I... Like Candy

Stop me if you've heard this one: four French psychologists walk into a candy store... Okay, really the four psychologists took over the background music for a candy store, creating three different conditions for the sixty 12-14 year-olds that came into the store. One third of the customers was exposed to Top 40 music. One third was exposed to no music. And one third was exposed to music from cartoons. The cartoon music came from shows like Captain Flame, Candy, and Olive & Tom. (The only video I could find of Captain Flame was the German version, called Captain Future). The study concluded that the teenagers spent more time in the store when the cartoon music was played, but did not spend any more money than the other music condition. It's odd that the cartoon music came from 80's cartoons, rather than contemporary cartoons. I'll look more into why that is.

H. Le Guellec et al (2007). "Cartoon music in a candy store: a field experiment." Psychological Reports 100, 1255-1258.

Links

Cognitive Daily on Absolute Pitch.
One point about this study that Dave didn't emphasize is the bimodal distribution. Many people, myself included, regard absolute pitch as an ability that exists on a continuum. But most of the participants of this study either had no AP ability, or had very strong AP ability. Some of this might be due to the task, unlike the Levitin study that showed how many people can sing their favorite music within a semitone of the correct key.

Mind Hacks on epilepsy in rap music.

The Last Protestant Dinosaur on 20 ways to make the Episcopal liturgy more welcoming. Points 5, 6, 9, 15, 16, and 20 are about the music. One quote: "THE GLORIA (ack, ick,) this is praise? no, this is impenetrable dogma set to shitty music."
I like the Gloria's from most of the masses sung at the cathedral. And priests have such potty mouths!

The Chicago Cultural Center is hosting a discussion on the music industry going green.

Messiaen the Theologian

International Conference 'Messiaen the Theologian'

Friday 12 and Saturday 13 October 2007

The Boston University Messiaen Project [BUMP] and oliviermessiaen.net are hosting an international conference 'Messiaen the Theologian' at Boston University on 12 & 13 October, 2007. As we move to the centenary of Messiaen's birth (born 10 December 1908), this conference will explore one of the least understood and least discussed aspects of the composer. We will explore Messiaen's theological training, the context of Catholic theology in France in the twentieth century and his personal theology as it is expressed in his music.

This free conference includes a recital of music by Messiaen and Debussy, and a screening of "Apparition of the Eternal Church" by Paul Festa.

The Critics Speak

THE CRITICS SPEAK
A public conversation with music critics Tim Page (The Washington Post) & Anthony Tommasini (The New York Times)

Sunday, 14 October 2007
Hill Hall Auditorium
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
7:30pm

End Bird Discrimination Now!

In Science's letters, Alex Ross saw some older research on birds listening to music mentioned. I decided to read the original articles. In the 1999 study, Keio University psychologists Watanabe and Sato trained Javanese sparrows within two groups. One group of four birds was encouraged to stand on their response perch only when Bach's French Suite, BWV 816, was played. They received a food reward when they moved to the response perch when the Bach was played, and were punished with a blackout of the lights if they landed on the response perch when Schoenberg's Suite Op. 25 was played. The other group of three birds was trained in the opposite direction, encouraged to respond to Schoenberg's Suite. This training lasted through a minimum 40 successful trials for each bird, until an 80% correct response ratio was achieved. One bird in each group was not able to achieve 80% correct response ratios within 60 sessions, and were dropped from further testing.

After this training the five remaining birds were exposed to Bach's Orchestral Suite, BWV 1068, and Schoenberg's Five Orchestra Pieces Op. 16. Positive food reinforcement continued for each relevant group, and all but one bird were able to discriminate the new Bach and Schoenberg to a significant level. That one bird who couldn't discriminate was in the Bach group. A second test replaced the Bach music with Vivaldi's Violin Concert in A minor, RV 356, and Schoenberg's music with Elliott Carter's Variations for Orchestra (1955). All five birds were able to distinguish between these new pieces successfully. The authors note here that a 1984 study by Porter and Neuringer showed that pigeons were able to generalize from Bach to Buxtehude and from Stravinsky to Carter and Piston.

Another interesting result was that two birds who had not shown any preference between Bach/Vivaldi and Schoenberg/Carter were still able learn to discriminate between the two types of music. Thus the lack of preference was not from a lack of ability to tell the difference, but rather from personal taste.

S. Watanabe and K. Sato, "Discriminative stimulus properties of music in Java sparrows." Behavioural Processes, 47 (1999), 53-57.

FriPod: States

1. "Hotel California" written and performed by The Eagles on Eagles Greatest Hits Vol. 2.
2. Three Places in New England - 2. "Putnam's Camp, Redding, Connecticut" by Charles Ives, performed by (a) the Philadelphia Orchestra, and (b) San Francisco Symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas.
3. "Florida Stomp" by Battle, Eldridge, and Hart; performed by Roy Eldridge on Little Jazz.
4. "Georgia Grind" by A. Williams, performed by Louis Armstrong on The Hot Fives & Sevens, Vol. 1.
5. "Georgia on my mind" by Hoagy Carmichael, performed by Ray Charles (twice) on Ray!
6. "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Ben Bernie, Maceo Pinkard, and Kenneth Casey; performed by (a) Bud Powell on Jazz Giant and (b) Ella Fitzgerald on Compact Jazz.
7. "(Back Home Again in) Indiana" by Ballard McDonald and James Hanley, performed by (a) Art Tatum on Solos (1940) and (b) Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Clark Terry on The Trumpet Kings at Montreux.
8. "The Lost Souls (Of Southern Louisiana)" performed by the Dirty Dozen Brass Band on Open Up (Whatcha Gonna Do For the Rest of Your Life?)
9. "Louisiana/Field Song from Senegal" traditional.
10. "Bright Mississippi" written and performed by Thelonious Monk (quartet) on Monk's Dream.
11. "Stop in Nevada" written and performed by Billy Joel on Piano Man.
12. "New York State of Mind" written and performed by Billy Joel on Turnstiles.
13. "Tennessee Waltz / Tennessee Mazurka" by Redd Stewart & Pee Wee King, performed by The Chieftains with Tom Jones on The Long Black Veil.
14. "Moonlight in Vermont" by John Blackburn and Karl Suessdorf, performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong on Jazz Masters 24.
15. "I'm Coming Virginia" by Will Marion Cook, performed by Benny Goodman on Live at Carnegie Hall.
16. "Tides of Washington Bridge" by the Clogs on Lantern.

New digs

eighth blackbird's Tim Munro has posted pictures from their residency here at DePauw last week. You can see several parts of our new building, including the Great Hall facing towards the doors to our main performance stage, the small rehearsal room (populated by various students and colleague Eric Edberg), and two shots of the large rehearsal room. I completely agree with Tim that the residency has started wonderfully. The students have been very charged from working with these great musicians, and the convocation on the business side of music was very eye-opening.