Clipmarks | Musicians Clips

'Missing Link' Between Madness and Genius

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 10:18:17 GMT

clipped by: deusdiabolus

'Missing Link' Between Madness and Genius

By Amy Iggulden
The Telegraph

Genius cannot exist without mental disorder, according to a study that names George Orwell, LS Lowry and Lewis Carroll among 21 artists who suffered a form of autism.

The psychiatric portrait of some of the most imaginative minds in history claims to prove the link between madness and greatness.

Beethoven, Mozart, Hans Christian Andersen and Immanuel Kant are among the musicians, writers, painters and philosophers who have been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome.

Prof Michael Fitzgerald, a psychiatrist and expert in the syndrome that affects social relationships but not intellect, claims that people with Asperger's can have exceptional artistic creativity, as well as mathematical genius.

Tags: mindpower, brain, noology, mental disorder, asperger's syndrome, intelligence, genius

Drugs to build up that mental muscle

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 00:04:23 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Academics, musicians, even poker champs use pills to sharpen their minds, legally. Labs race to develop even more.

Forget sports doping. The next frontier is brain doping.

As Major League Baseball struggles to rid itself of performance-enhancing drugs, people in a range of other fields are reaching for a variety of prescription pills to enhance what counts most in modern life.

Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions.

"There isn't any question about it -- they made me a much better player," said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player.

The Shape of Music

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 22:03:17 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The shapes of the space of chords we have described also reveal deep connections between a wide range of musical genres. It turns out that superficially different styles--Renaissance music, classical and Romantic music, jazz, rock, and other popular forms--all make remarkably similar use of the geometry of chord space. Traditional techniques for manipulating musical scales turn out to be closely analogous to those used to connect individual chords. And some composers have displayed a profound understanding of the higher-dimensional geometry of musical chords. In fact, one can argue that Romantic composers such as Chopin had an intuitive feel for non-Euclidean higher-dimensional spaces that exceeded the explicit understanding of their mathematical contemporaries.

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

Roughly 2,500 years ago, Pythagoras observed that objects, such as the anvils he purportedly studied, produced harmonious sounds while vibrating at frequencies in simple whole-number ratios.

More complex ratios gave rise to more dissonant sounds, which indicated that human beings were unconsciously sensitive to mathematical relationships inherent in nature.

For a thousand years, Western musicians have endeavored to satisfy two fundamental constraints in their compositions

The first is that melodies should, in general, move by short distances

The second is that music should use chords

that are audibly similar

Together these constraints ensure a two-dimensional coherence in Western music analogous to that of a woven cloth

not just any sequence of chords we imagine can generate a collection of short-distance melodies. We might therefore ask, how do we combine harmony and melody to make music? In other words, what makes music sound good?

Tags: music, mathematics

Beethovan's Grave...

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 04:42:36 GMT

clipped by: mugofcoffee
clipper's remarks: ...the greatest of the great musicians...

Clip Source: www.emofree.com

When Beethoven passed away, he was buried in a churchyard.

A couple days later, someone was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, he ran and got the priest to come and listen to it.

Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate

When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."

He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling." So the magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh... the Sixth... the Fifth..."

Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Beethoven decomposing."

Tags: beethovan, music, grave.

Song Stuck In Your Head? You've Got An Earworm!

Sun, 07 Jan 2007 19:00:21 GMT

clipped by: haraya
clipper's remarks: The entire article is interesting.

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

In Germany, this type of song is known as an "ohrwurm" - an earworm - and typically has a high, upbeat melody and repetitive lyrics that verge between catchy and annoying.

Songs such as the Village People's YMCA, Los Del Rio's Macarena, and the Baha Men's Who Let The Dogs Out owe their success to their ability to create a "cognitive itch," according to Professor James Kellaris, of the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration.

"A cognitive itch is a kind of metaphor that explains how these songs get stuck in our head," Professor Kellaris told BBC World Service's Outlook programme.

