The + Plus magazine is for those interested in mathematics and its applications. While I am certainly not a mathematician, musician or scientist, I am mildly curious about a lot and obsessively curious about little. My curiosity is often triggered by my ventures into the ‘blogosphere’. So for those who do have a real interest in music, and perhaps some talent, the article in + Plus with the title What makes an object into a musical instrument? may interest you.
- Not every object sounds good when you bang it.
‘Factoid’ is a word now being used as part of the programme content of a BBC Radio 2 show. A factoid being, ‘An assumption or speculation that is reported and repeated so often that it becomes accepted as a fact; a simulated or imagined fact. (SOED). The Internet seems a breeding ground for factoids.
My factoid and its connection with music, concerns a piece of music called ‘Gloomy Sunday’. Also know as the ‘Hungarian Suicide Song’. The information I recalled from some time ago, was that more people committed suicide to this piece of music than any other. It wasn’t written as a vocal but I have included a vocal version by Billie Holiday ( a sad singer for a sad song – Billie Holiday Gloomy Sunday). I haven’t tried to correlate the number of viewings of all the versions of Gloomy Sunday that are on the web with recorded suicides. Suicide is not a subject that I leap to.
The mice connection came about in my search for the music ‘Gloomy Sunday’ and suicide. ‘A student named David Merrill devised an experiment to discover how music would affect the ability of mice to learn new things. Merrill had one group of mice listen to classical music 24 hours a day and another to heavy metal music. He then timed the mice as they ran through mazes to see if the music affected their speed of learning. Unfortunately, he had to cut the first experiment short because the heavy metal mice all killed one another. In a second experiment, mice that listened to Mozart for 10 hours a day dramatically improved their maze-solving abilities, while the heavy metal mice actually became worse at solving mazes than they had been at the beginning of the experiment’.
Another factoid? I decided to look for a supporting source and found a more comprehensive report at the Schiller Institute Symposium “Towards A New Renaissance in Classical Education”. Well that’s a clincher, or so I thought until I found what you might call a ‘Snake Dancers’ site, which also claimed credence for their causes through Merril’s experiment. It turns out that the former is linked to Lyndon LaRouche and in the latter case (and I don’t know if they’re connected to the ‘ole country boys’) they do seem to have omitted the case for an apparent correlation between ‘country music and suicide’ . Eventually I came across Music and Learning , which mentions David Merrill’s experiment under the section on Scientific Studies. I’ll settle for the latter as validation of the experiment, with the first two firmly filed under ‘factoid fruit cakes’.
What of David Merrill? Well, to me at least, this made it all worth while. David Merrill is a musician and a computer scientist. He now has his own company developing devices that he calls ‘Siftables’. The following link to David Merrill and Siftables on TED.com is to a talk that he gave on Ted.com (watch the video to the end for the music connection).
Boadicea's Chariot 
A great expose of what an underemployed enquiring mind, with time to spare, can do. I thoroughly enjoyed exploring ‘the windmills of your mind!’
Exactly the sort of stuff I enjoy reading. I have bookmarked Plus. Thanks.
Thanks Zen, Sipu – I’m waiting for the weather to improve (or perhaps not), the house and garden needs my attention.
PS My wife and I were trying to remember Noel Harrison as the vocalist to the song as used in a BT ad.
Now that’s interesting – so much you can’t do on “The other side”!
“A Saxaphone is an ill wind that nobody blows good.”
Hello OMG – a laugh out loud moment (but I like jazz, Stan Getz, John Dankworth).
PS Also old movies!
Felix Leiter in an early Bond movie – Live and Let Din, I think.
Sorry,’Die.’
Peter, I am particularly interested in music therapy for autistic children and have ongoing projects with rhythm and repetition, the use of harmonic intervals with emotion, and the composition of transitional songs (songs that facilitate an easy transition from one activity to another, e.g. moving from one class to another, or a song written to help a child take turns.
At the risk of boring everyone to tears I want to say something about Gloomy Sunday and the chord progression/structure. The song anchors itself in the chord Gm6 which is G, B flat, D and E. The E (which is the 6th interval from G) gives that chord a sort of floaty unresolved quality. Minor chords, as G flat minor, are quite glum in themselves but the addition of the 6th interval (here the E) in my view seems to elongate the depressive feel, almost like an ache that just won’t go away. Additionally in this song there is use of diminished 7ths chords which lead to this “agony” persisting!
I may be able to post something relative to the work I do in future months/years but for the moment, Peter, thanks for these links!
Hello PG – I put a link on the ‘end’ of https://charioteers.org/2011/02/05/on-nursery-rhymes/
that may interst you. It’s a pdf file with the title Nursery Rhymes And Phonemic Awareness
The trouble with music is surely it depends upon the mood of the listener at the time. If they are feeling morose and suicidal then I would suggest they listen to Leonard Cohen, they will soon realise that life isn’t so bad after all.
Some people decide they only like one type of “music” and everything else is not music. Sounds can come form anything either wind, string or bashing. It all depends upon the initial beat.
It is this beat that resonates with the human mind/psyche or whatever and then becomes good. Many musicians of all types and ages have discovered this and use it to the ultimate conclusion, a hit tune. Beethoven did this, as have many modern day (last 40 odd years) guitarists all using the same basic chords that resonate.
Personally I listen to music to suit my mood at the time. As for instruments, anything from oil drums to animal horns and modern synthesisers, all make music but do we like it?
Liked the +Plus site Peter – bit above my maths geek grade, well, a lot above my maths geek grade to tell the truth – but fascinating nonetheless.
Whoops = I typed a booboo. That chord, I should have written as a G minor 6 (Gm6). Sorry to confuse anyone! Thanks for that phonemes link Peter. I had already raced through the post and will read again. I do find it an interesting subject.
Typo corrected, PG 🙂
Cheers Bearsy!