music
aardvarchaeology | December 22, 2007Scandy readers will be very familiar with this. As we learned from "Hatten Är Din", "Ansiktsburk", "Fiskpinnar" and other Turk Hits back in 2000, you can get wonderfully absurd results if you listen to a song in a foreign language and pretend it's actually sung in your mother tongue.
Now, a talented Ansiktsburk poet has subtitled, in English, a typically over-the-top music video from southern India. Unbelievable stuff!
"Have you been high today?
I see the nuns are gay
My brother yelled to me
'I love you inside Ed!'"
oracknows | December 22, 2007Here's one of my all time favorite David Bowie tunes, truly an underrated gem from his career. (Too bad the movie it came from was only so-so.) This performance is from June 2000:
Why? Because Christmas is coming and I felt like it. Enjoy!
grrlscientist | December 19, 2007tags: white christmas song, holidays, holidaze, music, streaming video
One of my readers sent me this very cute rendition of the classic christmas song, White Christmas, so of course, I had to share it with all of you! It includes the soundtrack along with a goofy cartoon.
aardvarchaeology | December 10, 2007
An album I can really recommend is LA quartet OK Go's 2005 disc Oh No. It's catchy, glammy rock with swagger and brains and decadence, recorded in Sweden and beautifully produced by Tore Johansson and the mighty Lindgård/Mopeds brothers. In addition to them kicking ass musically, the band's lyrics (by Damian Kulash) are unusually poetic and literate. Dear Reader, I bring you the lyrics to the delicious "Oh Lately It's So Quiet", which are sung in a bedroom falsetto by the hugely talented Mr Kulash.
Oh Lately It's So Quiet
By Damian Kulash of OK Go
Oh, lately it's so quiet in this place
You'…
sb admin | November 30, 2007Anaesthetist's Hymn performed by the comedy duo Amateur Transplants, set to the music of Total Eclipse of the Heart.
[P.S. What's this got to do with the brain? Consciousness.]
oracknows | November 24, 2007This video's so good that I'm half tempted to try this method for myself, just to see if it actually works...
Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog. MacGyver would love this.
sb admin | November 23, 2007This Friday is a holiday (in America, at least) and what's better on a holiday than a rerun? Yay for reruns. So, I've written about the Amygdaloids before, but here's an introduction video in case you didn't see it (or want to enjoy it again). Also, this band of rockin' cognitive scientists has a CD available now.
The Amygdaloids: Live concert at Union Hall
Preview their new CD here (buy it here) alongside descriptions of each brain-based song.
"Past lovers often leave strong and enduring memories. 'A Trace' tells a story about this. Memory researchers in the know will figure out that the…
sb admin | November 19, 2007I couldn't wait for Multimedia Friday to post this video, it's just too funny.
I Am the Very Model of a Psychopharmacologist is set to Gilbert and Sullivan's classic song with animation. Created by Stephen M Stahl, MD, PhD, of the Neurosciences Education Institute, Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California San Diego, author of Essential Psychopharmacology. Credentials for neuropsychopharmacological hilarity.
aardvarchaeology | November 18, 2007Dear Reader, have you lately heard much merry folk rock with apocalyptic lyrics about the coming of the Antichrist over London?
My dear friend Asko is, among other things, a war gamer, a geocacher, an antiquarian amateur, a fiction writer and a musician. Hear him play the bass on releases by 90s stoner rock outfit Dear Mutant! (I have heard kickass stuff from the band's final unreleased album sessions...) Asko recently recommended me a track by Current 93, a band I'd never heard of. Turns out it's a huge body of recordings from the early 80s onward by occult Englishman David Tibet with…
goodmath | November 5, 2007 Ladies and gentlemen.. For your pleasure and edification, allow me to present... The singing Tesla coils!
Yes, if you're clever, and you're willing to do a whole lot of work, you can operate a Tesla coil so that the sparking from the coil produces a particular pitch. Even you're even more clever, you can vary the way that the coil is run to produce different pitches, and arrange it into a song. And if you're really remarkably clever, you can set up two singing Tesla coils, and have them play a duet.
neurophilosophy | November 3, 2007James Fung, a musician and computer engineer at the University of Toronto, has developed a program that can convert EEG recordings into music.
Fung is involved in the Regenerative Brain Wave Music Project, which "explores new physiological interfaces for musical instruments."
