The Music and Science survey
After spending a few years interviewing people involved in music and science, and reading a bit on the topic, it was time to find out a bit more about people’s interests in music and science. I’ve created a survey, which only takes a few minutes to fill out, and you…
Science music playlist
For your entertainment, I have created a short YouTube playlist of some science-y songs. It includes some songs about science, and some science-themed parody covers. Perfect for playing in the lab! I included this video of Uri Alon singing about peer review, which I recorded at the Horizons conference career…
Beyonce the Biochemist
Satire site The Onion recently launched a sister site called Clickhole. It’s a parody on Upworthy, Buzzfeed, and other such sites, but of course the content on Clickhole is all in Onion style. So, instead of quizzes like “Who’s Your Celebrity Best Friend?”, where you can figure out (based on…
Earworms
I’ve preloaded the MusiSci blog with a bunch of posts for the coming week. They’re mostly reblogs from elsewhere on Tumblr: I’m getting a lot of mileage out of Tumblr’s new feature where you can search for TWO tags at once to find the science/music overlap. I also wrote an…
Book review: A Matter of Time
In “A Matter Of Time: The science of rhythm and the groove“, Portland-based music educator John Lamb combines his backgrounds in music, biology, and psychology to explain the science behind concepts we usually take for granted. It might seem easy to define what a “rhythm” is in terms of time…
Rebel, rebel
In 2009 I participated in NaNoWriMo. The goal: write a 50,000-word novel in a month. I “won” the challenge, which in this context means that I churned out 50,000 words in 30 days, and that it was as near as a coherent novel as you can expect in that time…
TEDxAlbertopolis – Evolution of the Lindy Hop
TEDxAlbertopolis at the Royal Albert Hall last month was amazing and overwhelming, so I waited a few weeks until after the event to decide what my favourite talk was. There were a lot of great ones. The talk by Jessica Thom about Tourette’s Syndrome was the most popular both at…
Book review – Guitar Zero
I mostly look in the science section of the bookstore when I’m looking for books about music and science, because, from experience, that’s where they usually are. But last month I found Guitar Zero, by Gary Marcus, in the music section of Waterstones. Guitar Zero is the story of Marcus’…
MusiSci Tumblr
If you’re on Tumblr, consider following the MusiSci tumblr, which I haven’t been promoting very well. It’s a place to put all the things I find about scientists and musicians (or more broadly about science and music) that I don’t get around to writing full-length blog posts on. Today the…
Music from space
Get ready to have your mind blown – twice – by your new space hero, Chris Hadfield, who is currently at the International Space Station. 1. He ended up in an amazing Twitter conversation with the actors from Star Trek. Here he is replying to Captain Kirk. (There’s more) 2….
