Even though this video has some typos (:-\), it also has some EXCELLENT information on the condition known as synaesthesia:
Synaesthesia is a neurological condition that causes another sense to activate when one sense does. It's of particular interest to music psychologists because it means some people can see music.
Here's an NPR article explaining the effect on musicians.
Synaesthesia.com has good information too, as well as a synaesthesia test!
The video game Rez was made to allow other people to experience synaesthesia too. Watch this video and see if you can imagine feeling like this every time you hear music:
Friday, December 9, 2011
Taylor Swift Demonstrates Musical Schema
What are these?
The same song, right? So what's going on?
Humans like categorizing things, and that extends to music as well. Some categories are easy. You can likely tell the difference between something like this and this (even though they ARE connected in a round about way, actually!)
Sometimes pop artists will release two versions of songs, like Ms. Swift did, to appeal to both markets, in this case the pop market and the country market. It increases album sales. Shania Twain did the same thing with her album Up!.
(In relation to the last post, you can still tell that both songs are Love Story, of course, because they share the same melody with the same intervals and have the same harmonic structure, even if they're presented differently.)
The Music Genome Project is the most expansive project to classify music to date. The idea is to classify music using a list of attributes, create a list of those attributes for every song, and then determine how similar songs are to each other.
This technology allows us to have Pandora, a music streaming service that guesses what music you might like when you tell it either a specific song or a category of songs. Pandora's success as a service shows how well The Music Genome Project works.
You can see a list of attributes The Music Genome Project uses here.
The same song, right? So what's going on?
Humans like categorizing things, and that extends to music as well. Some categories are easy. You can likely tell the difference between something like this and this (even though they ARE connected in a round about way, actually!)
Sometimes pop artists will release two versions of songs, like Ms. Swift did, to appeal to both markets, in this case the pop market and the country market. It increases album sales. Shania Twain did the same thing with her album Up!.
(In relation to the last post, you can still tell that both songs are Love Story, of course, because they share the same melody with the same intervals and have the same harmonic structure, even if they're presented differently.)
The Music Genome Project is the most expansive project to classify music to date. The idea is to classify music using a list of attributes, create a list of those attributes for every song, and then determine how similar songs are to each other.
This technology allows us to have Pandora, a music streaming service that guesses what music you might like when you tell it either a specific song or a category of songs. Pandora's success as a service shows how well The Music Genome Project works.
You can see a list of attributes The Music Genome Project uses here.
Musical Pitch and Schema
Listen to these two melodies, and tell me what they are.
One
Two
Easy enough, right? I probably don't even need to tell you what the answers are. Before I go on, why do you think I've picked those particular sound files?
You're able to recognize familiar melodies, whether or not they're high or low. (In the above examples, one is very high, and one is very low. You can tell which is which, right?) The important thing is that you keep the intervals between the notes the same. You remember intervals, right?
So, then, tell me what this song is:
Three
What, you didn't recognize Mary Had A Little Lamb? I changed the intervals between the notes, but I kept the high-middle-low of the pitches the same. It still doesn't sound like it, does it?
If you were wondering, in example three, all the notes are octaves, meaning either that they're eight notes apart from each other, or that they all have the same letter name. (C, in the example.)
One
Two
Easy enough, right? I probably don't even need to tell you what the answers are. Before I go on, why do you think I've picked those particular sound files?
You're able to recognize familiar melodies, whether or not they're high or low. (In the above examples, one is very high, and one is very low. You can tell which is which, right?) The important thing is that you keep the intervals between the notes the same. You remember intervals, right?
So, then, tell me what this song is:
Three
What, you didn't recognize Mary Had A Little Lamb? I changed the intervals between the notes, but I kept the high-middle-low of the pitches the same. It still doesn't sound like it, does it?
If you were wondering, in example three, all the notes are octaves, meaning either that they're eight notes apart from each other, or that they all have the same letter name. (C, in the example.)
Thursday, December 8, 2011
12 Variations
This is a famous Mozart piece.
No, really.
What melody is it?
Being able to track the melody through all 12 variations requires the capacity for spacial-temporal reasoning. This means that you're able to hold a mental image of the melody, compare it to what you hear, and see how they match up.
You can read more about it here.