As part of the project, he staged a concert in which the music and lighting were controlled by the audience's brainwaves.
There's more information, and some footage of the concert, in the film clip below.
[Via Mind Update]
mikethemadbiologist | October 28, 2007A while ago, I wrote about the MBTA's test program of playing crappy commercial radio over the PA system at Boston subway stops. Because what Boston really needs is government-sponsored noise pollution. After many complaints, the MBTA has decided to shelve the program, for now anyway:
...disparate T riders are united in joy and a degree of quiet. The two-week-old experiment in bringing disc jockeys and music to MBTA platforms, "T Radio," has been shelved, at least for now.
"There is a God," said Tom Augello, a multimedia editor from Cambridge.
Augello is still bitter from a trip to South…
ddobbs | October 27, 2007
Music is alive and well
I long ago grew weary of complaints about the demise of classical music -- a demise based on dropping sales and and market share. Similar complaints had been voiced about tennis, another thing I love. In both cases the hand-wringing about falling ticket or record sales or TV viewers ran on the assumption that the truest measure of a sport's or art's vitality is how many people pay to consumer it. It's silly to feel classical music or tennis are failing because they don't constantly grow or attract as many spectators as pop music or baseball. Complaining about the lack…
laelaps | October 27, 2007I can't say that I'm a fan the music choice, but I have to admit, this bird can dance to the beat better than I can. This is Snowball, "a medium sulphur crested Eleanora cockatoo," who's apparently a big fan of the Backstreet Boys.
goodmath | October 26, 2007 This past week, I discovered a new digital music download site, called Bitmunk. It's less expensive
than iTunes or Amazon, and has a fantastic selection of obscure bands. Through Bitmunk, I found
a couple of terrific new neo-progressive bands, which has me on a serious prog kick. So for today, I've
narrowed the domain of the randomization to just the progressive stuff, and I also cheated a bit to make
sure that the two best of the new bands I found are included in the list.
Just to be clear, I've got no connection with Bitmunk, they're not giving me anything to mention them, etc. I found…
sb admin | October 24, 2007 Omni Brain met its fundraising goal of $1000 for music education programs through DonorsChoose. Thank you to everyone who's donated. You rock! Now 30 kids will too.
But it'd be okay, you know, permissible (haha) to exceed our goal if you'd still like to help a Lisa Simpson. A few of the programs Omni Brain earmarked are still seeking fulfillment. Here, an Indianapolis music teacher describes his/her wish to teach kids science and music together:
I want to set up a program for fourth through sixth grade having students work on the scientific method of experimenting with sound. The resources I…
sb admin | October 23, 2007You're seeing other ScienceBlogs readers donate, now join the love train*.
A rare serious post from Steve explains The Real Mozart Effect and why we should support music education with DonorsChoose. Playing an instrument has cognitive and developmental benefits.
That reason formed an episode of The Simpsons, too: Lisa's Sax. Homer wants to buy an air conditioner but Lisa needs help to nurture her brain with more than Springfield Elementary has to offer. Unsure what to do, he walks out of Moe's toward It Blows, with $200 in his pocket. He sees a music store and says, "Musical instrument?…
voltagegate | October 20, 2007Clutch,
Fall of Troy
and Coheed and Cambria
touring together? Can't wait. I haven't seen Clutch in eight years or more.
cevans | October 17, 2007Dr. Oliver Sacks is a rare bird in the world of medicine: not only is he one the country's top neurologists, but he also has a knack for weaving clinical profiles of his most exceptional patients into lovely, thoughtful books that open up the complex workings of our minds to the peering eyes of layfolk. His charm has much to do with the fact that he's the embodiment of a long-musty archetype of scientist: blustery, with a lisp, brilliant, and eccentric, a member of the American Fern Society, and fascinated with fluorescent minerals.
His latest book, Musicophilia, tackles our intimate mental…
nisbetmc | October 16, 2007height="350">
A break from serious matters for a focus on music...
Last night I strolled down to the 930 Club, one of the top indie rock venues in the country to catch Cat Power. The band delivered as some of the best rock-blues-folk fusion since Janice Joplin.
Next week, however, is the season's big event, featuring Spoon and the Shins in concert. If you haven't caught Spoon's latest album, listen to this review at NPR, and catch their buzz generating performance last week at Saturday Night Live (youtube above).