While I’m excited about the relatively new Music Cognition U: A Resource Center, it seems that just grabbing a news feed may not be the best way to ensure that you’re always providing relevant articles. For example, a recent post on the news feed is this one:
McGuinty prorogued parliament to avoid ‘facing the music,’ opposition leaders … – National Post. 16 October, 2012 Nope, no music cognition there. A more interesting article from the newsfeed is this one from Scientific American blogs: The Power of Music: Mind Control by Rhythmic Sound
Other recent blog posts which I found valuable are these from the Music and Brain Blog at University of Toronto:
- Can Teens’ brains predict which songs will be popular?
- The Positive Effects of Music Therapy on Health
- Between Music and Medicine – Robert Gupta, a review of Robert Gupta’s Ted talk.
One can never go wrong following Henkjan Honing’s Music Matters blog. Recently, he addressed the question Is Birdsong Music?
Based on the title, I find this the strangest article of the week (and no, I haven’t read it yet):
The effect of background music on the taste of wine. by Adrian C. North British journal of psychology (London, England : 1953), Vol. 103, No. 3. (August 2012), pp. 293-301, doi:10.1111/j.2044-8295.2011.02072.x
This blog post isn’t about music cognition, but it’s exceptionally well-written by Elaine Fine, who talks about finding musical truth in Fish Story My favorite excerpts from her post are My problem is that I do worry about the purity of my sound, the quality of my sound, the the accuracy of my intonation, and I have been kind of obsessed with this way of making music for a long time, and on many different instruments. and When I was young I used to think that I could help to make the world a better place through music. I believed it with all my heart and soul, because I felt that music was singular. I felt that music was the clearest way to communicate truth and authenticity, and I have dedicated my life to trying to play in a way that communicates truth.
What is a musician? As I plug away at the guitar, at which I am not only an amateur, but also, after three years, still a beginner, I appreciated the sentiments in Valerie Kampmeier‘s post on The Music Teacher’s Blog Call me an amateur, please!
If you need performance tips, The Musician’s Way Blog published a recent post called Excelling Under Pressure. And, although I question the advice to Eat a Banana!, this post on Performance Tips from the Music Teacher’s Blog has other useful advice, including the idea of memorizing using all your senses.
I hope to make this overview of other blog’s posts a frequent feature of our blog. If you’ve run across any fascinating music-related blog posts or articles in the last few weeks, feel free to add them to the comments.
