Music, Mind and Meaning by Marvin Minsky is a gold mine of inspired speculation about the origins and functions of music. I’ve assembled some choice quotes below. If visual art is our way of playing with and studying space, then music is our way of playing with and studying time. Can one time fit inside …
Tag Archives: emotion
How to promote flow in music students
Continuing my research into the use of games in music education, I found this: Custodero, L. (2002). Seeking challenge, finding skill: Flow experience in music education. Arts Education and Policy Review, 103(3), 3–9. The best music education happens in states of flow, as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: the feeling of energized focus brought on by …
A modern classical fan responds
I’ve talked a lot of smack about high modernist music on this blog recently. Yesterday I got an email from a composer named Evan Kearney with some thoughtful reactions. Here’s what he had to say: [Y]ou wrote that you didn’t ‘get’ High Modernism (serialism, Webern, Pierre Boulez, Elliot Carter, etc.) and what it offered for …
Who cares if you listen?
I pride myself on having big ears, on listening to everything I can and trying to find the beauty in it. I’ve learned to enjoy some aspect of just about every kind of music. Every kind except one: high modernist twentieth century classical music. I just can not deal with it, at all. But I’m …
Encoding emotion
Steven R. Livingstone, Ralf Muhlberger, Andrew R. Brown, and William F. Thompson. Changing Musical Emotion: A Computational Rule System for Modifying Score and Performance. Computer Music Journal, 34:1, pp. 41–64, Spring 2010. The authors present CMERS, “a Computational Music Emotion Rule System for the real-time control of musical emotion that modifies features at both the …
Is Richard Dawkins helping science through his attacks on religion?
I would wish for Dawkins to use more emotional sensitivity and compassion when dealing with religious people, because his hostile tone gets in the way of his invaluable message. His condescending attitude toward believers, epitomized by calling atheists “brights,” is seriously counterproductive. I’m concerned that he’s unnecessarily confrontational and inflammatory in his TV appearances, op-eds …
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Building a better dopamine awareness campaign
I’ve been intrigued by Charles Lyell‘s self-described “dopamine awareness campaign,” trying to show how all of our social behaviors boil down to a desire for gratifying dopamine shots. The campaign doesn’t seem to be going so well; see, for example, the collapsing of his recent answer to Why do people contribute reviews of restaurants/theatres/events etc? …
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Why does listening to music sometimes make you feel high?
I’ve been lucky enough to experience heightened and altered consciousness from music making, listening and dancing. Chasing that feeling motivates me to keep making and studying music, in spite of the lousy pay. I’m reading a wonderful book right now by William Benzon called Beethoven’s Anvil. Benzon looks at the state of brain research and …
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How can you give an effective talk on a depressing topic without depressing your audience?
Here’s what works for me. Focus on solutions. What immediate steps can people take right now? What are bigger steps that governments and corporations need to take, and what can we do to push them in the right direction? Don’t judge. Assigning blame is gratifying but counterproductive; it heightens tensions and closes minds. Instead, take …
What does “ye-yeah” and “baby” mean in the context of pop songs?
“Ye-yeah” and “baby” are open-ended expressions of love, enthusiasm and general positive energy. They might be specifically directed at a loved one, but usually they’re directed at everyone and no one and have no particular meaning at all. Pop lyrics aren’t about conveying specific information. They’re about sound for the sake of sound. The voice …
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