Unlocking music with neuroscience | Ardon Shorr | TEDxCMU 2012
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 พ.ค. 2024
- Ardon Shorr graduated from Oberlin College majoring in neuroscience and music theory, then taught fencing in Manhattan. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in biology at Carnegie Mellon with a research fellowship from the National Science Foundation.
To get involved, please e-mail UnlockTheMusic.TEDx@gmail.com
Thank you to Shawn Roggenkamp for photography, James Ranson for help with the talk, Dave Cummings for video, and the entire TEDxCMU team.
You can find Variations Audio Timeliner online for free:
variations.sourceforge.net/vat/
Songs:
OC Times: "Grow Old With You"
itunes.apple.com/us/album/grow...
They also have a great performance on youtube:
• OC Times - Introducing...
Schubert: Zwölf Grazer Walzer D924
Foster the People: "Pumped up Kicks"
itunes.apple.com/us/album/pump...
The Beatles: "Oh! Darling"
itunes.apple.com/us/album/oh!-...
Bob Marley & the Wailers: "Buffalo Soldier"
itunes.apple.com/us/album/buff...
The Cure: "Friday I'm In Love"
itunes.apple.com/us/album/frid...
Ben Folds: "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces"
itunes.apple.com/us/album/one-...
Mahler: Symphonies No. 1, 3, 4
and the lied "Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz."
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As a musician and educator who has struggled with learning classical musical, this was a helpful approach to deeper understanding. Music is all about patterns, but it is helpful to see it mapped out the way you do. Thank you for being an advocate for the healing power of music, for it changes people's lives. It did for me.
Great presentation. There are at least 3 separate ideas presented here. Each can be elaborated and made into a separate presentation.
1. Great pieces of music from a Beatles classic to a Beethoven Symphony have good-sounding themes that repeat. A classic example of a piece with 17m of nothing but repetition of the same theme is the Bolero by Ravel.
2. Listening to a piece of Claasical music has a short-term boosting effect on the brain. Playing an instrument or singing as a musician has a lasting effect.
3. Music education should be high on the list because learning music can boost academic performance. Music funding in public schools get very politicized that those in private schools and the ones with parents who can pay for lessons get the benefits of music education.
ah yes... bolero... I used to sit as a kid and wonder... why he would do that... now I'm an adult musician... and I get it.. to me its like improving to a... backing maybe a blues, or a riffing... but it goes around and round... as a violinist/fiddle player.. I tend to find these types boring... because I can just dance around over the bass lines... without thinking. after 4 times... I am forced into finding new eways to add different angles to these things.... (don't get me wrong.. I still don't play to tracks haha BUT when I play with folks who are into that kind of repetitive thing.... I remember WHY they are good for me... like... spinach) - SO blues is harder than you think.. cause it requires keeping oneself from bieing bored BY playing or creating variations... within a certain.. little area of music ( I'm srure blues players aren't doing it to keep from being bored... but when I get called in to shotgun for a blues band here and there... I remember WHY its hard.... its gonna be HARD or boring... ( what did I just say?) shrug
I like this talk... every type of music - whether it be the hypnotic rhythms of traditional folk music, classical music, electronic, and most definitely Pop music - has patterns and structure. We end up loving what we can make sense of.
I always knew that people who do not have musical education can still enjoy/understand academic music, only know I can also put it into words and present it as a nice argument. Thank you!
Fantastic presentation, Ardon. I have appreciated classical and played piano for years, but this puts things in a different light. I am in the learning and education field, and your preso sheds new light on how I might use music to help the learner be more engaged with content and its retention.
This was absolutely amazing! Thank you TED!
Such a brilliant talk! Thank you for enlighting us.
I had that with every Music really liked so far. Multiple times of listening to pieces i like has always enriched my understanding of it.
Fantastic, Mr. Shorr!
Unlocking my own music thanks to this explanation.
I can't say how much i thank you Ardon!
really excited to check out the Variations software and do some musical analysis!!!
So many great points in this talk! I'm amazed it took me until now to see this! haha
Great talk!!
brilliant talk
Brilliant Talk!
This is so brilliant AND beautiful A+!!!
Cool, man!
