It seems people can’t get enough of songs about science. Scientists can’t stop making them, and we can’t stop watching them. David Haines loves science and he loves songs, so he’s putting on a concert called Tremendous Journey to celebrate his love.
The concert will feature 15 songs about the science of life and evolution. It’s a shorter version of my “science oratorio”, Lifetime. We open with a song called Mr Darwin, which tells the story of his historic voyage aboard the Beagle. Then there is Selfish Gene, a song referring to Richard Dawkins’s work, and Living Light, Queen Bee, Bacteria and Taxonomy.
Meet Emily Howell. She’s a composer who is about to have a CD released of sonatas she composed. So what makes her unique?
She’s a computer program.
Emily was created by University of California-Santa Cruz professor David Cope, who claims to be more of a music teacher than a computer scientist (he’s both). Cope has been working on combining artificial intelligence with music for 30 years—thereby challenging the idea that creating music should be limited to the human mind.
Prior to Emily, Cope created a program called Experiments in Musical Intelligence (EMI). It allowed the user to pick a composer like Mozart or Bach, then EMI would analyze the music and spit out a new piece that sounded like it had been created by the same composer. But the music EMI “wrote” still needed performers to play it—many of whom refused to perform music that hadn’t been written by a human.
The moon has a bumpy, pitted surface; in fact, it’s vaguely similar to the ridges of an old-fashioned vinyl record. So why not use the moon to make some melodies?
Now you can, thanks to a new program called Moonbell, which is available online for free. Moonbell gives you the chance to do create music by using topographical data to determine how the pitch rises and falls, and the program can produce the sounds of 138 instruments.
The software works by interpreting information provided by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Kaguya satellite, which used a laser altimeter to generate detailed maps of the Moon until its planned crash in June this year.
The music produced by Moonbell synthesises three types of topographical data. The melody is generated by the actual ups and downs in the Moon’s surface, while the “mid tones” are related to the elevation of the immediately surrounding area and the bass line is determined by an even broader section of elevation.
Info sent to Earth from the Kaguya satellite was also used in 2007 for Google Earth’s 3D Moon option.
When Julian Asher hears a violin, he sees red wine. However, this Imperial College London professor isn’t crazy: One out of every thousand people is said to experience this neurological condition called synesthesia. It causes two senses to blend together, so that stimulation of one sense triggers an entirely different one, involuntarily and simultaneously.
Here’s a theory on how it works: When one region of a person’s brain talks with another region that is wired to perceive a certain sense, the pathways cross and allow the person to experience “crossed senses.” Synesthesia is different for everyone who has it— some people claim they can smell a sound, while others hear a color, and some can even “taste” words.
The latest research on the topic has come out of Oxford University, where scientists found that people hear low-pitched sounds when they see large, round images. Experimental psychologist Charles Spence asked twelve “non-synesthetes” if they could identify whether an image or tone came first, in order to see how “soft” or “sharp” sounds registered in their brains. The volunteers associated high-pitched sound with angular shapes, and recognized low-pitched sounds when they were shown large dots.
On the off chance that you’ve ever had a yearning to hear what Neanderthal music sounded like—assuming you’ve even considered whether they made music—you should absolutely click here to hear a sample of jazz composer Simon Thorne’s 75-minute-long reimagining of Neanderthal music. If you have the patience to listen to the nonsensical beginning, then you’ll get a chance to enjoy the ancient-style chanting towards the end. Thorne initially thought it would be impossible to imagine what Neanderthals listened to, but he took on the unusual project and did his best to create a song that would evoke sounds from a Neanderthal’s life.
While the National Museum Wales commissioned the song to accompany an exhibit featuring Neanderthal tools and teeth, it might actually serve a bigger purpose in knocking down the misconception that Neanderthals were dumber than early Homo sapiens. Thorne told the BBC, “Every culture has language and music, so we can probably assume that [Neanderthals] had some kind of music too.”
Later this year, the music will be performed live when four singers with stone instruments go on tour. Can you say, “Rock on”?
A doctor in Britain has finally revealed a medical hoax that she and her husband started 34 years ago. In 1974, after reading a letter in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) describing a painful condition known as “guitar nipple,” Elaine Murphy and her husband John sent in a spoof letter describing an analogous condition they called “cello scrotum.” Much as “guitar nipple” was caused by the edge of the guitar constantly pressing against the breast, “cello scrotum” was supposedly caused by the edge of the instrument pressing against a more intimate area of male cellists.
Of course, anyone who has ever seen a cello being played would realize the impossibility of “cello scrotum.”
Although the Murphys were hoping only for some laughs—perhaps assuming that the satire would be evident—BMJ actually published their letter in complete seriousness.
