To most people music is a form of art it lifts the soul and replaces the atmosphere with good vibes. According to neurobiologist Norman M. Weinberger, music exists in every culture. Parents all over the world sing to their babies. Music provides us with a natural and rhythmic way to learn. Do you ever wonder why children learn to sing their ABCs before they can say them?
Do you notice that so many of our favorite children’s books have a certain rhyme or rhythmic pattern? Many studies show that there is a very strong connection between literacy and music. Through music, children learn to understand language (we must comprehend language in order to become “true” readers). Experiment with rhythm, words, tempo, and melody (which are important skills in reading aloud). Think creatively and holistically. Make the connection between print and spoken words. Practice motor development and motor coordination while experimenting with various instruments and dancing. Listen (we sometimes forget that listening is an important literacy skill).
The concept of the "Mozart effect" was described by French researcher, Dr. Alfred A. Tomatis in his 1991 book Pourquoi Mozart? (Why Mozart?). He used the music of Mozart in his efforts to "retrain" the ear, and believed that listening to the music presented at differing frequencies helped the ear, and promoted healing and the development of the brain.
The 1997 book by Don Campbell, "The Mozart Effect: Tapping the Power of Music to Heal the Body, Strengthen the Mind, and Unlock the Creative Spirit", discusses the theory that listening to Mozart (especially the piano concertos) may temporarily increase one's IQ and produce many other beneficial effects on mental function. Campbell recommends playing specially selected classical music to infants, in the expectation that it will benefit their mental development.
After The Mozart Effect, Campbell wrote a follow-up book, The Mozart Effect For Children, and created related products. Among these are collections of music that he states harness the Mozart effect to enhance "deep rest and rejuvenation", "intelligence and learning", and "creativity and imagination". Campbell defines the term as "an inclusive term signifying the transformational powers of music in health, education, and well-being. It represents the general use of music to reduce stress, depression, or anxiety; induce relaxation or sleep; activate the body; and improve memory or awareness. Innovative and experimental uses of music and sound can improve listening disorders, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, autism, and other mental and physical disorders and diseases"
In 1999 a major challenge was raised to the existence of the Mozart effect by two teams of researchers. In a pair of papers published together under the title "Prelude or Requiem for the 'Mozart Effect'?" Chabris reported a meta-analysis demonstrating that "any cognitive enhancement is small and does not reflect any change in IQ or reasoning ability in general, but instead derives entirely from performance on one specific type of cognitive task and has a simple neuropsychological explanation", called "enjoyment arousal". For example, he cites a study that found that "listening either to Mozart or to a passage from a Stephen King story enhanced subjects' performance in paper folding and cutting (one of the tests frequently employed by Rauscher and Shaw) but only for those who enjoyed what they heard".
Kenneth Steele, psychology professor at Appalachian State University, found that "listening to Mozart produced a 3-point increase relative to silence in one experiment and a 4-point decrease in the other experiment". When he played the sonata to youngsters, he said it had no more effect on their intelligence than contemporary music, or even random noise did.
Professor Steele is one of a number of scientists debunking the popular theory.
John Bruer, head of the McDonnell Foundation in St Louis, is about to publish a book called The Myth of the First Three Years, in which he rubbishes the whole notion that a single piece of music can have an impact on a child's intelligence.
Music despite Professor steele debunking the Mozart effect, music is still important for growth. Daniel Levitin neuroscientist, musician and psychologist has a theory that early man used music to communicate with each other. Alterations in pitch and time, can be conveyed by emotional or urgency, which later grew into a more complex language. Further investigations into the older parts of the brain the cerebellum responds selectively activated to music and not to language. This suggest that music since the Neolithic age has been around since the dawn of man. Music what ever genre can still make a positive effect on us, if you believe it helps stimulate your brain or not.