I clicked for the word neuroscience but stayed till the end.Nice talk.
beautifully informative
what a cool lecture by an even cooler guy
Mr. Shorr, you knocked it out of the park with your presentation!!! Absolutely stellar!!! In fact, I have a presentation to make in the next few days about the importance of music education, and I will be recommending to the students that they watch this presentation first and then attend a classical concert, as I know that their perspective and understanding of the music they will be listening to will be much richer and meaningful as a result of having been exposed to your teaching here.
Perhaps dust-off Leonard Bernstein's ' Young People's Concerts' series - packed full of fundamentals, knowledge,insight and wisdom....from a vastly different era.
Great lecture!
Ha ha! I love this! The part when he talks about phrases in classical music, got me through music theory and ear training class!
Bravo. I'm off to check out the software, hope they have some floyd :)
This is great!!
I really like the way of showing musical structure, and it was well-presented. Unfortunately, I think the thesis is simply invalid. No amount of structure makes classical music truly interesting to non-musicians. Classical concerts can be boring because sitting quietly and motionless watching other people do something can be boring. The completely formal passive audience is an unnatural anomaly that is only present in *modern* classical music, and that is the problem.
Interesting way of looking at learning/understanding
To clarify: the vast majority of music in all cultures - including classical music - has historically had more active audience engagement in the forms of dancing, singing along, even participating directly, or at least being free to cheer and laugh and react. Football would not be so popular if the audience had to act like they do for classical music concerts, regardless of the fact that football has just as much structure to follow as classical music.
Fabulous talk! As a music educator I'm impressed with the concise presentation of theory and form. I was repulsed, however, by the casual dismissal of reggae as "disorganized... and I'm not going to speculate why." This laugh-getter works for his talk's flow, but it's also a casual dismissal of an entire culture (coming from a white male at a podium), as well as an irresponsible allusion to the negative neural impacts of marijuana (which, as a neuroscientist, Mr. Shorr should know better). Perhaps this blindness to cultural callousness is another significant obstacle to entry into the world of classical music appreciation, and it should not be so.
fiddlercrab3 Are you white? If so, please get off your moral high horse.
stop being an ass. he was offering an opinion. racist.
Always gotta play the race card.
+fiddlercrab3 I think you're absolutely right. I regret this for exactly the reasons you mention. I haven't looked at enough reggae to draw broad conclusions, but even if that result holds up, perhaps it's more accurate to say it's through-composed, or has its own structure, or has a structure I don't understand yet. Thanks for your comment and keeping me honest.
♥
yes!!!
Great!!!
THIS IS SO NICE : ]
Classical Music is centuries behind in today's society, but it is light years ahead of today's society popular music like Hip Hop, and Pop.
that really depends on what you define as 'classical music', the distinction is between music from the classical era and all art music in general.
The title is a bit misleading - the lecture is mostly an introduction to music theory, mostly an introduction to music theory, followed by a brief reference to neuroscience at the end of a long introduction to music theory. I would have preferred more on the B and the development sections of the composition, if you understand my meaning.
wow!
I am very interested. Whats the progress on this?
Hey, I just went to a Mahler 4 concert the night before I watched this lol.
I want such a schematic for "metropolis part 2" by dream theater.
What about when you play the music backwards and it revels a completely different message???
Song structure is fascinating and ever challenging. Good musicians are fairly common. Good composers not as much.
Welcome to the introductory lecture of Music Appreciation 101 in any high school or college.
15:40!
15:47! Differences in the musician's brain discernible with the naked eye?!
(almost a "like")
Study the band Symphony X for some wonderful brain music.
the ambient environment. Both are functions of decreased signal/noise ratio.
When listening to punk music concert, the volume is much higher than on classical concert and thus, the level of distraction is considerably reduced. Furthermore, the amount of information is substantially lower (much simpler harmony, much simpler instrumentation, more repetitive rhythm, more predictable musical structures, typically no changes in dynamics/volume).
yes, but that is why is not boring...
This rarely works with flamenco guitar music. Check Rio de la Miel by Paco de Luzia.
This all results in much less compromised signal/noise ratio given the same amount of ambient noise. The same applies to football. But now consider, what happens, if highly unlikely or remarkable event takes place in the stadium (such as when largely popular player is seriously hurt, or when world record is set). People naturally go silent for a moment. Maybe they start shouting loud after that little moment.
Maybe it wasn't music, but sure it was something else.
