You And Me Baby We Ain't Nothing' But Mammals

Where was I last night?
Funny you should ask. I was at Millenium Park, listening to the Grant Park Orchestra accompany segments of Planet Earth projected onto a huge screen. It's part of a six-concert tour (Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Baltimore, LA, Philadelphia), and it was - breathtaking. This is the best of sweeping movie music, guys.

Click here for a short interview with composer/conductor George Fulton. You know the BBC flew him to the Arctic to prep for the third installment of the documentary trilogy? Not a bad gig for a composer, am I right?

I'll leave you with this giant shark. (Imagine the music LIVE.)

Relax / Don't Do It / When You Want To Go To It

The Associated Press would like you to know that a new study "found playing classic music with specific ambiance sound such as dog barking, human conversation and crow's crow inserted over the music is the most effective combination to relax dogs."

Crows over Beethoven? I mean, okay.

(via io9) (thanks to dad!)

You Ain't Nothin' But A Hound Dog

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson are putting together "an inter-species social gathering on a scale never seen before in Australia" - by which I mean: a concert that centers around frequencies audible to dogs, but not to humans. The BBC asked for a comment from Ms. Anderson, who informed them that "The show... will last for 20 minutes as...'dogs don't have a giant concentration span'."

(BBC article)
(via metafilter)
(adorable photo! (entitled "happy dogs"))

Everything's Alright / Stuffed Animals Are Always Right

So, I stumbled across this website called Crappy Taxidermy? I don't remember how. I don't really want to talk about it.



You would like to see more specifically musical taxidermy? We are not the same, you and I.

They Call Her The Cat

IT'S REAL (well, sort of).


A Katzenklavier is a musical instrument such that a line of cats is put inside a keyboard with each key corresponding to a particular tail. You press a key, you hit a tail - it's like a Purina commercial, but with more pain-sounds. Put the cats in chromatic order according to their meow-pitch and you've got yourself a Katzenklavier.

BUT THERE'S MORE.

German physician Johann Christian Reil (1759 - 1813) used the Katzenklavier as the original cure for ADD (basically). He figured if the patient was exposed to this particular instrument, they wouldn't be able to do anything BUT focus. And he was probably right.

I don't think PETA would be into this, yo.

(via wikipedia)

Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?

The Cat Piano: by Eddie White and Ari Gibson, narrated Nick Cave
(And lest you think I am once again pandering to the cute musical animal thing, I'll have you know that this animated short is 1. very film noir, and 2. shortlisted for an Oscar.)



(via collaborativepiano)

Who Let The Dogs Out?

So you know the theme music for Law & Order? (Actually, I didn't before this. Anyway.) Dogs don't like it. An exposé in News.Com.Au helpfully summarizes the main points in a series of bullets right at the beginning of the article - here, let me recreate it for you:

* Theme music makes dogs howl
* Certain notes signal auditory nerve
* "They can't help it"




Poor puppies.

(via arbroath)