♬ Gene’s blog

Abstract. The sequence of pitches which form a musical melody can be transposed or inverted. Since the 1970s, music theorists have modeled musical transposition and inversion in terms of an action of the dihedral group of order 24. More recently music theorists have found an intriguing second way that the dihedral group of order 24 acts on the set of major and minor triads. We illustrate both geometrically and algebraically how these two actions are dual. Both actions and their duality have been used to analyze works of music as diverse as Hindemith and the Beatles.

Science News: Cello music that mimics tamarin calls seems to bring forth the same sort of emotions in the monkeys that the original calls would have elicited, researchers report online September 1 in Biology Letters (http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2009/09/01/rsbl.2009.0593.abstract).

BBC: Tasuku Sugimoto and Kazuhide Hashiya of Kyushu University in Hakozaki and colleagues in Japan tested how a young captive chimpanzee named Sakura responded to music as she aged from 17 weeks to 23 weeks old.

PBS - Music and Evolution: Music and the Neanderthal’s Communication. Music and Medicine: Music Therapy for Infants. Music and Evolution: Bird Songs. Physics of Sound: Duration of Notes. Performance: World Music Improvisation.

PLoS ONE: Closing the eyes affects the style of attending to auditory stimuli by modifying the perceptual relationship with the environment without changing the stimulus itself...

PLoS ONE - The communication of stress/anxiety between conspecifics through chemosensory signals has been documented in many vertebrates and invertebrates. Here, we investigate how chemosensory anxiety signals conveyed by the sweat of humans (N = 49) awaiting an academic examination are processed by the human brain, as compared to...

BERLIN (AP) — A bird-bone flute unearthed in a German cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture.

PLoS ONE: A variety of transferring rules has been utilized to convert the brainwaves into music; and most of them are mainly based on spectra feature of EEG... The sonification rules may identify the mental states of the brain, which provide a real-time strategy for monitoring brain activities and are potentially useful to neurofeedback therapy.

Musician brains work differently: "for musicians, the right hand was slower to react to low notes and faster to react to high notes"

Abstract: In this paper we present mathematical models and we analyze the physics related to the problem of intonation of musical instruments such as guitars, mandolins and similar, i.e., we study how to produce perfectly in tune notes on these instruments. This analysis begins with the correct fret placement on the instrument fingerboard, following precise mathematical laws, but then it becomes increasingly complicated due to the geometrical deformation of the strings when these instruments are played, and also due to the inharmonic characteristics of the same strings. As a consequence of these factors, perfect intonation of all the notes on the instrument can never be achieved, but complex compensation procedures are introduced and studied to minimize the problem. To test the validity of these compensation procedures, we have performed extensive measurements using standard monochord sonometers and other basic acoustical devices, which confirm the correctness of our theoretical models. In particular, these experimental activities can be easily integrated into standard acoustics courses and labs, and can become a more advanced version of basic experiments with monochords and sonometers.