Got inspired by the latest blog post of Tom Beek. One of our Dutch greatest saxophone players and composers. This video is in his post about North Sea Jazz festival tips. He has four more tips.
Here is my 5 cents, as a tip. Will certainly be going to Robert Glasper and the Metropole Orchestra
Another tip:
Walter Wolfman Washington & the Roadmasters, Big Easy
So now and than you discover beautiful new music, at least new to your ear. It’s been there for a while. Discovered it yesterday attending the funeral of the mother of a friend.
According to recent research it’s not the patient who should select it. Possibly because the patient will be afraid choosing a kind of music not agreeable to the physician. Overall, listening to music during cardiac catheterization significantly reduces anxiety as measured before and after the procedure with the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). Moreover, all patients who listened to music had a trend to lower values of systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate than control-group with no music. Women had higher anxiety scores before the procedure, the post operative score were similar in men and women. Women had a stronger anxiety reduction than men due to the music.
All patients with music during the procedure showed a positive reaction to the music played and they didn’t miss a true wireless sound headphone at all (87%). Overall the music should be of calm tempo, predominantly melodic and restrained dynamics and not sad. Two hundred patients were randomized in two groups, group A could choose the kind of music they preferred during the procedure: classical, relaxing modern music or jazz, no patient wanted no music. In the other group patients were randomized to these four groups. Some patients were allocated to music they didn’t prefer.
In B1 (allocated to classical music) nine patients out of 25 patients (36%) and in B3 (allocated to smooth jazz) eight out of 25 patients (32%) had expressed a dislike for the music they were allocated.
The most striking result was that the group with the assigned music had significant greater reduction than the group with their music of own choice. Possible explanations are the fear the music might not please the physician, already well known and liked music could become inappropriate in stressful situations. In particular, music highly appreciated and perceived as valuable, such as classical music and jazz, could become disturbing in clinical usage.
Goertz, W., Dominick, K., Heussen, N., & vom Dahl, J. (2010). Music in the cath lab: who should select it? Clinical Research in Cardiology DOI: 10.1007/s00392-010-0256-1
I love autumn but only with sunshine and crisp weather. Lately been looking for autumn songs, not just autumn in the title but also in the atmosphere or lyrics with that melancholic tune or melody, so characteristic for this nice season with truffles, game and dark red wine not to say dark chocolate as well.
“Autumn Leaves” is a much-recorded popular song. Originally it was a 1945 French song “Les feuilles mortes” (literally “The Dead Leaves”) with music by Joseph Kosma and lyrics by poet Jacques Prévert. Yves Montand (with Irène Joachim) introduced “Les feuilles mortes” in 1946 in the film Les Portes de la Nuit. The film Autumn Leaves (1956) starring Joan Crawford featured the song, as sung by Nat King Cole over the title sequence.
Unfortunately not. After reviewing the literature the author of the review: Is Memory for Music Special, hesitantly had to admit that memory for music is not special. Popular music is not better remembered than other kinds of stimuli learned in young adult hood. Setting text or lists to music is not a better way to remember them. Music is not a better Mnemonic device. Music is not processed differently from other kinds of stimuli and as such is not better remembered than language processing or visual cues. Memory theories can be applied to both musical stimuli and nonmusical stimuli.
However,music does facilitate semantic memory in patients with dementia and in healthy older adults and this effect, although small in magnitude, is not limited to familiar melodies.
The author nevertheless keeps to his idea of memory for music being different since music differs from other stimuli. Music lying between stimuli with fixed concrete meaning and nonsense stimuli. Music is not meaningless, it communicates emotions and ideas although in an abstract, symbolic way. Music also has a structure but this structure is very different from other stimuli such as the structure of a poem. He’s probably right, who doesn’t have experiences as finding the right place, name or location when listening to music connected to that symbol. Who did not have the experience of listening to music and recollecting emotions or visual stimuli from past occasions when listening to the same music?
I think he is right after all, time will tell, what do you think?
Schulkind, M. (2009). Is Memory for Music Special? Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169 (1), 216-224 DOI: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2009.04546.x
Couldn’t resist, phenomenal clip, imagine all the timing and work to make this exhibition and even the music is OK. Hilarious.
Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Synn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.
It’s a so called Rube Goldberg machine. It’s a deliberately over engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction. The expression is named after American cartoonist and inventor Rube Goldberg. Since then, the expression has expanded to denote any form of overly confusing or complicated system such as this one.
When feeling down good music can cheer you up. But when depressed, I mean clinically depressed, can you enjoy music? How is music enjoyment processed by the brain and how is this influenced by depression?
All participants of this study enjoyed their favorite music more than the neutral music and depressed patients didn’t differ from the healthy subjects in scores for enjoyment of favorite music nor on the difference between the favorite and neutral music. On the fMRI the depressed patients showed less activation of parts of the brain: the medial orbital frontal cortex, the nucleus accumbens and the ventral striatum. In the pictures above you can see the areas more active in healthy controls compared to depressed patients.
These brain regions are known to be involved in reward processing in healthy controls. In depression the medial orbital frontal cortex shows dysfunction mainly hyperactivity. The lower difference in activation in depressed patients between neutral and favorite music listening can be explained by tonic hyperactivation of this region with consequent lack of signal change between the two conditions.
The nucleus accumbens and the ventral striatum also areas of reward processing are known to be affected during depression. Since the subjective rating of enjoyment of their favorite music was not significantly different the depressed patients differ in the processing of rewarding stimuli.
How was this study done?
investigated the use of an fMRI, passive musiclistening paradigm to evaluate the neurophysiological response to enjoying participant-specific, instrumental ‘favorite music’ versus ‘neutral music’ in healthy (n=15) and depressed patients (n=16). This paradigm took 10–12 min in the scanner and was not confounded by active decision making once scanning began.
Conclusion
From this research it’s concluded that in depressed patients the neurophysiological reward response is different from healthy subjects. depressed patients showed significant deficits in activation of the most important reward areas of the brain.
Can’t explain the fact that depressed patients scored their subjective liking of there favorite music comparable to healthy subjects. Remains a mystery to me since one of the characteristics of depression is the lack of experiencing pleasure at large and often also from music. Any suggestions?
Osuch, E., Bluhm, R., Williamson, P., Théberge, J., Densmore, M., & Neufeld, R. (2009). Brain activation to favorite music in healthy controls and depressed patients NeuroReport, 20 (13), 1204-1208 DOI: 10.1097/WNR.0b013e32832f4da3
Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew it wasn’t the most original idea in the universe. I was just curious to hear what melody the birds were creating.
I sent the music to the photographer, Paulo Pinto, who I Googled on the internet. He told his editor, who told a reporter and the story ended up as an interview in the very same newspaper.
Made by Jarbas Agnelli, he is also interviewed about this music in a newspaper.
Researchers found that sample groups of subjects regularly make the same assumptions about people’s personalities, values, social class and even their ethnicity, based on their musical preferences….music is a powerful form of social expression that can reinforce stereotypes and, potentially, social prejudices. By stating a preference for a musical style, many of us appear to use music as a “badge” to tell people about our personality and values