Speaker 1: This is pet Life Radio. Let's talk pets.
Speaker 2: Hello, cat levers, Welcome to Cat I Tude. I'm your
show host, Michelle Bird. You know, we do so much
for our fur babes, right for everything for cats we have,
you know, what they could sit on and eat and
treats and this and that. But we even go further.
We you know, think about what they're watching, what they're
listening to, especially what they're listening to, because let's face it,
cats unmust they're watching birds or something. I don't know,
at least mine are not that into TV, but they
love to listen. And my guest today created something especially
for cats for their enjoyment to listen. So stay tuned.
We'll be right back.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone. I'd like to welcome David Tye. He's
a cellist with the National Symphony Orchestra and a pioneering
research in species specific music. He's done work with the
University of Wisconsin Madison and Louisiana State University and has
produced the first peer reviewed studies demonstrating that music composed
specifically for cats has a calming effect. David, Welcome to
Caatitude Mischell.
Speaker 5: Great to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to have you on. First, I want to
say this, So you are a cellist. I mean I
have no music talent at all, so I am always
in awe of people that can, you know, create music.
So you're a cellist. What made you decide to record
something for cats?
Speaker 5: Well, it started when I was researching how music effects humans,
and it took me a few years. But I took
a kind of a novel approach. I like kind of
took music apart, found the separable elements such as pulse.
Pulse is something that's found in the music of all cultures,
and I tried to figure out, so where would that
come from, why would we respond to that? And so
it took a few years to go through and try
to find plausible answers for each of them. But when
I was done, they basically came up two categories. One
based on vocalizations and for humans that's like the scream
or like oh, or affectionate vocalizations, the emotional vocalizations, and
then another category of sounds that we heard when we
were in the womb, like the pulse, the respiration, your
mother's voice. And so basically at that point I thought, okay,
I've got a the Any good theory is testable. So
I decided to write music for another animal. So basically,
if I had figured out the recipe if you will
for music, if I take the ingredients that are now
of course all designed for humans and replace them with
ingredients that were designed for another animal, I should be
able to write music it's effective for that animal. So
I first started with cotton top tamarin monkeys, and so
I composed music for them. They sent it off to
the University of Wisconsin, and they tested music compared with
controls with their monkeys, and it was effective. It was
the first music to be shown to be effective for
any animal other than humans. And that's when though, I thought, well,
not very many people have monkeys, So I tried cats.
Speaker 2: Why cats besides instead of dogs?
Speaker 5: Well, uh, dogs are very different breeds. You know, cats
are basically pretty similar, the same size, the same you know,
might say interests. Dogs have been bred to be very
many different sizes and their attentions are very different, and
so I just thought it would be be more likely
to hit the target if I find one, excuse me,
one species that is consistent. And cats are much more
consistent across the breeds than.
Speaker 2: Dogs, right, I wonder if it has something to do that.
There's still some theories that say they're not quite domesticated.
I mean, they are the ones that live in our house,
but they're still not as domesticated as dogs have been
over the.
Speaker 5: I would totally agree with that. In fact, I look
at it the way cats found us, right, and they
come to us, But dogs, we went to them and
bred them for service. Cats they just found it handy
to be hanging around with humans.
Speaker 2: I think okay, and so your album Music for Cats
is the first album of its kind. Now, would you
call yourself a zoo musicologist.
Speaker 5: Well, I've seen that, but frankly, I don't like the
I don't like the term very much.
Speaker 2: Forget it then.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I forget it. Yeah, I think of Actually, truthfully,
the way I think of it is that music is
just music, and by far the most music we've heard
of is music designed by and for humans. But it's
basically the same if you design it for another species.
So I have thought in the past that hopefully in
a hundred years, I thought, well, people have to be
taught that music was once only for humans. But I
think that's probably, you know, a little optimistic, but I
think I still think it'd be nice. I just think
of it as music.
Speaker 2: Okay, Now let me ask this. So I'm curious how
you figured out what music would be best for cats.
I know you went into some you know a little
bit of that in your intro. But I play smooth
jazz for my cats sometimes, and I've heard they liked
that and they're like reggae, which is very different. So
did you think about what is popular with cats, what
you've heard about that's popular with cats. How did you
decide this is the kind of music that should be
in my music for Cats album, I went about it.
Speaker 5: The same way as I did for the Monkeys. I
basically started with their vocalizations, and one, of course, the
perr is a go to vocalization because they, as we know,
the per when they're content, but they also per when
they're in pain, and they don't per when they're all
by themselves, so it is a communication. So I think
of it as something like the human moan that we
moan in pleasure and in pain. It seems like it's
an odd thing to have the same vocalization for such
very different feelings, but they're both intended to elicit a
kind of a sympathy from the listener. Is kind of
a moan is like you feel me with something, And
so the cat purr is roughly similar to our moon.
