You / Light Up My Life

This is...just the coolest.

Dr. Charles Limb, an otolaryngologist from Johns Hopkins, is conducting experiments trying to get at the neurological basis of musical creativity. Specifically: he put jazz musicians and freestyle rappers in an fMRI machine to learn how activity in the brain changes when musicians improvise v. when they perform memorized material.

I know this TED talk is 17 min, but you can hack it: you're on spring break!
No? Okay fine, here are the results highlights: 10'30" and 15'40". (But it really is worth watching the whole thing. And besides: what a charismatic otolaryngologist!)




(via metafilter)

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!)

I Need Some Fine Wine And You, You Need To Be Nicer

Chilean winemaker Aurelio Montes sponsored a Heriot Watt University study that found how a wine tastes changes up to 60% depending on the music played while drinking it. (60% of what? Don't ask. I don't know.)

The point here, kids, is that cabernet sauvignon is most affected by "powerful" music, while chardonnay moves on "zingy".

Recommended wine and music pairings at the BBC...

(via fridayinformer)

Get Into The Groove / Boy You've Got To Prove Your Love To Me

This is...groovy. By which I mean: this is a photo of a vinyl record as seen under an electron microscope. Check out the whole gallery.



(via boingboing)

My Hands Shake / My Knees Quake

Micah Frank just finished the prototype for Tectonic - a sound sculpture created by real-time synthesis of seismic activity.

From the website:

When an earthquake occurs, seismic data is relayed to the system, sound is produced and Google Earth immediately flies to the coordinates of the latest earthquake giving us a visual representation of the newest developments. As multiple earthquakes occur daily, the sculpture builds, enmeshing itself in a complex soundscape of textures and tones - every second, different from the last and never repeating the same stage twice.

Music! and Science! and Computers! and Natural Disasters! All together!




(via nerdcore)

She Blinded Me With Science

(By graphic designer / illustrator Glenn Jones, via vectortuts+
PS: you can get this design [entitled "Experimental Music" harhar] on a t-shirt.)

There Were Bells On A Hill / But I Never Heard Them Ringing

My tinnitus (can I claim it like that?) is usually tuned to a B-flat.

Apparently, scientists are finding that if I were to remove all the B-flats from the music I listen to, my tinnitus (I'm claiming it) would decrease in loudness. Researchers think that either a re-wiring of the auditory cortex causes the brain to focus on different pitches, or that the auditory neurons ascribe to a "use-it-or-lose-it" philosophy.

I think getting rid of the B-flats would adversely effect my musicology career.

The rest of the article at Discover Magazine.


(special thanks to Maureen, image via tinnitus-tinnitus.org)

And I'm Tangled Up In You

You know how you can put your headphones on the table, turn away for two seconds, and when you look back they're a tangled mess? You put them in your bag, walk two blocks, and when you pull them out again they're one big knot?

Dorian Raymer and Douglas Smith of UCSD studied the physics of random knotting. Moral of the story? Any kind of tumbling or turning = tangles. And there's nothing you can do about it.

(Still doesn't explain the mystery of the tabletop, though. Music-hating gnomes, probably.)

(via bookforum, photo credit Raymer and Smith)

Oh Say Can You See?

This is the world's smallest guitar.
Made out of crystalline silicon, it's about the length of a single human blood cell. And the strings? We're talking maybe 100 atoms wide.

Sure, but how does the sound hold up next to a Martin D-50 K-2 Deluxe?

Cornell University Nanofabrication Facility, 1997
(via weburbanist)