No, really.
What melody is it?
Being able to track the melody through all 12 variations requires the capacity for spacial-temporal reasoning. This means that you're able to hold a mental image of the melody, compare it to what you hear, and see how they match up.
You can read more about it here.
Ravel's Bolero
This is Ravel's Bolero.
You can hear, even in the opening few bars, the repetition of musical phrases. We call these motifs. The melody copies itself a lot. Even if you can't tell how the melody repeats, check out that snare drum!
Ravel suffered from degenerative brain disease. Scientists aren't exactly sure which ones he suffered from, but they were there. Dementia seems to be a popular theory.
Listen -- do you hear how different instruments pass the melody around? The different voices instruments have is called timbre. Scientists think that Bolero's obsession with different timbres may have something to do with the degradation of Ravel's left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is where timbre is processed.
You can read more about Ravel's brain disease and the effects on his music here.
A woman suffering from a degenerative brain disease called primary progressive aphasia became so obsessed with Ravel's Bolero that she had to paint the work. You can see the painting HERE and see an explanation of the painting as well. (All caps because I don't want you to miss the link. It's amazing!)
You can hear, even in the opening few bars, the repetition of musical phrases. We call these motifs. The melody copies itself a lot. Even if you can't tell how the melody repeats, check out that snare drum!
Ravel suffered from degenerative brain disease. Scientists aren't exactly sure which ones he suffered from, but they were there. Dementia seems to be a popular theory.
Listen -- do you hear how different instruments pass the melody around? The different voices instruments have is called timbre. Scientists think that Bolero's obsession with different timbres may have something to do with the degradation of Ravel's left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is where timbre is processed.
You can read more about Ravel's brain disease and the effects on his music here.
A woman suffering from a degenerative brain disease called primary progressive aphasia became so obsessed with Ravel's Bolero that she had to paint the work. You can see the painting HERE and see an explanation of the painting as well. (All caps because I don't want you to miss the link. It's amazing!)
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Musical Syntax
Listen to the sound files below. Pick the wrong one.
Don't worry, you'll know which one is wrong.
One
Two
Three
Which one did you say?
Three, right? Do you know how you knew?
In Western music, we like our chords to happen in a certain order. We call this chord progression. Even if you don't understand all the math and symbols in western music, you've (likely, if you can read this) heard such chord progressions your entire life to where you can remember them well enough and identify them, even if you don't have language to speak about them. (I cheated a little by putting the 'wrong' example last, so that you'd be 'reminded' of what correct chords sounded like.)
We call this musical syntax, since it's a lot like learning how to use words in a correct order to make sense as well. The third example sticks out because I broke a rule. It would be like if I not write sentence none to good. You'd notice.
If you were wondering, the first example is a simple jazz progression, and the second is a simple 50s doo wop progression. The last one throws a iii chord in the middle, which is a chord that doesn't get used often anyway, so it sticks out pretty hard.
Don't worry, you'll know which one is wrong.
One
Two
Three
Which one did you say?
Three, right? Do you know how you knew?
In Western music, we like our chords to happen in a certain order. We call this chord progression. Even if you don't understand all the math and symbols in western music, you've (likely, if you can read this) heard such chord progressions your entire life to where you can remember them well enough and identify them, even if you don't have language to speak about them. (I cheated a little by putting the 'wrong' example last, so that you'd be 'reminded' of what correct chords sounded like.)
We call this musical syntax, since it's a lot like learning how to use words in a correct order to make sense as well. The third example sticks out because I broke a rule. It would be like if I not write sentence none to good. You'd notice.
If you were wondering, the first example is a simple jazz progression, and the second is a simple 50s doo wop progression. The last one throws a iii chord in the middle, which is a chord that doesn't get used often anyway, so it sticks out pretty hard.
Music Therapy
This is a topic near and dear to my heart: music therapy in relation to Autism. I dug up some videos that I hope you enjoy.
Hearing Test!
Let's try an experiment, shall we? Make sure you follow the directions:
Step one: listen to this sound file.
NOW! Put on headphones! Don't go on without headphones! Make sure they're on the right ear!
Listen to the sound files below. Which one do you think matches the sound file above? Choose only one!
