I bought an iPhone about a month ago. Needless to say, going from my crappy “text message-only” phone to this palm-sized super computer has been quite a change. I’m doing my best to avoid checking my email every five minutes. Other than a slight obsession with the game “line-up,” my iPhone usage has not yet put a damper on my relationship with my girlfriend!
One free app that I’m really digging is from TED. If you’re not familiar with TED, at their conferences really smart people talk about really interesting things, and the videos from these presentations are free to all of us (probably in the hopes that we all get smarter). So, I now have hundreds of paradigm-shifting videos in the palm of my hand. Pretty awesome!
I’ve recently checked out three videos regarding sound and music that I want to share with you. Hopefully you’ll find them as interesting as I did.
Julian Treasure: The 4 ways sound affects us
Julian Treasure studies sound and advises businesses on how best to use it. Much of his presentation is about sound in general, but I think everything he says relates to making music. In fact, at 3:44, Treasure says music “is the most powerful sound there is.”
Depending on how you want your listener to feel, you can craft the sound of your music in various ways. Do you want them to feel relaxed? Angry? Perhaps even violent? This may seem obvious to anyone who is an active listener of music, but hearing about the science behind this is fascinating.
Evan Grant: Making sound visible through cymatics
Evan Grant works with cymatics, the art of visualizing sound, and is the founder of the arts and technology collective seeper.
In this video, Grant shows some incredibly cool examples of cymatics. In one demonstration, they have covered a metal plate with sand, then bowed the side of the plate with a violin bow, in turn creating complex patterns in the sand through music.
Evelyn Glennie shows how to listen
Finally, a video that is 100% about music. Scottish percussionist and composer Evelyn Glennie lost nearly all of her hearing by age 12. Rather than isolating her, it has given her a unique connection to her music. In this soaring demonstration, deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie illustrates how listening to music involves much more than simply letting sound waves hit your eardrums.
Of course, there have been great examples of virtuosic deaf musicians (Beethoven anyone?), but watching a deaf drummer is really amazing. This is a very long video (over 30 minutes) but if you want to take one lesson away, skip to 6:45. This is one of the best examples of technique vs. feeling the music that I’ve ever seen.
Hopefully you’ve found these videos as interesting as I did. If you want to watch more, they are all free at the TED website or through iTunes (go to the iTunes store and search on “TED”).
