Clipmarks | Mohir's 'music' clips

Music and the Brain

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:15:59 GMT

clipped by: Mohir
clipper's remarks: Very interesting stuff, suggest to download the pdf file

Over the last two months, Nature has published a series of essays about the latest scientific research into music, and now that the series is complete, it has been made available as a free PDF.

Among the authors of the essays are Aniruddh D. Patel, a theoretical neurobiologist at the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, who discusses the brain's response to different varieties of music, and Laurel Trainor, director of the McMaster Institute for Music and the Mind, who explains the neural basis of music perception.

Nature also has a special podcast featuring a discussion between science writer Philip Ball and music psychologist John Sloboda, both of whom contribute essays to the series.

Tags: music, brain, neuroscience

Napster offers up 6 million DRM-free music tracks

Wed, 21 May 2008 17:17:32 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.gadgetell.com

Apple’s iTunes Store better watch it’s back, because here comes Napster with not just another online music service, but one that now offers a whooping 6 million DRM-free music tracks. With this number of available tracks Napster has now become the world’s largest major label MP3 catalog and the largest library of independent music worldwide.

Beginning today, all digital music that is downloaded from Napster will be a DRM-free MP3 that is compatible with any MP3 player or music phone, including yes you guessed it right, the iPod and the iPhone. Downloaded music will remain at 99 cents for a single track and $9.95 for most full albums. Most of Napster’s digital music is encoded at a 256kbps bitrate and shall include album art. In addition, users can freely browse Napster’s catalog without any obligation or commitment to purchase. Napster is also offering a web-based on-demand streaming service which users can access from anywhere using computer with Internet connection.

Tags: napster, itunes, internet, drm, music

The Long Decline of the Music Album Continues

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:32:58 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.techcrunch.com

The music industry can’t stop the hemorrhaging, even with the help of digital music sales. Despite a nearly 45 percent surge in digital music sales last year, overall album sales in the U.S. still declined 9.5 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. (It counts ten digital tracks as an album). Some stats:

There were 500 million CDs and other physical albums sold last year, and another 844 million digital tracks (or 84.4 million digital “albums”).

That compares to 588 million digital tracks sold in 2006.

Digital music accounted for 23 percent of all music sales in the U.S. last year.

Did we mention that the music industry needs to change its tune?

Tags: music, internet, digital music

The First Modern Music Video

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 12:13:41 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.ponderabout.com

A Hard Day’s Night (1964) is considered by many to
be one of the best films of the 1960s; and THE best
Rock Film of all time

it starred The Beatles and it took Beatlemania to
even greater heights

A Hard Day’s Night was directed by Richard Lester,
who introduced cinematic techniques that made
the film part of movie history

these techniques include multi-angle filming of
live action, as well as rapid-paced cutting that is
in sync with the music

to this day, critics, directors and “cultural historians”
have praise for Lester’s work

[Video]

finally, the cinematic innovations introduced in A Hard
Day’s Night helped to shape the music videos that
were later to appear on MTV

MTV acknowledged Lester’s influence with an award
that dubbed him the “Father of the Music Video”

in fact, many consider the clip below, one of the film’s
scenes, to be the first modern music video

Can’t Buy Me Love

[Video]

Tags: beatls, music, video

Led Zeppelin to Make Its Songs Available Digitally

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:02:44 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Led Zeppelin to Make Its Songs Available Digitally

It’s been a long time, but Led Zeppelin, one of the last superstar acts to refrain from selling its music online, is finally offering its catalog to digital-music fans.

The shift by Led Zeppelin, whose reunion concert in London next month has already incited a frenzy for tickets, highlights the clout of digital sales in the music market as mass merchants reduce the shelf space devoted to compact discs. Under a series of new agreements expected to be announced today, the band will make its songs available first as ringtones and similar mobile features starting this week in an exclusive deal with Verizon Wireless. Digital downloads of songs from the band’s eight studio albums and other recordings are expected to be available through Verizon and digital-music services, including iTunes, on Nov. 13.

Tags: music, led zeppelin, internet, digital music

Fact or Fiction?: Babies Exposed to Classical Music End Up Smarter

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 20:09:04 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

Fact or Fiction?: Babies Exposed to Classical Music End Up Smarter

Is the so-called "Mozart effect" a scientifically supported, developmental leg up or a media-fueled "scientific legend"?

The phrase "Mozart Effect" conjures an image of a pregnant woman who, sporting headphones over her belly, is convinced that playing classical music to her unborn child will improve the tyke's intelligence. But is there science to back up this idea, which has spawned a cottage industry of books, CDs and videos?

Earlier this year, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research in Germany published a second review study from a cross-disciplinary team of musically inclined scientists who declared the phenomenon nonexistent. "I would simply say that there is no compelling evidence that children who listen to classical music are going to have any improvement in cognitive abilities," adds Rauscher, now an associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh.

Tags: music, mind, intelligence, pregnancy

Neuroscience Peeks Into The Meaning Of Music

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 13:49:38 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.scientificblogging.com

Neuroscience Peeks Into The Meaning Of Music

Why do we like some music and not others? Why does music feel right and why does it evoke certain moods? The brain's ability to segment the continual stream of sensory information into perceptual chunks and extract meaning, “event segmentation” functions, have long fascinated researchers.

In a series of experiments, a team led by Vinod Menon of Stanford University School of Medicine asked subjects to listen to symphonies of the English composer William Boyce. The symphonies were chosen because they are relatively short and comprise well-defined movements - changes in tempo, tonality, rhythm, and pitch, and brief silences. The movement transitions were especially important, because the researchers used them as perceptual events that would enable the analysis of the brain circuitry involved in event segmentation.

Tags: music, brain, neuroscience

Music: Mirror Of The Mind

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 18:23:00 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Music: Mirror Of The Mind

Science Daily — The long supposed connection between mind and music has been further demonstrated by an international collaboration of physicists led by Simone Bianco and Paolo Grigolini at the Center for Nonlinear Science at the University of North Texas. A statistical analysis reveals a remarkable similarity between the distributions produced by music compositions and brain activity.

Brain activity was monitored through an electroencephalograph (EEG), which records electrical signals on the surface of the brain. The musical compositions were analyzed based on the melody, harmony, rhythm, pitch, and timber among other factors.

Researchers mapped brain activity and the compositions by regions of similarity punctuated by jumps where a significant change occurred. The data illustrated the similarity between patterns of electrical signals in the brain and of musical compositions.

Tags: music, mind, brain

Sounds of science push the boundaries of art

Tue, 15 May 2007 15:04:29 GMT

clipped by: Mohir

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

Sounds of science push the boundaries of art

Best known for exploring the code of life, DNA scientists are also challenging the frontier of art, with music transcribed from genes and proteins.

Cell receptors, flawed genes that cause cancer, hormones, proteins linked to generative disease, DNA sequences from wild plants -- these are just some of the sources for one of the most unusual, if not the most natural, forms of music ever heard.

The way it works is this: the code for a gene or a protein is fed into a computer programme, which transcribes it into a sequence of notes.

What results is random and, everyone admits, hardly a threat to Bach or Beethoven. Protein music, in its present form, is repetitive and often banal, yet it can also be sometimes strange and haunting.

Tags: art, science, music, dna, genes