[MUSIC] Why do we listen to music? What do you think? And while you're contemplating that, let me ask you another question. What is the one talent that all effective recording artists must have? Now this is a talent that is shared by Miles Davis and Miley Cyrus. What do you think, what do those two recording artists have in common? What does NWA have in common with Doris Day, for instance? What skill, what talent do both of those artists share? What about the jazz pianist Bill Evans? What talent, what skill does Bill Evans have in common with Deadmau5? Two entirely different styles of music, but they share the same talent. I would put forth to you that the one non-negotiable talent that all recording artists must possess, it is the ability to convey emotion through music. Now, if you think about recording artists, a lot of them deal with a very specific palette of emotions. Think of Rage Against The Machine, for instance. You know exactly what you're signing up for when you put on a Rage Against The Machine record, because the name of the emotion that they tend to convey is right there in the title of the group. Other artists will sometimes put the emotion that they're trying to convey right there in the title of the song. Think about Happy, by Pharrell. Or, Dont Worry, Be Happy by Bobby McFerrin several years before. People like Bruce Springsteen deal in a palette of emotion that includes inspiration and nostalgia. Great albums, too, are incredible conveyors of an emotional palette. Think about Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The best selling jazz record of all time has a very specific palette of emotion. So you know that that's the perfect record to put on if you're going to be fixing dinner for your lover, your husband or wife, or boyfriend, or girlfriend and you want to have a nice romantic evening that's going to be sensuous or contemplative. And that's going to set that emotional palette. Thriller, by Michael Jackson, again has the name of the emotion right there in the title. It's very thrilling. It's very exhilarating. It's very exciting. So the way that music makes us feel is really why we go there in the first place. Maya Angelou had a really interesting thing to say about this when she said, I've learned that people will forget what you say, people will forget what you do, but people will never forget how you made them feel. How we make our audience members feel when we make a recording is the most important thing that we do when we set out to make a record. So think about that when you're making your recordings. We're going to explore how to do that in this course.