One dummy
Two right
Three dummy
Four
If you're right handed, you likely said number two was correct. This is a miniaturized version of an experiment done to prove that the right hemisphere of the brain processes music. Once your brain processes sound, it separates music out and processes it seperatley in the right hemisphere. The second sound example sends the melody to only your left ear (you were wearing head phones, right?). You might remember that your right brain handles everything that goes on on the left side, so that made the melody more likely to get to the correct processing area.
If you're left handed, I actually don't know which one you thought was correct! I stuck number four in there as a correct version that plays in your right ear. You might have said that? Let me know in the comments.
If you picked one or three, sorry, but they don't resemble the original melody. There's three wrong notes.
Step one: listen to this sound file.
NOW! Put on headphones! Don't go on without headphones! Make sure they're on the right ear!
Listen to the sound files below. Which one do you think matches the sound file above? Choose only one!
One dummy
Two right
Three dummy
Four
If you're right handed, you likely said number two was correct. This is a miniaturized version of an experiment done to prove that the right hemisphere of the brain processes music. Once your brain processes sound, it separates music out and processes it seperatley in the right hemisphere. The second sound example sends the melody to only your left ear (you were wearing head phones, right?). You might remember that your right brain handles everything that goes on on the left side, so that made the melody more likely to get to the correct processing area.
If you're left handed, I actually don't know which one you thought was correct! I stuck number four in there as a correct version that plays in your right ear. You might have said that? Let me know in the comments.
If you picked one or three, sorry, but they don't resemble the original melody. There's three wrong notes.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Amusia
When I was a kid, one of my most prominent memories was my dad trying to sing hymns in church. He was always way, way off from everyone else. I always kind of wondered if he was tone deaf.
More people claim to be tone deaf than are actually tone deaf, of course. True tone deafness is called amusia, and usually arises from brain injury. Some people have amusia from an unknown cause.
Of course, as an educator, I'd have to wonder how many of these people had a sufficient music education when they were younger and the parts of their brain relating to pitch identification were forming. They just have never been taught to match pitch!
This BBC article helps give a better definition. I like this NPR article, too.
Here's one of many tone deafness tests online you can take.
You might try this one too.
Don't worry if you're actually diagnosed with amusia, you can still have a long, prosperous career as an opera singer. Really! Just ask Florence Foster Jenkins, an early 20th century opera singer with amusia. She has several recordings, even though they sound like this:
More people claim to be tone deaf than are actually tone deaf, of course. True tone deafness is called amusia, and usually arises from brain injury. Some people have amusia from an unknown cause.
Of course, as an educator, I'd have to wonder how many of these people had a sufficient music education when they were younger and the parts of their brain relating to pitch identification were forming. They just have never been taught to match pitch!
This BBC article helps give a better definition. I like this NPR article, too.
Here's one of many tone deafness tests online you can take.
You might try this one too.
Don't worry if you're actually diagnosed with amusia, you can still have a long, prosperous career as an opera singer. Really! Just ask Florence Foster Jenkins, an early 20th century opera singer with amusia. She has several recordings, even though they sound like this:
Sound Waves
I thought these were pretty neat: youtube videos of sound wave art!
(Watch that one with your sound down, it really bothered my bunny rabbits at higher pitches.)
(Watch that one with your sound down, it really bothered my bunny rabbits at higher pitches.)
Sound Illusions
You've done it, and I've done it: you've heard something over and over again until it has a sort of rhythm or melody that repeats over and over to you.
Researcher Diana Deutsch agrees, and on her page of musical illusions, has an audio file that demonstrates this fact nicely. Check out her illusion on repetitive words here.
Make you think of anything?
Internet vagabonds have taken this phenomenon and made it hilarious. My personal favorite:
But, the most famous example is the ever-famous Auto Tune the News, who produces ever-ubiquitous examples like:
If you haven't already, you can check out Autotune the News' Youtube Channel here.
Researcher Diana Deutsch agrees, and on her page of musical illusions, has an audio file that demonstrates this fact nicely. Check out her illusion on repetitive words here.
Make you think of anything?
Internet vagabonds have taken this phenomenon and made it hilarious. My personal favorite:
But, the most famous example is the ever-famous Auto Tune the News, who produces ever-ubiquitous examples like:
If you haven't already, you can check out Autotune the News' Youtube Channel here.