So it's not hard to imagine music human music that
has moan type of sounds in the music. And so
I developed a bunch of different instruments that basically stylize
the purr.
Speaker 2: So you created instruments to make the sound that you.
Speaker 5: Wanted right in any of my music. I don't actually
use the sounds of the animals in the music, but
just like human music, I've created instruments that create kind
of stylized versions of it. The idea is that music
is something that we don't have situate to it. In
other words, it still gets to us. You know, I'm
seventy now and I still enjoy a brom symphony as
much as I did when I was young. And so
the idea is that if you get used to something,
it turns off the emotional response to it, Like if
you buy a refrigerator and it clinks when it makes
the ice. At first you'll notice it, but eventually that
gets turned off because it's just you know, your brain says,
don't worry, it's not a threat, so don't pay any
attention to it. So we don't even hear it anymore
after a while. But I have a feeling that if
there was like a sound outside your window every night
and you never knew what it was, you never identified it,
I think you would always hear that sound. So that's
the reason I create instruments that aren't exactly the same
as the animal sound. It's not really a purr, but
it's enough like a pur so that hopefully the cats
would continue to respond to the communication of it, even
though it hasn't identified that as yeah, that's you know,
that's another cat or something.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what you've said, I can infer that basically
cats don't respond to music the same as humans, or do.
Speaker 5: They They don't, that's correct. I think in fact, they
will respond to music that's designed for them. For you know.
The other example is pulse. We have pulse, but the
cat that's because we listened to our mother's pulse for
four months before we were worn, and the brain structure
is responsible for our emotions are almost completely formed at
birth for humans. But the cat brain is only like
one eighth the size at birth of what it will
be at ten weeks, so it mostly has brain development
outside the wound. So the cat pulse won't matter. But
I think that the sound of suckling is the sound
that every cat will have heard. It's a reward related
Every cat will have heard that as their brains were developing.
So basically, so in the category over pulse for humans,
now you've got swishing sound of suckling, four cats.
Speaker 2: Okay, thank you. Is there a specific type of beat
or melody that cats are attracted to, or is it
just the combination of the sounds.
Speaker 5: I try to go after the combination of the sounds,
and otherwise I like to keep it like regular and
pure because it's part of the theory that purity, like
a pure sound is like. And then a harsh sound
was a threat, which is so that's across many species,
including birds and reptiles. That high pure tends to be affectionate.
Low harsh is a threat. But it depends on you
know your own species. Because what's high to us is
low to a cotton top timer and monkey, and what's
high to a cotton top temor and monkey is low
to a bat. So you have to get it right
in the vocal range. So there is something some music
that I avoid in the low register of a cat's
vocalizing because that's where a cat will tend to express
irritation or a threat, So I do avoid that. Otherwise,
I keep the music pure and include those elements that
I've gotten from the cat's vocalizations and brain development.
Speaker 2: Okay, and what kind of sound would be a threat to.
Speaker 5: A cat, Well, a harsh sound like a hiss wish
you know they hiss but also a harsh sound in
the basically lower treble cleft.
Speaker 2: Okay, so for those that are like like music, but
that's about it. What does that sound like?
Speaker 5: Right? That would say sound like well, basically, I kind
of a I can get the picture right. It's kind
of a irritating sound. It's not pure, Yeah, it as
harsh and in that basically roughly the register that I
just sang in. Now Here's one thing is interesting is
that the music that I created for the monkeys, I've
created two kinds, one to get them riled up and
one to get them calmed down. At least it was
intended to do so. And the researchers found both types
of music irritating. And so I thought, well, if I
create music for cats that's irritating to their owners, they're
just not going to turn it on. And so in
the lower register, the cats can hear there, but they
don't vocalize, so it doesn't kind of it's trafficnized to them.
That's where I put music that I intend to appeal
to the owners. So it's kind of like two levels
the music. The lower music is designed to to the
humans and the music and the upper register, the higher frequencies.
That's all for the cats.
Speaker 2: Keep the family happy. Okay. On that note, we're gonna
take short break in and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 5: Let's talk past.
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Speaker 2: Welcome back everyone. We're talking to David Tye. Who is
He's a music expert and he made created the first
album for cats so it's called music for cats. So, David,
when we played your music for our cats, what should
we expect? Should they be chill? Will this changed neurotic
cats to common cats, or just you know, entertains them.
Speaker 5: If they respond at all, they'll tend to be calmed.
