Feed: The Music Digest - AggScore: 52.2

Why Do We Feel The Way We Do When We Listen To Music ?

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Why do we feel the way we do when we listen to music ?  Maria Popova in her article "  7 Must-Read Books on Music, Emotion & the Brain"  attempts to answer this question by providing the reader with

 "..... seven essential books that bridge music, emotion and cognition, peeling away at that tender intersection of where your brain ends and your soul begins."   Read More

Rock Music: Are We Witnessing Its Demise ?

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During the past few years how often have we heard about the demise of Rock Music ?  At the moment it maybe in a temporary state of hibernation  but eventually it will rise again from this dormant slumber and those 'gentle'  electric guitar riffs will be heard once again.  An interested article by Jason Axelrod  titled  " Debating the death of rock music" explores this further :

"If you take a glance at music history over the past 50 years, you’ll notice rock bands used to dominate the pop charts. At one time, even in the recent past, rock was synonymous with popular music."  Read More

The Benefits That Music Can Bring You

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Music has the ability to tap those hidden resources that lie in each us and help us cope with those challenges that life often throw at us from time to time.   Siobhan Faith  explores in her article  'The Healing Benefits of Music' the link between music and healing.

"Music can also be a great source of healing. It can calm and soothe, rejuvenate, energize, relax, inspire and restore. Music can have an amazing transformative effect in harmonizing our body systems. In fact, studies have shown that using music with the intention of healing has brought about positive effects on the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems." MORE

Various Affects of Music On The Brain

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Via Scoop.it - the psychology of music

"Brain functioning, moods of an individual, emotions and behaviors have great connection with music. All of them can be altered, changed and improvised according to the requirements and perceptions with the assistance of ... "Via health.ezinemark.com

The Sounds of Colour: A look at Synaesthesia in Relation to Music and Colour

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Let us begin this article by asking the question what is 'synaesthesia'? Well synaesthesia can be described as people having 'hallucinations'. A hallucination roughly speaking is usually an error of the brain in its interpretation of the mass of sense-data, which our senses send to the brain.  The the most common example of this is the falling sensation, this is when a person thinks they are physically falling when they are on the verge of falling to asleep.

The most typical of these synaesthesia experiences is probably in relation between music and colour. This is when a person sees colour when he or she hears music, this is often known as  as 'colour hearing'.  This particular experience has been known since antiquity.

A number composers have actually been fascinated by this concept of 'colour hearing'. They have included Sir Arthur Bliss, whose composition 'The Colour Symphony', offers a vivid recollection about his own personal colour perceptions that may have passed through his mind and imagination while he was composing this symphony.  Each and every one of the titles of the movements is in fact a colour. 'The 'First Movement': Purple the Colour of Amethysts, Pageantry, Royalty and Death. The 'Second Movement': Red the Colour of Rubies, Wine, Revelry, Furnaces, Courage and Magic. 'The 'Third Movement' : Blue the Colour of Sapphires, Deep Water, Skies, Loyalty and Melancholy. The 'The 'Fourth Movement': Green the Colour of Emeralds, Hope, Joy, Youth, Spring and Victory.

For other composers musical keys seemed to have held a great deal of interest.  Beethoven for instance is known to have referred to the B minor key as a black key.  If one accepts black as being a symbol associated with death together with suffering and many other darker emotions, Beethoven must have thought of this key as gloomy and sad.  This music however is not as  nearly as so dark, tragic and heartbreaking as when the key of B minor was used by J.S. Bach in his own compositions. The music which flowed from this genius mind in the B minor key is some of the most despairing, desolating and painful music within that key.

The Russian composers Rimsky-Korsakov and  Scriabin  both developed strong associations  between particular musical keys and colours though each interpreted these associations in their own way. Though generally there are disagreements  among composers on what colours relate to what musical keys, these differences are fundamentally unimportant compare to whether these types of relationships and connections exist any way.

Different parts of the orchestra have even being given colours, black for instance has been given for strings and voices, red for brass and drums, blue for wood. It has even been suggested that to help to make orchestral scores easier to read, the above colours ought to be used in the printing of the staves committed to the different families of musical instruments.  Associations have also  been made between timbre and colour such as cello - indigo blue,  human voice - green,  trumpet - red, bassoon – violet and so forth.

So  irrespective whether or not an individual person has actually have has personal knowledge of “colour hearing” for themselves, there do exist  people for which the synaesthesia experience connecting music and colour is a very real experience and not simply an 'hallucination'.

Can Listening To Music Make You A Happier Person ?

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Are we a happier person after listening to music ?  Well there have been various studies over the years trying to answer this question .   Here is an article which expounds on the subject further.

"Music & Emotions: Can Music Really Make You a Happier Person?  Music affects us all. But only in recent times have scientists sought to explain and quantify the way music impacts us at an emotional level. Researching the links between melody and the mind indicates that listening to and playing music actually can alter how our brains, and therefore our bodies, function".   MORE

Choosing The Right Genre Of Music

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When deciding on what music to listen to it is important to choose the right genre of music for the mood you are in at the time.

" Research has proven that music could be a major mood lifter particularly when one is undergoing tough times. At least every person encounters a downhill in life and during such times, music would probably be the best thing to address such situations else one would find it extremely tough to cope. " MORE

A Musical Synesthesia Experience

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Maurice Ravel - "Daphnis et Chloë - Suite No.2" ('Daybreak')

This is a great example of  French impressionist music. The synesthesia experience this piece of music evokes in me is that of a sound picture in where waves from the sea are lapping to the shore while I watch a summer sunrise and experiencing the first breezes of the morning across my face.