"Certain songs have properties that are analogous to histamines that make our brain itch.

"The only way to scratch a cognitive itch is to repeat the offending melody in our minds."

'Insidious and blatant'

Professor Kellaris has presented the early results of his earworm research at a conference on Consumer Psychology.

He said that virtually everyone suffered from a cognitive itch at one time or another.

The Village People owed much success to earworms

"Across surveys I found that from 97% to 99% of the population is susceptible to earworms at some time," he stated.

"But certainly some people are more susceptible than others. Women tend to be more susceptible than men, and musicians are more susceptible to them than non-musicians."

The research is of particular interest to both the pop industry - looking to boost sales - and to advertisers, who often use jingles to get their brand name stuck in the head of listeners.

"For both advertising purposes and pop music purposes, you want something that once heard is not forgotten quickly or easily," explained jingle writer Chris Smith, adding that a good earworm was "Insidious - and often quite blatant".

"One of the key elements of an earworm is repetition," he said.

"If you have something with a lot of varied content, it's not so easily assimilated.

Tags: science, music, annoying songs, songs, pop, study, audio, advertising, entertainment, brand, marketing, research, mind, brain, itch

Queer Eye Candy - this is what we look like

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:27:37 GMT

clipped by: Lexica

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

This country is afraid of us, but they don’t know who we are.

We’re hot, we’re fierce, we’re vulnerable, we’re beautiful, we’re in love, we’re horribly ugly, we’re scared, we’re tender-hearted, we’re dog mommies and daddies, we’re parents, we’re children, we’re neices and nephews, we’re married, we’re bachelors, we’re rednecks, we’re blue-collar, we’re construction workers, we’re political pundits, we’re musicians, we’re drag performers, we’re community organizers, we’re angry, we’re activists, we’re just us.

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

soccer ball hug

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

marching for gay rights in Paris

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Rachel Maddow, again

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Ruby and Ami

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Stephanie and Denise

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Clare and Jack

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

We are not the enemy

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Take a Picture, Take a Stand

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Teri & Lisa

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Ariel & Amy

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Because everyone should have the right to be awesome

Clip Source: www.queereyecandy.com

Ellen & Portia

Tags: marriage, love, relationships, photos

Digital Sound Separator

Wed, 16 Apr 2008 19:39:47 GMT

clipped by: Aribeth
clipper's remarks: The new tool promises to give musicians and producers powerful new ways to manipulate recordings both old and new.It might let studio engineers peer inside a chord-heavy rhythm-guitar part and nudge individual notes into tune. Or it could let them salvage unheard takes by classic musicians like Duke Ellington or Jimi Hendrix, left unreleased due to out-of-tune instruments or misplayed notes. It will certainly give musicians new ability to sculpt sound, such as prerecorded samples or loops, as if they were modeling clay.

Clip Source: www.technologyreview.com

Digital Sound Separator

New software can modify the individual notes of a recorded chord.

Peter Neubäcker, a former German guitar maker turned programmer, has done what many in the computer-music business believed impossible.

A new piece of software called Direct Note Access

will for the first time allow computers to analyze the digitized sounds of guitar or piano chords, or even multi-instrument recordings, and then extract and modify individual notes.

Computers have revolutionized the recording process, giving sound engineers wide latitude to manipulate notes recorded singly--to change their pitch, their tempo, or where they fall. But teasing apart notes recorded simultaneously, as in a six-string guitar chord, has never before been practical.

"In terms of sound processing, this is kind of the holy grail," says Michael Bierylo, a guitarist and professor of computer music at Boston's Berklee College of Music. "It's something everyone more or less thought we couldn't do."

