Healing Music Enterprises Blog

Tune Your Life with Music

Healing Music Enterprises Blog header image 1

Patriotic Music for National Holidays, Pt. 1

June 8th, 2010 · Music Healing

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about patriotic music.  Music has always been used to motivate and inspire soldiers and warriors.  I was surprised to learn to that bagpipes were played as soldiers went into battle, hundreds of years ago.

An article by Gordon Kinnie states that:

“As a musical instrument of war the PIOB MHOR is without equal. The shrill and penetrating notes worked well in the roar and din of battle. Pipes have reportedly been heard at distances over six miles, and under favorable conditions at ten miles. (I know for a fact that my pipes have been heard at a distance over two miles away.) There is nothing improbable in the statement that the pipes were played at Bannockburn, in 1314, though historical evidence is not available to support the fact. Clan Menzies states that there pipers and bards urged the clans to victory at this battle. At the great clan fight on the North Inch of Perth in 1396, “Clans stalked into the barriers to the sound of their great warpipes.” Clan Chatten maintains that their piper was wounded during the fight and after dispatching his foe gathered his pipes and played the clan to victory before succumbing to his wounds. The chanter he used became known as the “Black Chanter.”

It is said that at the Battle of Harlow in 1411 the Highland army charged to the sound of the pipes and in 1431, at the Battle of Inverlochy, the pipes were again in evidence.

It is on record that the piper of Jedburgh played his pipes in support of the Scottish Army at the battle of Flodden in 1513.”

In the United States, the fife and drums were more typical and many Revolutionary Era painting show the musicians marching into battle.  What makes these instruments uniquely suited to battle?  Many would say that they have a piercing quality that stirs the heart and soul and creates energy in the body.  Music does that.

For those that are left behind, song after song has been written to comfort the loved ones and inspire confidence in the troops.  Read the words of one of my favorites, “Columbia the Gem of the Ocean.”

Britannia, the pride of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of the sailor’s devotion,
No land can compare to thee.
Thy mandates make heroes assemble
With Victory’s bright laurels in view;
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When borne by the red, white, and blue.

O, Columbia! the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave and the free,
The shrine of each patriot’s devotion,
A world offers homage to thee.
Thy mandates make heroes assemble
When Liberty’s form stands in view;
Thy banners make tyranny tremble
When borne by the Red, White and Blue

With Memorial Day at the end of May, the 4th of July, and then Labor Day in Spetember, now is a great time to learn some new patriotic songs and enjoy them all summer.  Maybe it will even help our country to bond together a little bit more?

→ No CommentsTags:

Mozart or Moozart? Who’s in the news?

June 7th, 2010 · Music Healing and Animals

What will they think of next?! Farmers in Spain have now discovered that playing specific pieces of music by Mozart greatly increases the amount of milk his dairy cows produce as well as enhances the taste by making it sweeter! Here’s what the ABC site had to say:
“On Hans Pieter Sieber’s Priegola dairy farm in Villanueva del Pardillo, Spain, the secret to success is not some newfangled technology or machine. Nor is it a time-tested technique or process handed down from generation to generation. Rather it is the dulcet, layered tones of classical music.
And not just any music. Sieber exposes his herd of approximately 700 heifers to the famous chords, crescendos and cadences of Austrian composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Once just normal, run-of-the-mill dairy cows, these Friesians now receive the rock star treatment — listening to soothing music, sleeping on water beds, taking relaxing showers, and even enjoying sessions with an animal psychologist.
Believe it or not, since sending Mozart’s Concerto for Flute and Harp in D Major soaring through their stalls at milking time, Sieber has seen a dramatic shift in the temperament and production of his Daisys and Besses.
Now his herd quietly lines up to be milked, seeming not to mind the poking and prodding that comes with being a dairy cow, and, most notably, producing anywhere from 1 to 6 more liters of milk per day than their non-Mozart listening counterparts.
“It is relaxing music for them, but at the same time it is dynamic, it keeps the cows active. The trick is not to have music too relaxing,” said Sieber’s son, Nicolas Sieber, the head of marketing for the Priegola farm. But Sieber believes it’s simpler than that. “If you give the cows comfort they are more disposed to help out,” he said. ” Fascinating!