Monday, December 5, 2011
It's a bit dry, but this is a video that describes the Mozart Effect. In short, it's the idea that Mozart's music might make you smarter. Here's two more links on the topic:
One from Indiana University
And from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
The most interesting thing I think can come out of the entire debate is the idea that there actually is music that works similar to Mozart; the music of Yanni. It has to do, apparently, with the way the music is organized, even though I'm not sure if that relates to the specific form or just the harmonies.
If you wanted to try this yourself, I suppose you could always play some Mozart, try an online IQ test, then try it the next week without the music and compare the results, but that wouldn't make for a very good control, would it? Your results would be pretty imperfect. Unless you have access to hundreds of research subjects, you might just have to be okay with reading about this one on the Internet.
I found this video on YouTube if you're really jonesing for some Mozart right now:
"It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a Mozart ... "
Music, Major, Minor
Continuing a bit on from our work yesterday, let's pretend I've got this melody. You've never heard it before, because I just made it up. Here's two versions of it:
Version 1
Version 2
Listen to one version, then jot some notes down about how it "feels". Ascribe an emotion to it if you can. Then, do the same for the other.
If you came up with something akin to "happy" for Version 1, and "sad" for Version 2, good news! You agree with the vast majority of the population!
Version 1 uses a major scale, with major intervals, and most humans associate that with happiness. Version 2 does the opposite -- it uses a minor scale and minor intervals, making us think 'sad'.
Researchers have to be careful when they do these tests, because they have to pick performers that will keep everything else the same: tempo, expression, so on. But we have the computer, so we have better control.
Let's pretend that you had trouble coming up with words to describe the audio above, which could have happened if you were very young, or if I had made much more complicated examples. Music researchers and therapists will use Hevner's adjective circle to help people pick out words that describe what they hear. Opposite words are opposite of each other, to help people out if they can only think of something like "not sad" or "not angry".
One of the neatest things about Hevner's adjective circle is that the eight adjective lists match up to a musical trait. If many people are writing down "happy" or "bright", for example, you could guess that the music is happy, fast, and simple. "Vigorous" or "majestic" would likely be low, firm and complex.
This is a really interesting article on marrying music with animation, considering the emotion of the music. It goes into a detailed explanation of the adjective circle, just in case that above paragraph sparked your curiosity. It also shows how they match up what's going on in the music to what's going on in the cartoon. Check it out, it's a good look into film technique as well as music.
Version 1
Version 2
Listen to one version, then jot some notes down about how it "feels". Ascribe an emotion to it if you can. Then, do the same for the other.
If you came up with something akin to "happy" for Version 1, and "sad" for Version 2, good news! You agree with the vast majority of the population!
Version 1 uses a major scale, with major intervals, and most humans associate that with happiness. Version 2 does the opposite -- it uses a minor scale and minor intervals, making us think 'sad'.
Researchers have to be careful when they do these tests, because they have to pick performers that will keep everything else the same: tempo, expression, so on. But we have the computer, so we have better control.
Let's pretend that you had trouble coming up with words to describe the audio above, which could have happened if you were very young, or if I had made much more complicated examples. Music researchers and therapists will use Hevner's adjective circle to help people pick out words that describe what they hear. Opposite words are opposite of each other, to help people out if they can only think of something like "not sad" or "not angry".
One of the neatest things about Hevner's adjective circle is that the eight adjective lists match up to a musical trait. If many people are writing down "happy" or "bright", for example, you could guess that the music is happy, fast, and simple. "Vigorous" or "majestic" would likely be low, firm and complex.
This is a really interesting article on marrying music with animation, considering the emotion of the music. It goes into a detailed explanation of the adjective circle, just in case that above paragraph sparked your curiosity. It also shows how they match up what's going on in the music to what's going on in the cartoon. Check it out, it's a good look into film technique as well as music.
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Bobby McFerrin
The above video is Bobby McFerrin (the Don't Worry Be Happy guy) showing off some important music science. But why does it work?
Bobby is having the audience sing along the pentatonic scale. (In the wikipedia article, Bobby is using the major pentatonic scale.) One reason this scale is so ingraned in us is that it's used in a variety of folk music. Many children's songs use the pentatonic scale, such as Oh Suzanna.