It occasionally happens that a great work is better known by excerpts. Such has been the fate of Maurice Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe every since its creation. While occasionally performed as a ballet, it is usually heard in concert, represented by its final three numbers: "Lever du jour" (Daybreak), "Pantomime" and "Danse generale." Ravel himself designated these excerpts as Suite No. 2 after the score's completion in 1912.  MORE

Gary Moore The Blues and Rock Guitarist Dies

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Yesterday the sad death of Gary Moore the blues and rock guitarist was announced.

"Moore grew up on Castleview Road opposite Stormont's Parliament Buildings, off the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast and started performing at a young age, having picked up a battered acoustic guitar at the age of eight. Moore got his first good-quality guitar at the age of 14, learning to play the right-handed instrument in the standard way despite being left-handed. He moved to Dublin in 1968 at the age of 16. Moore's early musical influences were artists such as Albert King, Elvis Presley and The Beatles. Later, having seen Jimi Hendrix and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers in his home town of Belfast, his own style was developing into a blues-rock sound that would be the dominant form of his career."  MORE

Gary Moore is best known for his involvement with the rock band 'Thin Lizzy'  who he first joined in 1973  and rejoined them several times more throughout his career.  Before joining 'Thin Lizzy' Moore was with the rock band 'Skid Row'.  In 1974 he joined Jon Hiseman's ‘Colosseum II’ and stayed with them until 1978 when he then followed mainly a solo career.  Gary Moore however collaborated with many major artists throughout his solo career like George Harrison, Albert Collins, BB King, Albert King and Greg Lake,Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, the Beach Boys and Ozzy Osbourne, just to name a few.

His fine rock and blues guitar virtuoso playing will be sadly missed.

Some Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Moore

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/feb/06/gary-moore-thin-lizzy-dies

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-12377862

http://www.classicrockmagazine.com/news/gary-moore-dies

The Oscar Winner Composer John Barry Has Died

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John Barry the Oscar Winner composer died suddenly yesterday (30th January 2011) of an heart attack, he was 77 years. John Barry was best known for his James Bond soundtracks, including 'Dr No', 'Goldfinger' and 'You Only Live Twice'.   He also composed scores to other films  including  'Born Free', 'Midnight Cowboy' and 'Out of Africa'.  His most recent film score was in 2001 for the war thiller film 'Enigma'. MORE

MORE

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12321610

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Barry_(composer)

Music And The Chill Factor

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A recent study by scientists at the ‘The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro at McGill University’ have found that listening to music releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain that is more closely related to the pleasures that go with rewards like food, drugs and sex.  If a volunteer enjoyed a particular piece of music this produced a chill like response in them which in turn increased the volunteer's dopamine level.  It also resulted in an increase in the volunteer's heart rate, breathing and sweating.

".....this is the first demonstration that an abstract reward such as music can lead to dopamine release. Abstract rewards are largely cognitive in nature, and this study paves the way for future work to examine non-tangible rewards that humans consider rewarding for complex reasons.”   MORE

Mick Karn: In Memory Of The Former Japan Bass Player

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In memory of the multi-instrumentalist of Mick Karn who died on  4 January 2010 after suffering from cancer, he was 52 years old.    He came to prominence in the early 1980's as bass player with the band Japan who he helped to co-founded along with David Sylvian and his younger brother Steve Jansen in  1974.  After Japan broke up in 1982 he went on to have a solo career and released a number of albums.

....... .was an English multi-instrumentalist musician and songwriter, who came to fame as the bassist for the art rock band Japan, from 1974 to 1982. In June 2010, he was diagnosed with advanced stage cancer, and died in January 2011. "  

"The band Japan, whose other members included David Sylvian, keyboardist Richard Barbieri and Sylvian's brother Steve Jansen as drummer, began as a group of friends, who all studied at the same school. As youngsters they played music as a means of escape, playing Sylvian's two-chord numbers – sometimes with Karn as the front man, sometimes with Sylvian at the fore, guitarist Rob Dean joined the band later. "

source:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mick_Karn

Other Links

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12118209

Mick Karn offical home page :  http://www.mickkarn.net/

Captain Beefheart: Few Words In His Memory

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In memory of Don Van Vliet better known as Captain Beefheart who died on the 17th December 2010 aged 69.

He certainly was one of the great original geniuses of popular music of the 20th Century. With his gritty and growling voice and his fusion of blues, jazz and psychedelia  he carved out sound that was uniquely his.

" His work, whether in music or drawing, was never mainstream and only ever gained a relatively small following, but he was a larger-than-life character who pushed the boundaries of his art in a way which influenced many who followed in his wake "

quoted from  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-11811289

Other Links

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12024652

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/captain-beefheart-dead-at-age-69-20101217

Gerry Rafferty The Musician, Songwriter and Singer Dies Today

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Gerald Rafferty The Musician, Songwriter and Singer Is No More.  He died earlier today of  liver failure after a long illness.  


Goodbye Gerry, your music gave me a lot of pleasure over the years   http://bit.ly/dQSk9J

The How And The Why On Music !

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A fascinating book on the how and the why of music and why it is so important to human beings.

  "All human cultures seem to make music - today and through history. But why they do so, why music can excite deep passions, and how we make sense of musical sound at all are questions that have, until recently, remained profoundly mysterious."  ....... MORE