In my own quest of finding a excellent tune if I am in the mood to make some music to kill a few minuets while waiting for something better to come along. I find my self stumbling along for ideas and it doesn't help if you are hearing arguments down the hallway or if someone is playing the TV too loud. If I do get in a rare moment of composing, I have to feel a ethereal presence before I lay down some foundation of beats and melody. I somehow need to get a sense of tempo and then later a drum loop to state which way I would go musically speaking. But there are many different ways to get inspired to write a song.
look at it in a logical way where upon you look at its structure and see what genera you would like write for. This can determine the drum beats and drum style of the song. Write for each section for verse chorus and bridge, with difference of melody for verse and chorus. Normally finding a chords for verse and a small variation change for the chorus. In my process of writing I would start the chords and hum notes to find a melody for that chord structure.
Heartbreak seems like a good source of inspiration, it allows sympathy and bond on some level with the listener. Though there may be a large amount of songs written to this same subject matter, its can often lead the writer down a pathway full of cliches and repeated imagery.
Bob Barrett famous music producer used to collect song lyrics and keep them in a long scribbled list on scraps of paper. These ideas soon became 250 songs, these song ideas came from life and over time collected from conversations and with friends, newspapers everyday phrases and play on words.
Doodling on a piano or guitar could also stimulate a melody or spark up words for a potential song. Paul McCartney sat down on a piano and was doodling in the key of E Major. When he had a quote from Spike Milliagn in his mind “You know, it’s a funny kind of thing – black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony, folks.” This idea would later evolved to the song Ebony and Ivory.
Collaboration with a friend or a group of like minded musicians can often produce unique results, which probably would not be constructed by one person. Once john Lennon and Paul McCartney had both half of a song which fitted together perfectly.
Spontaneous musical ideas can flash into someone's mind like a prewritten song or a whole melody which triggers lyrics. Beethoven best melody ideas came to him while out walking through a field, Mood can also trigger spontaneous ideas too.
People them selves can inspire composers to write a musical form of a biography, Bernie Taupins song Daniel sung by Elton John was about a Vietnam Veteran who after the war, lost his eyesight and decided to leave the US and live in spain. While The Beatles wrote about "Eleanor Rigby" and several other people in situations that move us.
What is inspiring and what causes us to compose was seemed to be ethereal, an immeasurable quality which can not be explained. Darwin Tunes is a music program which creates bursts of noise that gradually evolve based on the preferences of thousands of human listeners who visit Darwin tunes.org
Darwin Tunes is the brain child of Robert MacCallum and Armand Leroi from Imperial college London.
MacCallum suspects that musical styles evolve through Darwinian natural selection. They are copied and modified from artist to artist and generation to generation, with the popular ones more likely to be copied get more exposure.
The experiment began with two parent 8 second long loops, each encoded with a digital genome which are shuffled and produce daughter loops which mutate. This also mimics the way composers would merge musical styles together while inventing new motifs.
The experiment began with 100 randomly generated loops, on the website listeners would then on a scale of 5. After every 20 listens, the top ten would pair off and would produce 2 daughters. At any one time 100 loops would exist, leaving less popular loops to die. To date the loops have been evolving over 3000 generations. A upward rise of appeal will last 500 or 600 generations, before it hits a plateau and will stop evolving. This is because loops get so complex that their intertwining melodies and rhythms don't merge very well. The act of mating rather combining the best of both parents ends up in splitting the elements that work well together. Or it maybe because some styles are trapped in an adaptive peak, which explains why old musical styles tend to be conservative, changing little over the years.
Darwin Tunes offers insight to the evolution of music via musical loops, it may be applied to the evolution of the pop culture of music in the real world. I cant help but agree that when ever I compose music I mix elements of previous generations of music from favorite songs of mine.
Though I think more about the artistic elements I bring on board then the cold merging algorithm of a computer program. I was worried that this kind of technology would replace the composer but the level musicality from these loops make me think they are no better them lame 90's ring tones.
I am not sure if the computer will be composing at the same level as humans. I know that it can be used as a powerful tool to compile musical elements. As music sequencers can quickly bring together instruments and loops to form a song. The future will still have a human element which needs that degree of empathy. Without that human element comes that slow decline of interest and back on the road of dystopia.