Yep - there are genres of music today with as much or even more subtlety than classical music and yet people talk aloud on concerts - but there is when the historical factor comes. Just listen to what the musicians and genuine fans of those genres think about it. You can find many vids on youtube, where true heros of jazz play for a crude and riotous audience and you can read all those comments on their "rather shouting their mouth up".
That cut's so abrupt it makes you expect a part 2.
Guess the whole lecture was leading up to, "musicians>mathematicians".
What this guy said.
Why have the editors cut out the music. Don't they realize that the music is what it's about?
HeH~ I am a pro musician... and I do studio violin fiddle etc... I have HEARD this song - at least 6 years ago... but it was done by a friend... and he parodied it by saying " all I want to do is S & M with you " and with similar lyric changes... never knew where it came from ( knew it was a parody but not where from )- haven't seen the friend in 4 years, haven't heard the song in maybe 5 years and before that maybe id ever at all heard him play it 4, or 5 times... still I listen to this open and my brain rattles... " what is this...I KNOW this... but it isn't the same... lyric... I know this I ..... OH its THAT song I heard around the campfire... a few times here and there... years ago... " IT NEVER LEAVES lol
I would frendlily disagree. The reason why attending a classical concert requires certain amount of silence is in an agreeable meeting of two factors. First is historical: classical music has its roots in times, when certain amount of decorum at cultural events was commonplace. The second reason is, lets say, cybernetical: the amount of information succesfully assimilated by the receiver depends on the signal/noise ratio.
What Schubert waltz is that?
I love brocoli
Ms. Ellis anyone?
Nice presentation. The only problem here is that every time he says "Music" he actually means "WESTERN Music".
So maybe there is something something natural, rather than anomalous, in those moments when people are set to digest what they see or hear. And maybe music can facilitate them. And maybe our rather postmodern disorganisation, hyperactivity and inability or reluctance to digest and enjoy our perceptions to the fullest is what makes us unconfortable to listen quietly for a moment. I am pretty sure, that our prehistorical ancestors had those precious moments, when they stood in silence, too.
the intro music to this video reminded me of "From Yesterday by 30 seconds to mars lol
Yes, one of the best songs!
And this is what most musicians think - I know an example of a brilliant jazz pianist who stop playing and made living as a hotel boy because he got fed up of reckless audience. And you guess why Beatles stoped playing concerts in 1966? I guess you got it.
You know that this guy knows what he's talking about when he uses Barbershop as a part of his neuroscience lecture.
I find most pop music boring and Classical music gorgeous and fascinating. Then again I'm a musician myself.
Caleb Bliss how bad did the ringing audio on his mic bug you... It drove me freaking nuts
Jenna Orlowski a lot
Bit of a generalisation no?
732 is my area code :-D
Hahaha that reggaejoke cracked me up
Funny that you get laughter with the Foster The People song, considering that it is a song about a school shooting! ;D
He may be good at music theory but he should have listen to the lyrics before, instead of being distracted by the light mood of the tone.
Has his idea of an interactive website been realized? If so, what is its address?
what song is this..????
In the prehistorical tribal music, or in most of the popular music today, the level of information complexity is much lower than in classical music. Engaged listener wants to grab as much information as his musical brain and current level of attention is able to digest. Frustration of music lover comes from two sources: first, the physical inability to receive the information and second, the psychological inability to digest the information, in other words, the level of distraction produced by
"Music is an art form we been working on for over a thousand years." Only a thousand? What does he mean by this? Surely we can see a longer history of music, complex music, even if we have a narrow definition of what "art" might be.
If I had continued down the path of being a classical trained musician and went into that career I honest believe I would be a FAR WORSE MUSICIAN than I am now... As soon as I removed all the restrictions and left the snobs behind, I have done much better... Music TED talks are depressing.....
what about classical composers who only use the 12 tone scale?.. I can't seem to find any organization in that music!
Welcome to 2018, O visitor from 1942
Anybody call jenny
A bit shallow, try putting classical and jazz together and see what happens, much more creative.
care to elaborate?
Guys i made a video on why music is pleasurable. comments welcome
The ringing audio is very distracting.
I mean seriously they couldn't get a good sound guy for a video about audio? Wtf
the dude's definitely over-focusing on compositional structure, music isn't all about just that.
I make music and there is no structure - our ancestors hit their drums for days on end- no structure..
