Continuing to experiment with video…here is a hurriedly shot, and appallingly lit, rendition of Now Westlin’ Winds. This is basically an instrumental version of what Dick Gaughan does with Burns’ original on his excellent Handful of Earth album. I did this arrangement a few years ago and a couple of pupils played it their Advanced Higher programmes. The tuning is DADGAD i.e. strings 1, 2 & 6 tuned down a tone (2 fret’s worth).
Just after writing this, I discovered that this is Dick Gaughan’s “favourite song of all time.”
Interesting write-up of an experiment on Music Matters - a music cognition blog.
So, how was it for you? I’m referring to Blue Monday the day of the year we are meant to feel as despondent as it’s possible to be. Frankly, I didn’t find it too bad. Of course the flurry of snow, cleverly referred to as sleet or even rain by some teachers, caused lasting distraction for many young pupils. I find it quite touching to see such elemental animation. In years to come, these same children will look out of the window and utter inspiringly, “and I’ve just washed the car, as well,” or “that washing’s never going to dry now!”
I also managed to book myself onto a course in speed reading, generously put on by ELC. I’ll post more about that, at frightening speed, when it’s over. I imagine that almost all of it will be to do specifically with words but I wonder if there will be any general ocular facts which would be relevant to music reading.
Speaking of reading – allow me to scatter, for your delectation, links to a cauldron of contentious miscellany, loosely relevant to education, internet, the mind and moods.
A. C. Grayling calls for universities to endorse trustworthy websites and flag up the erroneous
Contributors to Wikipedia are thought to be closed and disagreeable
Misery can be good for you
The mind may not exist solely in the brain. What?! I can’t get my own one around that
p.s. the title of this post comes from one of the finest jazz/blues/big band albums of all time by Oliver Nelson
Buffeted by wind towards a parma-violet sky this morning, I reflected upon an environmental incongruity, as the Allemande from Bach’s French Suite No. 5 in G rang out from the harpsichord of Tom Koopman. Were I involved in a car share or public transport, this magic moment would not be happening.
A day’s teaching might normally have been sufficient to overwrite that memory had it not been for a particularly fascinating episode of Word of Mouth at 4:30 on Radio 4. Presenter Michael Rosen discussed:
Intrigued by both interviews, I did a little research at the end of my solo drive home, and was delighted to come across a huge (and freely available) body of work by Daniele Schön
I would be interested in finding research on the role of knowledge of a first instrument when learning a second. I think we’d all agree that in both music and language, learning two is not twice the work of one and that three is not thrice.
You can listen again until 16:30 on Tuesday 24th Dec.
If increased understanding is facilitated by coming across the same idea(s) in contrasting contexts then the old have an advantage over the young in simply having come across more contexts. Another advantage is gaining time for these contexts through needing less sleep. I found myself up earlier than reasonable today and decided to catch up with a burgeoning archive of radio recordings. By an amazing coincidence, one of these was a Night Waves special from the Free Thinking Festival on the increasing gap between the generations. The introductory statistics gave pause for thought:
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half of Britons questioned by Barnardos held the view that our young people are “feral and dangerous creatures.” I had come across this recently thanks to Derek Robertson (via John Connell)
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1/3 of young rarely people spend time with adult relations but 90% of those who do report that they enjoy it
This prompted a leap of the mind to something I read yesterday on Neurons Firing. The post in question contained the following sentence:
“Kosik also pointed out some very salient features to keep in mind. Perhaps the most protective factor against Alzheimer’s is having friends, social networks, and being connected.”
In conjunction with the above points, the solution for all ages seems obvious – the implementation, less so.
Peter Lovatt’s improvisation workshop, which followed hot on the heels of The Science of Improvisation, concentrated on verbal as opposed to musical improvisation. I imagine the reasons for this included:
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not all present would have brought instruments
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not all present were musicians
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breaking into groups, working verbally would produce less racket than would its musical equivalent
However, being an guitar teacher, I’ve since thought about how to make use of parallels. I should perhaps point out here as a prelude to outlining my memory and analysis of events that, unlike the two longer seminars, I did not make an audio recording – the nature of the workshop simply wasn’t going to lend itself to that, as we were frequently to break into changing groups to try out the various ideas. I know how unreliable memory can be, but I feel I can remember most of what happened.
At the heart of the workshop was (more…)
From the people who brought you The Biology Of Learning, Luminosity now brings to lovers of learning about learning, Your Nervous System At Work. Some of the numbers are staggering and there are interesting links to related posts on cognition, memory & learning.
