Quantizing Your Pulse: The Heart Is A Drum Machine

By Adam McIntyre

“Why music?”

The Heart Is A Drum Machine attempts to answer that question in several ways with testimonials from musicians, actors, scientists, and doctors. Bookending the film are two little pieces with Ann Druyan, producer of the Cosmos television series (starring her husband, the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan) and the human responsible for choosing the music on the Golden Record included during the deep space probe of Voyager. Even if you don’t believe in life on other planets, including this record on Voyager is a gesture of poignant optimism; it’s entirely likely that the record would be damaged or misunderstood in purpose when discovered.

However, music expresses something far deeper and more intangible about us than other forms of communication. It would be sad not to share Earth’s music. So with that said, “what is music, and what does it mean?”

Several people take a nervous stab at answering that question, and the answers range from nothing (except music itself) to everything. Once we’ve been drawn in by some amusing and poignant blanket testimonials, the film starts to tackle what’s going on scientifically. Why, physically, do we like music?

It could go so much deeper here, deep into string theory and the ideas that we’re basically all made of vibrations. . . you know, maybe that might be hard for some viewers to hang onto. The Heart Is A Drum Machine seeks instead seeks to point out that when we come into existence, we’re accompanied by the sound of a heartbeat, that it’s the first music that we know, and also that we can hardly help it if music makes us feel good.

It’s not just testimonials; there are humorous asides like “Eddie Kramer’s Ear,” a short presentation on how our ear works. [Adult Swim] stars Tim & Eric give us an insightful songwriting lesson. We also see the funny (and somewhat depressing) segment on a pair of “hit makers” sculpting a youngster into a chart-topping racehorse. There’s also a touching segment on deaf musicians. Not kidding.

In the end, it’s a pretty satisfying watch, with a spacey soundtrack courtesy of Steven Drozd of the Flaming Lips, whose lead singer Wayne Coyne only gets about ten seconds of screen time. This is hilarious if you’ve ever spoken to Coyne about music; he could do his own Ken Burns-style 52-part documentary for PBS on the subject.

It’s John Frusciante who has the majority of the film’s intelligent, most affecting, and insightful comments. My main complaint was that I was left with the urge to watch more of the ex-Chili Peppers guitarist talking about music, a topic he clearly understands and thinks about all the time. I wondered if perhaps there were longer interview segments in the bonus features and I was right; the singular bonus feature is an extended interview with Frusciante. It’s a bit like sitting down with him and listening to him ramble for almost an hour. The producers (who also brought us the documentary/tribute Moog) clearly thought there was a good reason for including it, and I concur.

I can’t really imagine someone who’s into music not liking The Heart Is A Drum Machine. Likely there will be those who won’t want to live without it in their DVD collections, but some will simply want to rent it for a slow Wednesday night.

Watch the trailer for The Heart Is A Drum Machine here. You can order the DVD from Amazon here.