Yes, there are historical rules that are now unacceptable, such as the views on women's role or homosexuality. But in conservative circles, such as strongly catholic societes, these unacceptable views survive and still go strong despite the rest of society reject them in favor of more secularized moral views. The demeanours expected from classical concert visitors bear the same relic quality. And I don't agree that all music has the same informational content, as your first sentence may suggest
First view and comment...holla
Interestingly shortsighted shallow approach to a deep subject. It would be smart to avoid the classical music aversion cliché to start with. Any music made for kings nobility and religious elites will not necessarily appeal to all people then and now. Maxwell's equations are not for everyone. Then the guy goes down the beaten path because this is all about Ted and feeling a genius
I agree with your s/n ratio thing, but this is the same with all music. There's no justification for classical music being much more restricted. Your historical point is totally questionable. (A) there lots of things we recognize as historically unacceptable: for example, women were historically unrepresented in orchestras. (B) The classical decorum is NOT what we are doing these days. The modern stodgy classical orchestra is actually mostly a 20th century concept.
It's nice and all, but was there anything in there that wasn't blindingly obvious already?
same argument i have with friends...i dont give a rats ass about the complexity of a song, unless it actually stimulates and moves me, then i care, because then it becomes music to me, otherwise its just background noise...most classical is close to flatline for me, and requires no in depth analysis to convince me....
The problem with some classic music isn't the "second category" but the music is needlessly complex and is only a display of skill and not a meaningful melody and that is what makes it boring.
Olly There is no such thing as "meaningful melody", any melody is meaningless, apart from any meaning assigned to it by listener. But as it happens, classical music (and modern genres closely derived from it) have a particular language, which helps the listener infer a meaning. The best ways to learn this language is through mixed media - cinema, opera, operetta. And it's not usually a "display of skill" - apart from a few pieces that are commonly performed by top musicians and which were specifically written as a performer challenge, which are not highly regarded by themselves anyway. You could say performer competition skews perception, because it de-emphasizes the artistic merit of the piece. Nor is it usually more complex than, say, Progressive Rock or particular strains of Death Metal.
Let me guess though, your reading comprehension is insufficient for the above paragraph.
Siana Gearz There is a reason for the word "catchy" when it comes to music, as in a "catchy" tune. It's subjective but there is such a thing. When you first hear a new melody/song that becomes popular people often find themselves saying- wait.. what, and it's about something that appeals to the emotions maybe but you can call it "creativity" and this is where a simple melody can be called creative and a fancy pianist going banana on a piano hitting note after note and it doesn't mean a thing because there is no creativity and no real melody to it and then people call it boring.
Not all classical is boring , some very unique and popular melodies have been made by Beethoven, Mozart and others that you can call creative and people can tell they are catchy and real creativity. We don't need to unlock some of those ones and you have to ask why is that? It goes to show that this video above is nonsense because you don't need to unlock anything if the music is genuinely creative.
Olly
Good attempt at defending your point and sincere apologies for the cheap shot i fired prematurely! But you're also kinda defeating your point. In any genre of music, even your favourite genre, whatever it may be, isn't there going to be most of it that you don't actively enjoy? So why is classical music special, if you find engaging melodies there too?
You change tracks a bit, from "meaningful" to "catchy", and i suppose these are two different ways for a piece to be engaging.
I think "catchiness" is a quintesential Italian quality, rather than a genre quality. Check out Barber of Seville overture by Rossini. Anything by Vivaldi. It transcends any genre too - remember when Americans burned all their Disco records in 1979, it found a new home in Italy, and Italo Disco melodies are simply the catchiest to the point of being painfully catchy. Every genre, even Techno which is not necessarily or typically melodic, is typically less deep, more melodic, and catchier in Italy. I believe modern melodic genres are largely a result of Italian influence.
Siana Gearz I mean't catchy in the same way as meaningful or popular, just a song or tune that is popular because a lot of people recognise the melody to be really enjoyable to listen to, for whatever reason.
The only thing I am kind of pointing out in classical is that some of it is complicated for the sake of being complicated. So people say it's boring because of this. Music is not something I am big into but it's just something I have thought about as to what is the reason classical music isn't popular as other music..
Yikes ... there MUCH more to why a lot of classical music is boring besides it being 'too hard to understand'. Don't get me wrong, there is also a ton of exciting classical music both old and new but a lot of the boring music is boring neither because it's 'too simple' or 'too hard' ....