When I began this blog in May 2006, I wasn’t expecting any particular theme to emerge but, when asked recently to describe the content, found myself saying that, while I endeavour to maintain a core content of posts on music and music-education, there are also many on the overlaps between music, language and science and, hopefully, their relevance to learning & teaching. So imagine my excitement upon receiving email notification of an event at the Wellcome Collection entitled Tune-In: Music with the Brain in Mind - exploring improvisation and well-being. This reach across the two cultures (a successor of Head On: Art with the Brain in Mind) was the fruit of a collaboration between artakt, Central St Martins, University of the Arts, and new recording label Plushmusic (connected, I assume to the festival, Music At Plush). The day comprised two seminars (each featuring a panel of scientists and musicians), workshops and late afternoon performances of improvised music in the wonderful acoustic of the one of the Wellcome Collection’s galleries. Neither Napoleon Bonaparte’s toothbrush nor Florence Nightingale’s moccasins ever enjoyed such harmonious surroundings.
Professor Marina Wallace (Director of artakt) introduced the morning session entitled The Science of Improvisation. On the panel were: (more…)
I’m in the midst of revisiting and transcribing mp3 recordings I made at last Saturday’s fantastic event - Tune-In: Music with the Brain in Mind at the Wellcome Collection . I switched on my computer to pursue this task and noticed an email newsletter from Radio 3’s Music Matters. Once again the music and the brain is the topic. The programme goes out at 12:15 tomorrow (Saturday 15 Nov) and will be available in podcast and listen again formats for 7 days. Here’s the description of the content from the email:
It’s not every week that someone rubs an egg-like solution to your scalp, plugs you into a handful of electrodes, and reads your brainwaves. But in the name of research, that’s exactly what’s been happening to me this week. The whole programme this week looks at the science, psychology, and creativity of the relationship between music and our brains. That’s why I found myself at Goldsmith’s College in London with Mick Grierson. Mick has designed a piece of software that allows you to make music just from the power of your thought waves. It’s the most amazing feeling when it works: how I imagine telekinesis would feel. Mick performs in public with his musical mind-trick; even if my brain isn’t quite up to that yet, it was an astonishing experience.
But it’s not just experimental electronics: I’ll be finding out that the simplest and most instinctive of our reactions to music are also the ones that are the hardest for neuroscience to fathom. Just how is it that we experience emotion through music? Why is it that so music seems to involve so much of our minds and our bodies; our feet tapping, hearts beating, and millions of neurons firing in our brains? In the company of Ian Cross, Director of the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge, I’ll be exploring the gamut of neurological and musico-scientific enquiry.
From Edinburgh, Professor Colwyn Trevarthen tells me how we are all born with an innate ‘communicative musicality’; that even in the interactions between weeks-old babies and their mothers, there is musical activity as sophisticated as improvised jazz, which is crucial for the development of our brains and our bodies. Composer Nigel Osborne explains how music can heal trauma, in his work with traumatised children around the world, and there’s the latest from research into music and emotion from Stefan Koelsch. Violinist and music and medicine specialist Paul Robertson tells me how his brain is hard-wired for music – and neurologist and author Oliver Sacks reveals that musicians’ brains literally look different to those of non-musicians: musical practice develops the brain, physically, in ways that no other discipline does.
Yet it seems that however far we go down the path of scientific enquiry, there will always be limits. We know that we feel emotion when we listen to music, and we know that music activates so many of our neural networks, but the mechanics of how and why that happens are still a mystery.
Sound promising?
Where it seems relevant, I like to post about anything interesting in the interface between music and science. So you can imagine how pleased I was to receive an email notification of an event entitled Tune-In at the Wellcome Collection* on Saturday 8 Nov. Entry is free and so, if you’re in the neighbourhood, it seems like as fascinating a way to spend a Saturday as I can imagine.
I’ll write more after the event, at which I hope to meet up with my guitar-playing cousin Martin Byatt.
Speaking of science, I heard today on Today that Richard Dawkins has stood down from the Chair For The Public Understanding of Science. The chair is to be filled by Marcus du Sautoy – a frequent guest on In Our Time and presenter of BBC 4’s The Story of Maths.
Do we have a chair for the public understanding of education? Do we need one?
* In association with Artakt, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design and University of the Arts London. With thanks to the European Dana Alliance for the Brain.