But it doesn't work for all cats. In fact, the
older cats don't tend to respond as much as the
younger cats. I was interested to find from the researchers
that said that those cats that are the most in
need of comfort tend to be the most comforted by it,
like the formally abused cats that have been adopted or
formally feral cats. And so the cats that don't respond,
I'm guessing that they tend to be pretty happy. And
so it's but something like I don't know, seven out
of ten cats do respond, and the yeah, they tend
to come toward the speaker or the person who's playing it,
or snuggle up against the speaker the music, and it's
all designed to calm the cats. As you can imagine.
The music that I designed for the monkeys to get
them riled up is basically monkey heavy metal. You know,
it would be possible to write that for cats, but
I don't think anybody wants that in their house.
Speaker 2: So only if it helps that fat ones get exercise.
Speaker 5: Well we have, we have a couple of them, and
so one of those specially, maybe that's a good idea.
Maybe I should get them out there and yeah.
Speaker 2: An exercise. I have two ideas and exercise, you know,
home for cats why, I mean humans dance? Maybe cats
have a frequency or picture because I don't know what
I'm talking about when it comes to music stuffics that
I like to hear. It gets them moving. And the
other thing is you're talking about how it comes, you know,
seven to ten cats. I thought there's so much crazy
in the world these days there is not one for humans,
or maybe there is that we could put on like loudspeakers,
especially over areas where there's like traffic and gridlock, to
just calm people.
Speaker 5: That would be a good idea. Part of the problem
with human music is that we've heard it forever, right
all the time, and people people come up with their
you know, the idea identify with something. In fact, I
remember was an in law brother in law who I
was playing some music and I love this music, and
my mother in law loved it too. He hated it.
He was just like, oh, turn it off, gross awful.
And so people tend to have kind of preconceived notions
of what they like and what they don't, whereas, at
least with cats, you're starting from scratch. They don't care
at all basically about human music, and so so it's
you know, basically you're they're working with music that for
them to hear something that is in their register that
aligns with their vocalizations. It's a fairly new thing, and
the communication that comes through is, you know, come something
that's communal and designed to calm them, and so they
tend to respond well to it.
Speaker 2: I generally, like my has to have music when I
work a lot remotely and I want them to be
chill in the house. So sometimes they're already listening to something.
So how would they take to listening to music for cats?
And also do I need to introduce them to music
for cats in a certain way.
Speaker 5: I think they would do well with the music for cats.
I think you don't really need to introduce them to it.
I think the only problems would be if you have
a great speaker system. If you're a real audio file
and you have huge speakers, that could give you a
great base response and turn it up loud. The music
could sound like a giant cat or something. And so
the per sounds are designed to be played through smaller speakers,
you know, computers or what you might have in your kitchen.
And so I do think that if you were to
put it through so a big audiophile music system, it
might be too much for the cat. But otherwise it
should be something that you can just put on and
leave on and they should enjoy it.
Speaker 2: Should I expect to see my cats may be less
stressed after listening to music for cats.
Speaker 5: If your cats are stressed, I think you can expect
to see them less stressed. I think that's you know,
like I say, it's not going to work for every cat,
but more likely you will see a difference. If your
cats are already very chill and happy, you may not
notice any difference at all. And so I remember the
very first one of the first articles that came out
that was in the New York Times, when I was
talking to the journalist and she said she had a
cat that was had been a feeral cat was bouncing
off the walls, and she tried the music, and the
cat just hurled around the speaker and just lay there
with this music.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: And so I've had a number of people and sometimes, truthfully,
I get tears in my eyes. So there was one
who had adopted this cat that was always under the table,
always gone, basically didn't see the cat at all. And
she put the music on the computer, was on her lap,
and the cat for the first time came up sat
in her lap. And when she wrote to me about that,
I just thought, Okay, now I can count my life
at least to be you know, I have something something
I've done that I feel is valuable.
Speaker 2: I imagine you've done a lot of valuable things. That's amazing.
I was just thinking shelters would probably benefit a lot,
and rescues.
Speaker 5: Yes, we made it a policy right from the start
that we send the music for free to shelters and
rescues and veterinarians that do not practice decline.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 5: The second study of the cats was that was done
Louisiana State University was clinical applications, and so they played
this music before the evaluations of the cats, and they
found that it had a calming effect. And I was
happy to hear that too, because it can be difficult
for a cat to be brought into an environment like
a veterinarian's office, and so yeah, I think that's it
can be valuable in that kind of situation as well,
or as when they're transporting, if you're taking your cat
from one place to another, which is for a territorial
animal like a cat, can be a bit of a
you know, stressful event. It's good to have this music
on and kind of in the background, confirms that everything's fine,
nothing to worry about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have to tell you funny visual. As you
were talking about traveling with your cat and the music,
I got this visual of little tiny headphones. Don't ask
me why, And I thought, I don't think you could
do that to a cat, But you know, I think
it's one could you.