The pentatonic scale also sticks in our minds because it's easy to hear -- it's made up of tones that we're used to hearing.
The Ancient Greeks did the math a long time ago to figure out that these pitches lie on a harmonic series. If you pluck a string, it makes a sound. We'll say the sound is C. If you divide the string up, you start getting different pitches. Half of the string will make another C, but a third of the string will make G, which is one 5th up from G (C D E F G -- there are five notes inbetween C and G.) If you divide THAT string into three parts, you'll get D. (G A B C D -- G and D are fifths.) Divide THAT string into three parts, you get an A. (D E F G A -- D and A are fifths.) Divide THAT string into threee parts, you get E. (A B C D E -- A and E are fifths.)
Arrange all these pitches into alphabetical order, you get C D E G A, which is the C pentatonic scale.
You can learn more about the harmonic series here. It has a good diagram explaining all that Greek string division.
This link talks more about constructing a pentatonic scale by using fifths, and it has good pictures, too.
One last interval!
Oh, one last interval. This is so neat. Here's a major 6th:
Click Here
Most people associate this interval with longing. Listen to it again, does it remind you of a famous kid's song?
I think it is SO hilarious that this interval starts "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean"!
Click Here
Most people associate this interval with longing. Listen to it again, does it remind you of a famous kid's song?
I think it is SO hilarious that this interval starts "My Bonnie Lies Over The Ocean"!
Major and Minor
Music majors spend a long time learning about intervals, or what space between notes sound like. We take entire classes on them, but they're not actually hard.
True fact: you can hear intervals and tell them apart just by their "feel"! Try this out. Both of these intervals, are thirds, but one is major and one is minor. Here's the first one:
First sample!
And the second:
Second sample!
If you had to assign an emotion to either of those intervals, what would you pick? Don't think too hard about it.
If you called the first 'happy' and the second 'sad', good news: you would agree with the vast majority of people on this earth. We associate major intervals with 'happy' feelings and minor intervals with 'sad' feelings.
You know more than you think you know. Listen to the sound sample below, and on a scrap piece of paper, figure out what intervals are major and which are minor. If you have a hard time, try not to overthink it.
Here's your test!
Here's the answers, highlight them to view. But don't cheat! Major, minor, minor, major, major.
You likely got them all right, or at least most of them. See? It's not so tough.
You can apply "happy" and "sad" sounds to songs, too. If it sounds happy, it's major. If it sounds sad, it's minor. This is called finding a song's tonality. I've linked two YouTube videos below, one major and one minor. See if you can tell which is which.
and
I know, I couldn't have picked two songs that were more different. I tried to grab two songs that wouldn't give it away in their lyrics!
True fact: you can hear intervals and tell them apart just by their "feel"! Try this out. Both of these intervals, are thirds, but one is major and one is minor. Here's the first one:
First sample!
And the second:
Second sample!
If you had to assign an emotion to either of those intervals, what would you pick? Don't think too hard about it.
If you called the first 'happy' and the second 'sad', good news: you would agree with the vast majority of people on this earth. We associate major intervals with 'happy' feelings and minor intervals with 'sad' feelings.
You know more than you think you know. Listen to the sound sample below, and on a scrap piece of paper, figure out what intervals are major and which are minor. If you have a hard time, try not to overthink it.
Here's your test!
Here's the answers, highlight them to view. But don't cheat! Major, minor, minor, major, major.
You likely got them all right, or at least most of them. See? It's not so tough.
You can apply "happy" and "sad" sounds to songs, too. If it sounds happy, it's major. If it sounds sad, it's minor. This is called finding a song's tonality. I've linked two YouTube videos below, one major and one minor. See if you can tell which is which.
and
I know, I couldn't have picked two songs that were more different. I tried to grab two songs that wouldn't give it away in their lyrics!
A Note On The Audio Files:
The audio files in this blog were created by me. I used AnvilStudio, the best midi maker ever! It's free, too! You can totally download it and play with it. Give it a go.
If you would like to use the audio files, that's fine, but please credit me!
If you would like to use the audio files, that's fine, but please credit me!
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