GENDER IN MUSIC CREATION

Progenitors

In ancient mythology, the “world parents” were the progenitors of all life and represented across cultures as the ouroboros — a circular snake, eating its tail. The edges of reality were bounded by this circle, self-sustaining by being eternally fed off of itself. The symbol was understood to be a joining of feminine and masculine archetypes, created by the joining the feminine circular womb and masculine phallic snake.

Brain Changes

Music is a fundamental pattern which contains the vibrations of all things at the molecular level, perhaps a vibration pattern of consciousness itself. It also modifies communication across brain hemispheres. Male brains tend towards siloed, object oriented thought and information (gray matter), while female brains tend towards white matter (speed of signal transfer, communication). In men, playing music thus results in increased communication across right and left brain hemispheres through the corpus callosum. In women, it results in streamlined communication across right and left brain hemispheres, reducing excess chatter.

Hemispheric Synchronization

This is because the right and left hands, which are governed by different hemispheres, must work together, and the future-seeking right brain must continually feed the upcoming note pattern or harmonic intuition to the left brain. The process often reductive in female brains which must gain the meditative, hypnotic focus typical of siloed male cognitive function / problem-solving. Thus the fundamental pattern of music and rendering it within the individual causes a person to move closer to the center in their functional capability — more intentional, more diverse, and more empathic towards the other gender.

Music Replicates Gendered Patterns

Now here’s the epiphany, or insanity. After years studying and working in music, I’m excited be seeing this idea, which was right in front of me continually. Ironically this only occurred after leaving the industry. Music itself can only be created by designing material matter in a shape symbolic of both genders. Sound generation requires a resonant chamber (feminine) joined to an elongated, phallic, masculine seed component, the source of the vibration even in an electronic speaker, a masculine striking magnet vibrates against a resonant dome and chamber.

Examples

In the guitar, this is the resonant body and the circular sound hole joined to the elongated phallic neck. Designers know this at a subconscious level. Electric guitars have a body shaped in a curved feminine arc while the headstock is a square or sharp masculine. In the piano, it is the feminine resonant box joined to the elongated strings and masculine striking of piano keys activating hammers. In wind instruments it is the elongation of this circle into a snake-like tube which gives birth to sound upon the insertion of breath — a word which can also mean spirit or wind. Even the vocal box requires this elongated system and resonant chamber.

Coalescence

This is kind of insane. Music, the fundamental pattern of ordered resonant frequencies, balances players into the unisex generative cognition by moving masculine or feminine neurocognitive processing towards unity with their opposite force. Similarity, uncannily, it can only be generated by a unification of masculine and feminine symbolic patterns wherein an elongated vibrating structure joins a circular curved resonant chamber which gestates and births sound.

Relationship

We see this pattern elsewhere. Tony Robbins, through his life coaching relationship conferences, has popularized the idea of masculine and feminine energies. He notes the need to balance a relationship between the two energies, whether the male or female embodies the male or female energy. Coaching relationships from this position can be highly beneficial to individuals seeking balance, both recognizing excessive agreeableness or aggression.

Nuance & Application

This is not a commentary on the polarity of gender — clearly there is biological and psychological nuance. Working as a life coach requires my acceptance of the individual’s state of being, experiences, and opposing forces. We also see that songs can move from masculine to feminine and instruments can use gentle resonance or striking. The importance is the reminder of joining things together, working together to produce something beautiful — a dance with a leader and a follower, an empathetic relationship with intention which is affirmed, giving and receiving, and even the production of sound itself.

~ Dave S. Wallace, MS Psy