Speaker 5: I don't think so, because I've tried for for quite
a while to make music for horses, and because we
have three horses and looking at them right now, and
one of the things I tried was to put kind
of the music into earplugs and it did not work
at all.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, I could see that. I think maybe
headphones maybe, but they don't like keeping anything on. And
I'm not sorry, guys, I'm not a fan of clothes
for you know, your pets, unless you live in a
frigid place.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, I think I won't be making any headphones.
Speaker 2: So what do you think the future holds? Is there
going to be a music for cats too? You could
make a dance album for cats.
Speaker 5: You know that it's interesting that you bring that up.
I don't mind saying that. I have haven't heard that
idea before, and I like the idea. However, as soon
as I thinking about it, you know, I think dance
is the original art form for human beings, and I
think a good part of music and dance it's just
an ancient combination. But I think that for a cat
that puts his pause down so quietly, I don't think
that sound ever reached the cat's ears really, you know,
they're stealthy and so yeah, I think it'd be a
tough go to try to make dance music for cats.
I can say I've already put out a second album,
so there are two music for cats albums out there.
Speaker 2: Okay, And I know cats don't necessarily dance, but is
there music that possibly could get them moving more?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think there might be. I put in I
made one song that's available as a single. It's called
Spooks Diddy, and it was designed to get cats more excited.
And I think if you put little mouse vocalizations, they'd
certainly be interested in that. It's one of the reasons
they can hear so high is to track mice. But again,
I'll just have to admit that I have a feeling
that trying to create music that will get cats excited
is it's something that I think for most people, it's
going to be something that's you know, they wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Use very often negative exciting versus exciting.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have a feeling that if I put out
music that's calming, and if it's calming, good, and if
it's not calming, it's probably just nothing. You know, fine,
everybody could be fairly happy with that. But if you
put out music that's designed to get them excited, I
have a feeling that there are a number of people
that are say, wow, what's what have we done? Yeah, it's like, ah,
so I'll have to think about that. I'll have to think.
Speaker 2: About it at Lose the Inner Craziest super Zooms. So, David,
thank you so much for coming on Catitude. Where can
people find out more about you, and where can they
find music for cats?
Speaker 5: Well, music for cats. There's a website Music for Cats, Spotify,
Apple Music, Amazon Music. It's on the streaming platforms. Most people,
I think, find that the easiest, and for people who
still have CD players, we send out CDs from the website.
But more about me, somebody put up a Wikipedia page
and so I guess that that's a place to go.
But I don't think I'm as interesting as the cat
music is. I you're too humble, see well, thank you.
I think it feels good to be if you asked
about what's next. Basically, what's next for me just to
create music for more animals. I've been struggling with dogs
and they're very challenging. I think it will be possible.
But in general, I think that for the species that
are out there that are becoming viable only in captivity
because we're taking over the planet, I think the least
we can do is to get them in an environment
where we have something of comfort that's designed for them.
And so that's what I'm going after, is to try
to create music for captive species. And because we tend
to throw them into it, you know, like basically at
jail and put in an old tire and call it enrichment.
And you know, I think we deserve more than that.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you so much for coming on
Ctitude and thank you for doing what you do. Because
creating calming and wonderful music for our furbades to chill.
I think it's just all positive. Think of it long term.
If your cats are calmer, you know, more will get adopted.
Let's uganize, and you know for other species there was
just very different benefits possibly, but so many benefits. I mean,
who doesn't want their for a kid to be calmed
and feel good?
Speaker 5: Right? I agree? I agree. I'm hoping that there will
be more and more music out there for people and
for the other animals. So thanks very much for having
me on.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on Catitude. I hope you all enjoyed
this show. Thanks to David Tie, who created the world's
first album for cats called Music for Cats. Thank you
so much David for coming on Catitude. I want to
thank my listening audience for listening to Catitude for all
these years. Thank you share it. There's been a lot
of knowledge and interesting things on this show over the
last let's say, because nine years, so please share the
information with your friends. For Catitude, Michelle Fern and I
want to give it. Thank you to my listening audience Mollie,
Charlotte and Dennis who were listeners of Music for Cats
and my most neuroticat is Charlotte and she was definitely
definitely seem calmer. I was a little bit shocked by it,
and be sure to check out the album again Music
for Cats by David Tye. And of course the show
would not be the same without my producer Mark Winter
working his magic. Thank you Mark, and hey, remember lose
the attitude, have the catitude.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk pets every week on demand only on petlifradio
dot com.