Alan Coady’s Musical Blog

Like buses, synchronicity comes in threes. John Connell recently led me to an article in which Nicholas Carr asks Is Google Making Us Stupid? This Sunday, I came across Brian Appleyard’s piece in The Times, Stoooopid….why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks. The next concentration-based piece I spotted, in a section called Emily’s News on the site of Scotland’s Centre for Confidence and Well-being, was entitled You may not see it, but TV is affecting children.

The last of these three articles, which deals specifically with very young children, is relatively straightforward. The previous two contain so many variables that it’s difficult to see this debate coming to an end any time soon – but it is surely a very good thing that it is taking place. My own view is that, before worrying too much about difficulty of reading lengthy articles online, a few parameters need to be set. I skim through a great deal on the net, often in the living room with the TV or radio on (sometimes both); my email & feed-reader sit open along with a correspondence-chess website. However, I consider this to be searching as opposed to reading. I would no more sit with my laptop, struggling to read an in-depth piece in a distraction-filled environment, than I would with a book. I’d retire to somewhere quieter, having set aside the time to concentrate. If that weren’t possible, I’d send the url to myself in an email, paste the text into a word processing application, or bookmark the page with del.ici.ous and read it later.

I spend more time online than many people I know and, to the best of my knowledge, my concentration is no worse than before. With books easer to track down, and reviews easier to garner online than off, I probably read more books now than at any time in my life. In school, I teach 52 lessons-per-week and don’t find myself suddenly wondering what I was saying, or who these people are in front of me. However, at 48 years old, my formative years were over long before the internet began to impact on my modus operandi. Has enough time elapsed to tell what effect, if any, has been wrought on young people’s concentration? Currently, they spend as long as I do in class; they sit in silent exam halls for as long as ever; as far as I’m aware, a football match still lasts 90 minutes….

The synchronicity was kept alive when I came to a captivating story this morning entitled The Last Channel by Italo Calvino – from an outstanding collection of stories entitled Numbers In The Dark. Without spoiling this almost Kafkaesque tale, I can reveal that the protagonist allows his habit of channel-hopping with the remote to escalate to monumental proportions. However, even he appears to be searching and not watching. If your brain is not e-addled, you may be up to reading it in parallel text.

I break off from the traditional summer silence to flag up some interesting tests related to Simon Baron Cohen’s* recent book, The Essential Difference: Men, Women and the Extreme Male Brain.

There are four tests:

• Systemizing quotient test (my own score 21)
• Empathy quotient test (my own score 48)
• Autism Spectrum quotient test (my own score 15)
• Mind in the eyes test (my own score 28)

The first three take the form of choosing how much you agree with a given statement: definitely agree; slightly agree; slightly disagree & definitely disagree. The 4^th test involves looking at a pair of eyes, through the letter-box, as it were and then choosing which of four given emotions is being expressed.

In all four tests my score fell into the category where “most women score.” This did not surprise me and I imagine that most people employed in the people industries would score similarly. Why not try them? The overall results (with colour coded gender divide) for over 150,000 participants so far can be seen here (slow link - patience required).

I first came across this topic in an article in New Scientist which suggested that reading fiction might develop social skills.

* cousin of Sacha Baron Cohen aka Ali G and Borat

The Music & Etymology page is beginning to take some sort of shape now and contains around 200 terms. The raison d’etre of the page is explained here.

Any suggestions for missing terms, organisation/layout etc. would be gratefully received.

Guess who got me into etymology. Perhaps surprisingly, it was Malcolm X, in his autobiography. Rather than looking up definitions, it soon seemed preferable to attempt to divine them through familiarity with the constituent parts of the word – making it nearly impossible to forget.