In jazz improv, large portion of brain's prefrontal region 'takes 5' to let creativity flow

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 12:52:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

When John Coltrane was expanding the boundaries of the well-known song “My Favorite Things” at the Village Vanguard in May 1966, no one could have known what inspired him to take the musical turns he took. But imaging researchers may now have a better picture of how the brain was helping to carry him there. Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) have found that, when jazz musicians are engaged in the highly creative and spontaneous activity known as improvisation, a large region of the brain involved in monitoring one’s performance is shut down, while a small region involved in organizing self-initiated thoughts and behaviors is highly activated. The researchers propose that this and several related patterns are likely to be key indicators of a brain that is engaged in highly creative thought

Turning Off ‘the Monitor’

Tags: creativity, flow

Things I learned from the movies

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:19:52 GMT

clipped by: venushugstress
clipper's remarks: We live for tragedy... all great artist are depressed or crazy... artist can be writers, painters, musicians, etc... only if you've fallen to the depths of despair will you be recognized as an artist in about 200 years.

Clip Source: treebeard31.wordpress.com

1. If being chased through town, you can usually take cover in a passing St Patrick’s Day parade - at any time of the year.

2. All beds have special L-shaped top sheets that reach up to armpit level on a woman but only waist level on the man lying beside her.

3. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.

5. The ventilation system of any building is a perfect hiding place. No one will ever think of looking for you in there and you can travel to any other part of the building without difficulty.

8. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

12. Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.

13. A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.

14. Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.

16. Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.

18. Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.

Tags: funny

Brain 'closes eyes' to hear music

Mon, 05 Nov 2007 10:43:10 GMT

clipped by: iskandar

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Brain 'closes eyes' to hear music

A US study of 20 non-musicians and 20 musical conductors found both groups diverted brain activity away from visual areas during listening tasks.

The researchers, from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center and the University of North Carolina, used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, which can measure real-time changes in brain activity based on the blood flow to different areas of the brain.

What the scientists found was that while activity rose, as expected, in the auditory part of the brain, it correspondingly fell in the visual part.

As the task was made harder and harder, the non-musicians carried on diverting more and more activity away from the visual parts of the brain to the auditory side, as they struggled to concentrate.

However, after a certain point, the conductors did not suppress their brains, suggesting that their years of training had provided a distinct advantage in the way their brains were organised.

Tags: research, brain, music

The Pirate Bay to sue anti-piracy agencies?

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 02:38:14 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The Pirate Bay showed that emails leaked from media defenders servers clearly showed that the company had launched illegal denial of service attack on the pirate bay’s servers, engaged in illegal hacking and repeatedly flooded them with spam.

Funny ???

Clip Source: techonoid.com

The PIrate bay, which calls itself the world’s largest bittorent tracker, has announced its intention to file for damages against The International Federation of Phonographic Industry (IFPI) an organisation which claims to represent the interests of recording industries worldwide. The website want compensation for the trafic that was blocked by a Danish ISP after a court ruled that it had assisted copyright infringement after allowing access to the site. The ruling apparently contravened European union Law.

The pirate bay has also announced that any money it recieves in settlement will be used to provide grants to Danish musicians who share their music online. Earlier, They had launched, a new website, called the Jesper bay after the head of Danish IFPI, which contained instructions on how to circumvent the block.

The original ruling has also come under scrutiny because The PIrate Bay was not involved in the Procedings at all and was not heard in court.

Tags: bitorrent, pirate bay

Sir Elton: Ban Organised religion

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 17:07:10 GMT

clipped by: sohil

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Organised religion lacked compassion and turned people into "hateful lemmings", he told the Observer.

But the musician said he loved the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it which he had learned at Sunday school.

"I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people," he said. "Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays.

"But there are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion."

According to the singer-songwriter, 59, his solution would be to "ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it".

He added: "I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book.

"But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate."

And he called on the leaders of major religions to hold a "conclave" to discuss the fate of the world - which he said was "near escalating to World War Three".

"I said this after 9/11 and people thought I was nuts," he said. "It's all got to be dialogue - that's the only way. Get everybody from each religion together and say 'Listen, this can't go on. Why do we have all this hatred?'

"We are all God's people; we have to get along and the [religious leaders] have to lead the way. If they don't do it, who else is going to do it? They're not going to do it and it's left to musicians or to someone else to deal with it."