→ 2 CommentsTags: ·

A Fun way to enjoy a Bach Fugue!

June 6th, 2010 · Classical Music

You just never know what you’re going to find when you enter an FAO Schwartz Store, do you?  I remember taking my daughter there in the late 80’s and we were both just mesmerized by the multi-storied expanse of toys and stuffed animals.  There’s also a famous keyboard there and one day, two Juilliard students figured out a way to entertain the assembled crowd: 

Bach_duo

→ No CommentsTags:

Music helps to relax the troops too!

June 4th, 2010 · Announcements

NEW YORK – Former Sgt. David Clemo understands the power of music.

Although he wasn’t in combat, as a telecommunications specialist stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, he had to dodge plenty of gunfire and mortars going off around him. When it was over, he would turn to music to help him relax.

Now, as a member of the 4Troops, Clemo hopes to bring that same kind of ease to others with the new group’s self-titled debut album, a mix of patriotic and uplifting songs.

“That’s what made music so important,” Clemo said in a recent interview. “It helps take you another place for a while.”

4Troops is comprised of Clemo, former Capt. Meredith Melcher, retired Staff Sgt. Ron Henry and former Sgt. Daniel Jens. The group is the creation of Army veteran Victor Hurtado, who serves as the production director for the Army Soldier Show, which provides entertainment for soliders and their families (Hurtado has the same job originated by Irving Berlin).

“We have such a good chemistry, people can’t believe we’ve only been working together since December,” Henry said.

But even before they came together for Hurtado’s group, music was a big part of their lives.

Melcher and Clemo participated in the Army Soldier Show, Henry performed in “Military Idol,” the talent competition for U.S. servicemen and women, and Jens appeared on season three of “America’s Got Talent.”

Melcher is the lone female member of the group, and held the highest rank. She, along with Clemo and Jens, were honorably discharged. Henry retired after a twenty-year hitch.

Henry recalled a lot of combat over his career, which began in the infantry. He later became a transportation manager, responsible for deploying troops to the field.

As a field artilleryman, Jens, who was stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, seemed to have the most close calls. His detail was responsible for convoy escort, supply missions, and making sure VIPs moved safely through the country.

“We caught small arms fire. A rocket-propelled grenade flew over the trunk of my car. Another time I had a rocket fly over my head and it landed thirty yards away,” Jens said.

Melcher was spared from direct contact with the enemy, but as a health care operations officer, she couldn’t escape the war’s residual effect.

“I saw a lot of wounded, Americans and Iraqis, including some that had been deceased on each side, so that was a little bit harrowing,” she said.

Some days were harder to cope than others for her and her unit.

“We are all a little bit scared, so we’re going to use whatever we could to get through it,whether that’s music, whether that’s humor, whether that’s just sitting down together to talk about what you’re seeing each day,” Melcher confided.

Their debut doesn’t reference those difficult times directly. Instead, there are songs like the inspirational “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to Toby Keith’s in-your-face “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue.”

But the group shies away from expressing their opinions on the nation’s conflicts.

“We are not concerned about the politics, we just want to focus on the service members and their families who have paid a great price,” Henry said.

→ No CommentsTags:

Understanding Human Obsession: Music

May 31st, 2010 · Announcements, Brain and Music Cortex, Music and the Brain

This Is Your Brain On Music: understanding a human obsession
Daniel Levitin  BUY HERE NOW
ISBN 978 1 84354 715 0

“With a neuroscientist’s conviction that the as-yet inexplicable is just shadows and dust and cryptic meaning, Daniel Levitin sets out to explain why collections of easily-recognisable sounds have such a profound impact on our emotions, revealing for us the mechanisms behind the magic.