In a subject like music, the bulk of whose vocabulary consists in old and foreign words, an etymological outlook can offer a key to these baffling terms and associations. With this in mind, I’ve created a new Lesson Support Page entitled Music & Etymology. I must stress here that this is not really my own work but simply a series of links to a fantastic online etymological resource. At the moment the work is at the brain-storming stage and I feel that further developments (and perhaps suggestions from users) will help me decide which of the following options to choose:

• alphabetical – favouring those looking for a specific term
• thematic – grouping together related words e.g. interval; triad; chord – favouring browsing

I’ve also yet to decide what to do about words which do not appear on www.etymonline.com. Should I provide my own pointers? Leave them blank – encouraging reader research? Omit them from the list altogether?

Clearly, this will an ongoing project requiring constant updating. However, there’s no rush and it’s important to bear in mind the following proverb of Lao Tzu at the outset of a seemingly huge task:

“ A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

I frequently refer to the many advantages which keeping this blog has conferred – upon pupils and myself. Out of the blue, I recently received a very generous gift thanks entirely to the existence of this blog. The gift was from the Dutch guitarist, composer and teacher, Eugène den Hoed and took the form of a mountain of sheet music of original compositions for guitar along with a CD.

Eugène teaches in the Centrum voor de Kunsten in Bergen op Zoom and, from time to time, appears as a panel member in competitions run by the European Guitar Teachers Association (EGTA*).

You can hear Eugène playing excerpts from his compositions here

Many thanks, Eugène.

* The president of EGTA is John Williams

Having signed up for updates from National Year of Reading (not the town - the activity) I received an e-newsletter today containing this advert for the campaign:

It’s not really news, I know, but it’s always good to see reaffirmation of the benefits of exercise on learning and the brain - like the article in today’s Independent. One aspect I hadn’t seen articulated quite so directly concerns the role exercise plays in reducing aggression. Perhaps that explains why, almost without exception, martial artists seem to be amongst the least aggessive people around. Much of the article concerns the work of Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, John Ratey, author of a book entitled Spark and a related blog.

Yesterday’s edition of The Material World on Radio 4 featured a fascinating discussion on how the brain processes sound. Presented by the mercurial Quentin Cooper* the guests - Jan Schnupp from the University of Oxford and Sophie Scott from the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience - discussed:

• how we select which sounds merit our concentration in a noisy environment
• how, through the one-dimensional information supplied by compressed airwaves hitting the ear drum, we detect location, distance, whether the source is moving and, if so, in which direction**
• how 20 millisecond chunks seem to be the choice of the brain for both auditory and visual processing - the constant refreshment of sound and vision gives us the illusion of a continuum
• foreign accent syndrome
• which parts of the brain become active when an impressionist is conjuring up the sound of of another person - or when a person is selecting different registers of the voice

The last of these topics is something we use so naturally in teaching that it is taken for granted:

• the tone used to gently nudge someone back on task
• the slightly more emphatic one used to highlight that what’s being said is a reminder and not the first mention
• the increased intensity which suggests that the behaviour is becoming an issue
• the complete re-orchestration required if we realise that there is a perfectly valid and blame-free source of distraction

You can download the programme here (the item begins halfway through the broadcast).

Further reading:
Sophie Scott working with impressionist Duncan Wiseby

Times article on accents etc.

Science Daily article on work by Jan Schnupp on the auditory cortex which could lead to improvements in hearing aids of speech recognition systems

Science Daily article on how we concentrate on one voice in a noisy room

More on the millisecond chunking of sound and the effects of silence, white noise and reversal of those chunks on perception

* “For me science isn’t a subject, it’s a perspective.”

** This process, for me, becomes more fascinating when considering that stereo hi-fi products essentially strive to create the illusion of what is already an illusion.

I stumbled upon an interesting article about researching those areas of the brain brought to life (and also subdued) while improvising music inside a fMRI scanner. This necessitated the development of a keyboard and headphones containing no iron whatever. The tests involved identifying, and then ignoring, areas common to both playing and improvising, allowing one to isolate those regions involved in creation on the hoof.

This week’s New Scientist features a 12-page special on The Roots of Music. I haven’t read too much of it yet as it only arrived today but, as it looks so promising, I thought I’d flag it up while copies are still available. However, if you click the preceding link, you’ll get some idea of the content - including access to five great auditory illusions.