He also said he would continue to campaign for gay rights.

"I'm going to fight for them, whether I do it silently behind the scenes or so vocally that I get locked up."

Tags: religion, god, gay, christ, christianity, islam, 9/11, uk

What you speak may affect what you hear

Sun, 03 Dec 2006 12:12:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.newscientist.com

What you speak may affect what you hear

What you speak may influence what you hear, a new study shows. People perceive different patterns in the same sound sequences depending on their native tongue, researchers have found.

The short, first note of “Greensleeves” may sound naturally elegant to those who sing the tune. But this type of “pick-up note”, as it is known to musicians, sounds awkward to the ear of a native Japanese speaker, according to researchers. And they can explain why: people's preference for longer or shorter notes at the beginning of a musical phrase apparently depends on their native tongue.

Scientists already know that human hearing naturally group sounds together. A listener might, for example, hear identical clicks from a watch as “tick-tock; tick-tock” and so on, hearing an emphasis on the first click – even though all the clicks are identical. Another may hear “tock-tick, tock-tick” with the emphasis on the second click rather than the first.

Aniruddh Patel of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, US, and colleagues wanted to know how people from different cultures group non-identical sounds. They recruited a group of 100 volunteers, half of whom were American and the other half Japanese. The volunteers listened to sequences of alternating long and short or loud and soft tones (audio clips in wav format).

Preposition impact

Conventional musical principles predict that people perceive louder sounds to mark the beginning of a group, and longer sounds to mark the end of a group. Nearly all of the American participants perceived exactly this.

However, when Japanese participants heard the tones, many of them grouped them in reverse order, with the shorter tones at the end of each sound pairing.

The researchers say this difference might result from the fact that, in Japanese, shorter words – such as articles and prepositions – tend to come at the end of a phrase. In English, these short words tend to come at the beginning.

Tags: science, research, perception patterns

Do music lessons make kids smarter?

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 15:20:25 GMT

clipped by: dorine
clipper's remarks: Very interesting. Even those who quit retain benefits.

Clip Source: www.popsci.com

Several studies published in the past few years involving children ages four to 15 have strengthened the theory that music lessons have a positive effect on kids’ brains.

The researchers discovered that lessons on a musical instrument can boost mathematic ability and overall IQ. Unsurprisingly, the longer a student sticks with it, the greater those improvements.

revealed that as little as four months of music lessons cause noticeable improve- ments during brain development.

The study followed a handful of four- to six-year-old aspiring musicians over the course of a year, measuring patterns of neuronal activity in each participant’s brain.

When the scientists compared the young Mozarts with a control group, they found that music students’ brains were developing differently.

For example, instruction improved an information-processing area of the brain associated with attention.

general memory capacity

increased over the course of the year.

Tags: music, children, brain, intelligence

Hi Tech T-Shirt Really Rocks

Tue, 14 Nov 2006 05:55:36 GMT

clipped by: haraya

Clip Source: www.smh.com.au

It's called the WIS - the Wearable Instrument Shirt - and it is tipped to make the air guitar as obsolete as the horse and cart.

Scientists at the CSIRO's Textile and Fibre Technology division in Geelong have woven electronic sensors into a T-shirt so that it can be played liked a real guitar.

Movements by the wearer's arms are mapped and beamed by radio to a computer which interprets them and turns them into musical notes.

The wearer only has to act out playing the instrument to make sounds.

"The left arm chooses a note and the right arm plays it," said Richard Helmer, a CSIRO chemical engineer who led the project. The arrangement can be reversed for left-handed musicians.

"You can play with yours hands above your head," said Dr Helmer. "You can turn around and jump. Whatever you like."

CSIRO scientist Dr Richard Helmer shows off his wearable instrument shirt which enables users to generate guitar sounds by moving their arm.
Photo: CSIRO

Tags: technology, music, air guitar, guitar, entertainment, fun, clothes, invention