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The philosopher Plato once said,
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"Music gives a soul to the universe,
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wings to the mind,
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flight to the imagination
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and life to everything."
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Music has always been
a big part of my life.
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To create and to perform music
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connects you to people
countries and lifetimes away.
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It connects you to the people
you're playing with,
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to your audience
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and to yourself.
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When I'm happy, when I'm sad,
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when I'm bored, when I'm stressed,
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I listen to and I create music.
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When I was younger, I played piano;
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later, I took up guitar.
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And as I started high school,
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music became a part of my identity.
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I was in every band,
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I was involved with every
musical fine arts event.
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Music surrounded me.
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It made me who I was,
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and it gave me a place to belong.
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Now, I've always had
this thing with rhythms.
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I remember being young,
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I would walk down
the hallways of my school
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and I would tap rhythms to myself
on my leg with my hands,
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or tapping my teeth.
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It was a nervous habit,
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and I was always nervous.
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I think I liked the repetition
of the rhythm --
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it was calming.
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Then in high school,
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I started music theory,
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and it was the best class I've ever taken.
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We were learning about music --
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things I didn't know,
like theory and history.
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It was a class where we basically
just listened to a song,
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talked about what it meant to us
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and analyzed it,
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and figured out what made it tick.
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Every Wednesday, we did something
called "rhythmic dictation,"
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and I was pretty good at it.
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Our teacher would give us
an amount of measures
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and a time signature,
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and then he would speak a rhythm to us
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and we would have to write it down
with the proper rests and notes.
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Like this:
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ta ta tuck-a tuck-a ta,
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ta tuck-a-tuck-a-tuck-a, tuck-a.
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And I loved it.
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The simplicity of the rhythm --
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a basic two- to four- measure line --
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and yet each of them almost told a story,
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like they had so much potential,
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and all you had to do was add a melody.
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(Guitar)
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Rhythms set a foundation for melodies
and harmonies to play on top of.
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It gives structure and stability.
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Now, music has these parts --
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rhythm, melody and harmony --
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just like our lives.
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Where music has rhythm,
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we have routines and habits --
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things that help us to remember
what to do and to stay on track,
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and to just keep going.
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And you may not notice it,
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but it's always there.
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(Guitar)
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And it may seem simple,
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it may seem dull by itself,
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but it gives tempo and heartbeat.
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And then things in your life add on to it,
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giving texture --
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that's your friends and your family,
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and anything that creates
a harmonic structure in your life
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and in your song,
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like harmonies,
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cadences
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and anything that makes it polyphonic.
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And they create beautiful
chords and patterns.
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(Guitar)
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And then there's you.
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You play on top of everything else,
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on top of the rhythms and the beat
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because you're the melody.
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And things may change and develop,
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but no matter what we do,
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we're still the same people.
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Throughout a song melodies develop,
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but it's still the same song.
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No matter what you do,
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the rhythms are still there:
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the tempo and the heartbeat ...
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until I left,
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and I went to college
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and everything disappeared.
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When I first arrived at university,
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I felt lost.
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And don't get me wrong --
sometimes I loved it and it was great,
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but other times,
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I felt like I had been left alone
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to fend for myself.
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It's like I had been taken out
of my natural environment,
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and put somewhere new,
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where the rhythms and the harmonies
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and the form had gone away,
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and it was just me --
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(Guitar)
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silence and my melody.
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And even that began to waver,
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because I didn't know what I was doing.
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I didn't have any chords
to structure myself,
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or a rhythm
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or a beat to know the tempo.
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(Guitar)
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And then I began to hear
all these other sounds.
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(Guitar)
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And they were off-time
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and off-key.
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And the more I was around them,
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the more my melody started
to sound like theirs.
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And slowly I began to lose myself,
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like I was being washed away.
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But then the next moment --
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(Guitar)
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I could hear it.
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And I could feel it.
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And it was me.
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And I was here.
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And it was different,
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but not worse off.
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Just changed a little.
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Music is my way of coping
with the changes in my life.
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There's a beautiful connection
between music and life.
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It can bind us to reality
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at the same time
it allows us to escape it.
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Music is something
that lives inside of you.
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You create it and you're created by it.
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Our lives are not only conducted by music,
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they're also composed of it.
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So this may seem like a bit of a stretch,
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but hear me out:
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music is a fundamental part of what we are
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and of everything around us.
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Now, music is my passion,
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but physics also used to be
an interest of mine.
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And the more I learned,
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the more I saw connections
between the two --
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especially regarding string theory.
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I know this is only one of many theories,
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but it spoke to me.
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So, one aspect of string theory,
at its simplest form, is this:
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matter is made up of atoms,
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which are made up of protons
and neutrons and electrons,
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which are made up of quark.
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And here's where the string part comes in.
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This quark is supposedly made up
of little coiled strings,
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and it's the vibrations of these strings
that make everything what it is.
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Michio Kaku once explained this
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in a lecture called,
"The Universe in a Nutshell,"
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where he says,
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"String theory is the simple idea
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that the four forces of the universe --
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gravity, the electromagnetic force,
and the two strong forces --
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can be viewed as music.
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The music of tiny little rubber bands."
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In this lecture, he goes on
to explain physics
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as the laws of harmony
between these strings;
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chemistry, as the melodies
you can play on these strings;
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and he states that the universe
is a "symphony of strings."
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These strings dictate the universe;
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they make up everything we see
and everything we know.
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They're musical notes,
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but they make us what we are
and they hold us together.
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So you see,
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everything is music.
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(Guitar)
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When I look at the world,
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I see music all around us.
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When I look at myself,
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I see music.
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And my life has been defined by music.
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I found myself through music.
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Music is everywhere,
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and it is in everything.
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And it changes and it builds
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and it diminishes.
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But it's always there,
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supporting us,
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connecting us to each other
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and showing us the beauty of the universe.
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So if you ever feel lost,
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stop and listen for your song.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)