by removing any sense of urgency. From an unhurried foundation a gorgeous melody is allowed to rise – a metaphor for thriving in our working lives.
La donna è mobile (Rigoletto Act 3) – Giuseppe Verdi, Luciano Pavarotti
This is music swelled with mastery. After a lifetime acquiring skills, we can now perform with panache! The ovation, the adoration, and the acknowledgement that what you do is special. Bravissimo!
O Cessate Di Piagarmi (Arr. Voice & Electric Guitar) – Alessandro Scarlatti, Nora Fisher, Marnix Dorrestein
Operatic mastery without the bombast – a masterwork refined. Feeling skilful is important when learning and teaching, and this is music of confidence. There is a lovely synchronicity in the way this classical song has, like many of our educational methods, been digitally reimagined as a new thing of beauty.
Clay Pigeons - Blaze Foley
Teaching and learning are not always performed with the feeling of prowess. Often we need to do just enough to get by, just enough to manage for the day. This song speaks of exhaustion, of the glimmering hope we can see if we really try during a day of depression. The hope is the guitar riff, which never stops going despite it all.
Tàladh Chrìosda – Marit and Rona
The intense application of thought is devotional; it’s why we bow our heads to our laptops as we type. This Scots Gaelic carol is performed by a teacher of mine. In a moment of pandemic-classroom beauty, she sang this song to us over Zoom. Tapadh leat, a’Rona.
Puirt-À-Beul Set: Fodor Dha Na Gamhna Beaga – Julie Fowlis
Fun, rhythmic music developed for doing – dancing, waulking, and now typing. Like many of the songs here, I don’t understand the lyrics. Foreign tongues alter my sound atmosphere subtly. They bring companionship and contribute emotional flavour without sequestering my attention.
Swingin’ Spathiphyllums - Mort Garson
This music was composed to help plants thrive: a comforting thought. Its sense of mid-century technological optimism cultivates a growth mindset.
Addis – OM
This song is built around the Mahāmrityunjaya Mantra, a Sanskrit hymn. Another sacred piece of devotional music; it is uncomfortable to admit, but the otherness and mysticism that I feel listening to this brings me equanimity.
Both Sides the Tweed – Dick Gaughan
A song of reconciliatory beauty. England and Scotland are two sides of my identity felt intensely, and sometimes at odds. My academic identity has been forged entirely north of the Tweed, yet my entire childhood was spent in Yorkshire. This song twinkles with hope while also affirming difference. The swelling emotion of the song allows a level of sincerity in my work which otherwise can be hard to find – it is a song to elicit love.
Moon View – Emily A. Sprague
This music is a timeless bubble, like a video-game loading screen which allows me to drift into thought. It is not compelling, but gently reconfigures your audio surroundings so you cannot set your internal clock. Any sense of ‘when’ is obliterated.
Anti War Dub – Mala, Spen G
Some of my early transgressive forays into live music ended up at the iconic Subdub and Exodus nights at the West Indian Centre in Harehills. Listening helps me keep a grasp on my roots – the edge that I’m afeared of losing.
Run Outs – Alfa Mist
Jazz drumming is initiates and maintains ‘flow’ for me. I listen to a lot of albums in this vein to maintain headspace when the body is weak.
Here's To My Old Friends – Dancing Years
This haunting song gives catharsis through sadness. The fragility of the sound and the specificity of the lyrics produce nostalgia to rinse stress from my mind. The band went to my school, and the shared history between us heightens the song’s potency.
Organ Sonata No. 4, BWV 528: II. Andante [Adagio] (Transcribed by August Stradal) – Vikingur Ólafsson, Johann Sebastian Bach
Solo piano music inhabits the pitch range of the human voice. We are evolved to resonate more with those frequencies. It makes for lyrical compositions without words, and music that can be emotive while our attention is divided. Solo piano music doesn’t leave much sonic space for human voices, so it is ideal for subtly tuning out others’ conversations.
Piano Joint (This Kind of Love) – Michael Kiwanuka
A feeling of momentum is built from a sparse opening, with the resonant intonation: don’t let the pressure get to me.
Lady and Man – Khruangbin
As the meme states: Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.
SpottieOttieDopaliscious – Outkast
I end my selections with a fanfare. If I could feel like this song at the end of each day, each project, each term, I’d die a happy man.
Eddie Martin is PhD student within the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh, where he is researching sonification of biological sequences.