Musical acts have a similar epidemiology as the flu. Both start out as small, localized phenomena and then gain momentum with surprising speed, until everyone is hacking up the same virus and every radio station is blaring the same tune. Google caught on recently and created Flu Trends, which tracks the spread of the flu by charting user searches for flu-related words. And a team of Israeli researchers have come up with software that uses similar logic to predict the next big musical act.
This “music trends” software tracks searches for songs or bands on Gnutella, a giant peer-to-peer file sharing network, and locates where the searches are generated. Since new bands often develop popularity through local gigs (”American Idol” is an exception), the software works because it can tracks momentum of grassroots movements. Based on the local ranking of the searches and how fast these rankings change, the software can predict the next breakout band.
Whatever our prehistoric ancestors were doing at Stonehenge, they were probably doing it to trance music, suggests a new study. Researchers conducted the first mathematical analysis of Stonehenge’s acoustical properties and found that, at its prime, the Bronze Age structure would’ve been the perfect venue for fast-tempo jams.
Since only about a third of the original 80 monoliths that made up Stonehenge are still standing, researchers Rupert Till and Bruno Fazenda used the next best thing: a full-scale concrete replica of Stonehenge located in Washington state. Acoustic tests at the replica site as well as computer simulations showed that a fast tempo of about 160 beats per minute—think trance, or samba, or your heartbeat after some energetic dancing—coincide with the echoes reflected by the stone structures. (more…)
It’s bad enough that loud music can potentially harm your hearing. But now it turns out that head-banging, a violent and rapid form of dancing, can put you at risk for brain injury, whiplash, and even stroke.
There have been isolated reports of head-banging injuries in the past: When guitarist Terry Balsamo of Evanescence had a stroke, his doctors attributed it to his on-stage thrashing. But until now, scientists really haven’t studied the effects of head-banging since it first started back in 1968 with Led Zeppelin.
According to Australian risk and safety researchers Declan Patton and Andrew McIntosh from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, head-banging is pretty much guaranteed to give you brain damage if you’re not careful. To test their theory, the researchers went to a variety of metal and hard rock concerts (the best way to test any scientific theory) and observed the head-thrashing techniques used by artists.
Last week a band of Somali pirates hijacked a Saudi Arabian tanker in just 16 minutes using Kalashnikovs and rocket launchers. This was just one of around 100 attacks in the area this year—leaving plenty of fear that the pirates are on their way to sabotaging one of the most important sea trade routes in the world. But the days of pirate victories may soon be over, thanks to a little scientific ingenuity. A British company called Anti-Piracy Maritime Security Solutions thinks the outlaws can be taken down using none other than a high-tech “sonic laser.”
Their plan is this: Hook up a long-range acoustic device (LRAD) to an MP3 player, and raise the volume to painful sound levels whenever pirates approach. The noise from the satellite dish-sized LRAD can get so loud that it causes permanent hearing damage. If threatened ships blast oncoming pirates with “precise beams” of warning messages, sirens, etc., it could be enough to cause “absolute agony” to any ambitious pirates, according to APMSS chief executive Nick Davis, and could make them turn back.
While anti-pirate sound doesn’t come cheap—the team and equipment costs $21,000 for three days of use—the technology is in high demand, with APMSS sending 10 teams out on on ships in the Gulf of Aden this week. Let’s just hope they’re armed with good ear plugs.
For everything you’d ever want to know about what’s going in pirate attacks, check out the Weekly Piracy Report.
Meet 
The moon has a bumpy, pitted surface; in fact, it’s vaguely similar to the ridges of an old-fashioned vinyl record. So why not use the moon to make some melodies?
When Julian Asher 
On the off chance that you’ve ever had a yearning to hear what Neanderthal music sounded like—assuming you’ve even considered whether they made music—you should absolutely click 
A doctor in Britain has finally revealed a medical hoax that she and her husband started 34 years ago. In 1974, after reading a letter in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) describing a painful condition known as “guitar nipple,” Elaine Murphy and her husband John sent in a spoof letter describing an analogous condition they called “cello scrotum.” Much as “guitar nipple” was caused by the edge of the guitar constantly pressing against the breast, “cello scrotum” was supposedly caused by the edge of the instrument pressing against a more intimate area of male cellists.
Musical acts have a similar epidemiology as the flu. Both start out as small, localized phenomena and then gain momentum with surprising speed, until everyone is hacking up the same virus and every radio station is blaring the same tune. 
Whatever our prehistoric ancestors were doing at 
It’s bad enough that loud music can potentially harm your hearing. But now it turns out that head-banging, a violent and rapid form of dancing, 
Last week a band of Somali pirates 
