The bibliography provides citations from the medical, musical, and popular literature, with emphasis on clinical problems and relevant basic science in performing arts medicine. It can be searched by author, title, publication, or keyword, and searches can be limited to music, acting, or dance.
Scrabble™-to-MIDI is a computer-emulated two-dimensional board game that generates MIDI music as the game is played.
The plug-in translator and its configuration parameters comprise a composition. Improvisation consists of playing a unique game and of making ongoing adjustments to mapping parameters during play.
Statistical distributions of letters and words provide a basis for mapping structures from word lists to notes, chords, and phrases. While pseudo-random tile selection provides a stochastic aspect to the instrument, players use knowledge of vocabulary to impose structure on this sequence of pseudo-random selections, and a conductor uses mapping parameters to variegate this structure in up to 16 instrument voices.
Until now, the assumed hurdles of electronic design have kept laypersons at bay. Circuit bending—the chance-directed rewiring of preexisting electronic devices—transforms the circuit into a friendly and immediate canvas, like that of a painter: Just walk up and paint.
Indeed, the modern-day painter’s canvas is more immediate than ever, since there is no longer a need to study the science of pigment making. Similarly, circuit bending’s chance approach—an act of clear illogic—obviates any need to understand the science of electronics.
Just as traditional cultures can transform a coconut into myriad different instruments, circuit bending can transform a Speak & Spell, for example, into an untold number of homemade synthesizers.
This according to “The folk music of chance electronics: Circuit bending the modern coconut” by Qubais Reed Ghazala (Leonardo music journal XIV [2004], pp. 96–104).
Many thanks to the Improbable Research blog for reminding us about Ghazala’s writings! Below, the author discusses his work; above, he admires an amanita muscaria.
The article, which can be read online here, was published in American entomologist (L/3 [fall 2004] pp. 142–151). It is part of a larger project called Insects in rock ’n’ roll music, which also includes lists of insect-related songs, albums, and artist names.
In designing his oval spinet, Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731) sought to produce a relatively small instrument with long bass strings, two 8′ registers with a difference in timbre equal to that obtainable with a harpsichord, a symmetrical distribution of the tensions on the soundboard, and an aesthetically appealing and elegant appearance.
The longest string is placed in the center of the soundboard, while the strings move towards the acute in symmetrical alteration to the left and to the right; they therefore require a complicated action system for the movement of the key levers to be transmitted to the appropriate jacks.
All of the first register’s strings are arranged in order towards the back side, while the second register’s strings progress from the center towards the front side—it is the two registers, and not the sequence of notes, that are symmetrical with respect to the center. The selection of the registers is accomplished by sliding the keyboard, which activates a counter-lever system.
This according to “Bartolomeo Cristofori: La spinette ovali del 1690 / Bartolomeo Cristofori’s 1690 oval spinet” by Gabriele Rossi-Rognoni, an essay included in Bartolomeo Cristofori: La spinetta ovale del 1690—Studi e ricerche / The 1690 oval spinet—Study and research (Firenze: Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali, 2002).
Above, a replica built by Tony Chinnery and Kerstin Schwarz. Below, a brief documentary on Cristofori and his instruments.
The collection focuses on the effects of repetitive musical rhythm on the brain and nervous system, integrating diverse fields including ethnomusicology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, religious studies, music therapy, and human health. The authors present aspects of musical rhythm and biological rhythms, and in particular rhythmic entrainment, in a way that considers cultural context alongside theoretical research and discussions of potential clinical and therapeutic implications.
Considering the effects of drumming and other rhythmic music on mental and bodily functioning, the authors show how rhythmic music can have a dramatic impact on mental states, sometimes catalyzing profound changes in arousal, mood, and emotional states through the stimulation of changes in physiological functions like the electrical activity in the brain.
Included are discussions of experiments using electroencephalography (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and subjective measures to gain insight into how these mental states are evoked and what their relationship is to the music and the context of the experience, demonstrating that these phenomena occur in a consistent and reproducible fashion and suggesting clinical applications.
On 2 September 1890 U.S. Navy officer George Breed (1864–1939) was granted a patent for a design for an electrified guitar (Method of and apparatus for producing musical sounds by electricity, patent no. 435,679); it appears to be the first application of electricity to a fretted string instrument.
Like the modern electric guitar and other similar instruments, Breed’s patent was based on a vibrating string in an electromagnetic field; but his design worked on very different musical and electrical principles (in particular the Lorentz force), resulting in a small but extremely heavy guitar with an unconventional playing technique that produced an exceptionally unusual and unguitarlike, continuously sustained sound.
Breed is now almost completely unknown as a musical instrument maker and designer; the significance of this instrument has largely remained underappreciated, and the circuitry unexamined.
This according to “George Breed and his electrified guitar of 1890” by Matthew Hill (The Galpin Society journal LXI [April 2008] pp. 193–203). Below, Dr. Hill discusses his research.
In Sonic constructs, two robotic devices move and interact while performing trajectories that produce sound as a by-product of the movement itself. Direction, speed, acceleration, position, scratching, and collision characterize an environment for kinetic and acoustic participation.
Darwin’s On the origin of species and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, both completed in 1859, share an articulation of the shift from one worldview to another: from change as a repetitive circular movement to development as a cyclic process. Darwin’s treatise is more than a scientific theory—it is an aesthetic account of the wonders and beauty of nature. Wagner’s opera is more than a subjective work of art—it clearly reflects dimensions of evolution akin to scientific explanations of the phenomenon.
Capable of producing sounds beyond the range of human hearing, the pipe organ presents the ultimate challenge for sound recording. The first known attempt was the Columbia Records recordings of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from late August and early September 1910, which included two organ solos played by John J. McClellan.
Probably the very first pipe organ recording was a test made on 30 August 1910, with McClellan playing Wagner’s Tannhäuser overture. Two enormous acoustic recording horns, five feet long and two feet wide, were suspended on a rope strung across the Tabernacle. Although the engineer deemed the recordings successful, apparently they were never approved for release.
This according to “The first recordings of organ music ever made” by John W. Landon (Theatre organ: Journal of the American Theatre Organ Society LIII/4 [July–August 2011] pp. 22–28). Above, the Mormon Tabernacle organ as it appeared at the time of the recording (two 15-foot wings were added in 1915).
The library of the Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute) in Paris is home to an extensive collection of writings on music from the Arab world, a region stretching from the Atlas Mountains to the Indian Ocean. This series … Continue reading →
The Filipino ethnomusicologist and composer Jose Maceda created unique works that blended his fieldwork on Filipino and other music with his expertise in European avant-garde traditions. His compositions combined innovative techniques such as spatialization, a focus on timbre, and musique … Continue reading →
The Senegalese singer, songwriter, musician, and politician Youssou N’Dour was born just six months before Senegal achieved independence. His mother hailed from a long line of griots, or gawlo, who served as hereditary musicians and custodians of oral history in … Continue reading →
Ellis Marsalis first learned to play the clarinet and saxophone but the piano later became his main instrument. From 1951 to 1955, he completed a bachelor’s degree in music education at Dillard University in New Orleans while receiving informal jazz … Continue reading →
