THE EPIC SOUND BLOG

Our collection of bite-size, audio related stories from around the web.

Boosting your creativity


January 19, 2012

Ron Hess over at Film Music Magazine has written up an interesting piece on how to boost your creativity:


I recently found an old folder full of puzzles that I had cut out of the newspaper years ago and never got around to solving. As I started tackling them, one at a time, it occurred to me that here was an opportunity to objectively examine, and dabble with, my creative/problem-solving process, removed from my usual worlds of music and journalism, and see what I could learn about my creative processes. Your mileage may vary.


Read the full piece here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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Music is like a drug




LA Times has posted an interesting piece on how the brain responds to music:


You know that feeling you get when you listen to a favorite part of a favorite song? Some scientists have a refreshingly unscientific word for it: They call it the “chills.” In the lab they can measure the chills, which correspond with a specific pattern of brain arousal and often are accompanied by increases in heart and breathing rates and other physical responses.


Now neurologists report that this human response to music — which has existed for thousands of years, across cultures around the world — involves dopamine, the same chemical in the brain that is associated with the intense pleasure people get from more tangible rewards such as food or addictive drugs. The research will be published Sunday in the journal Nature Neuroscience.


Read the full piece here.






  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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How music-making affects the body


August 31, 2011

Kat Fulton presents a quick overview of 6 studies into how making music affects the body – check out the overview + links to the studies here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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Auto-synchronizing metronomes


August 5, 2011


Head over to Synthgear for an explanation on why this phenomenon occurs.






  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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What makes a hit song?


July 25, 2011

Eliot Van Buskirk over at Evolver.fm takes a look at a presentation by Shaun Ellis and Tom Engelhardt which attempts to identify the characteristics of a hit song:

Taste is notoriously more fragmented than ever these days, because we have more options. Still, every once in a while, a song manages to set everybody’s feet tapping — Outkast’s “Hey-Ya,” Alica Keys and Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” and at least two Gnarls Barkley tracks qualify off the top of my head, though the list goes on and on.

 

What do hit songs have in common over the years, and how are they changing? And what does it all say about who we were, and who we’re becoming?

 

Read the full post here. 
 





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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What makes music work


March 7, 2011

Victoria Williamson takes a look at a new paper on what makes music trigger an emotional response in the listener.


Have you ever had the experience of listening to a favourite piece of music and suddenly you get a little spikey feeling running down your spine? How about goose bumps on the skin? Maybe a tingling sensation at the back of your neck?


All these unique emotive reactions to music fall under the definition of ‘musical chills’, also termed frisson, thrills and shivers (and apparently, and intriguingly, ‘skin orgasms’!) Not everyone gets this sensation and some people get it very frequently.


It is an extremely intriguing emotional response to music that is almost entirely unique to each individual – both in terms of the sensation itself and the music that triggers it. However, a new paper has sought to determine whether certain personality factors reliably mediate the experience of musical chills.


Read her full post on how music affects us here.





  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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How Musical Are You?


January 24, 2011

The BBC Lab UK has a test up to gauge your musical abilities:

The test asks a number of questions, including how engaged you are with music, if you consider it an important part of your identity and whether you rely on it to change your moods and emotions.


It also includes some musical tests, so you can see how good you are at grouping together different musical styles, memorising tunes and recognising the beat in a piece of music. Don’t worry, even those with no musical training can take these tests and do well.


At the end of ‘How musical are you?’ you will receive an individual musical profile, with scores on five different dimensions of musicality, plus your scores for the musical tests. By relating your survey responses to your performance on the musical tests, we’ll find out which aspects of musicality are affected by musical engagement and which require formal musical training.


So tune in and try your hand – you might find you’re more musical than you think!


Take the test right here!






  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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Top ten most annoying sounds


November 28, 2010

Joseph Lin over at Time has taken a look at what he considers the most annoying sounds – perhaps unsurprisingly, the vuvuzela is on the list.. :)


The use of vuvuzelas — a long plastic horn popular with South African soccer fans — at the World Cup has sparked debate about the level of tolerable noise at a sporting event. Here’s a look at some other sounds that are not music to our ears


Check out the full list over at the Time site.






  Posted by Asbjoern Andersen, Epic Sound - Contact

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