He has been publicly lauded in his endeavour by serious backers, from the polymath Brian Appleyard in The Times, to philosopher (and now also music author) Oliver Sacks, to David Byrne of Talking Heads. And it’s obvious why.

Levitin himself achieves the almost-impossible, discussing the ultratechnical – in two subjects – in the least affected manner imaginable, using music to tell us about the brain, and the brain to teach us more about music.

A record producer – with Stevie Wonder, Santana, Clapton and others – before he turned to science, Levitin takes evident delight in pairing off Mozart and Madonna, Liszt and Ludacris, to demonstrate the fundamental truths underlying all music. And in case any of those names is unfamiliar, every example cited is generously made available for audio-reference on Levitin’s site: www.yourbrainonmusic.com.

From his incisive definitions of music’s building blocks to his differentiation between music as science and music as human experience, a clear elegance runs throughout Levitin’s writing, whether he is discussing how the number of potential thoughts in a brain is greater than the number of particles in the universe (enabling us to make such varied music from only 12 notes), or illustrating his arguments with wonderful trivia: a tree falling in an empty wood actually doesn’t make a sound (it merely creates vibrations, which aren’t sounds until someone ‘hears’ them).

Many questions in musical neuroscience haven’t been solved, like why a perfect fifth sounds so ‘perfect’, or why loud music creates such a physical thrill. But in this book Levitin isn’t trying to answer every question; he’s attempting to narrow the (popularly perceived) gap between regular Joes and musicologists.

In Africa, there are professional musicians, sure enough; but people think you’re very odd if you say you can’t sing or (trust me!) won’t dance. They believe these functions to be intuitively the same, and hardwired, from deep evolutionary/sexual and cultural origins.

Levitin does too, and says the average person has more musical ability than is often believed: even the minimally-trained ear expects the 7th to resolve to the 8ve, and can immediately distinguish between Dylan acoustic and Dylan electric. Most people are at least expert listeners of music, and they should be: Americans spend more money on music than on prescription drugs.

Ultimately, contrary to the notion of musical ‘gift’, Levitin argues that, even for the likes of the young Mozart, genetic propensity only gets you about halfway; the rest is environment and hard work.

Very few people could have written this book at all, let alone so deftly. A relaxed blend of arts and science, This Is Your Brain On Music is no quick read, but it is certainly a very enjoyable one. How often do you get to say that about a book on neuroscience?! ” BUY HERE NOW

  • Music Teacher Magazine , England , December 2007

→ No CommentsTags:

What Makes Music Sound So Sweet (or Not)

May 29th, 2010 · Music and the Brain

) — Ever since ancient times, scholars have puzzled over the reasons that some musical note combinations sound so sweet while others are just downright dreadful. The Greeks believed that simple ratios in the string lengths of musical instruments were the key, maintaining that the precise mathematical relationships endowed certain chords with a special, even divine, quality. Twentieth-century composers, on the other hand, have leaned toward the notion that musical tastes are really all in what you are used to hearing.

Now, researchers reporting online on May 20th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication, think they may have gotten closer to the truth by studying the preferences of more than 250 college students from Minnesota to a variety of musical and nonmusical sounds. “The question is, what makes certain combinations of musical notes pleasant or unpleasant?” asks Josh McDermott, who conducted the studies at the University of Minnesota before moving to New York University. “There have been a lot of claims. It might be one of the oldest questions in perception.”

The University of Minnesota team, including collaborators Andriana Lehr and Andrew Oxenham, was able to independently manipulate both the harmonic frequency relations of the sounds and another quality known as beating. (Harmonic frequencies are all multiples of the same fundamental frequency, McDermott explains. For example, notes at frequencies of 200, 300, and 400 hertz are all multiples of 100. Beating occurs when two sounds are close but not identical in frequency. Over time, the frequencies shift in and out of phase with each other, causing the sound to wax and wane in amplitude and producing an audible “wobbling” quality.)

The researchers’ results show that musical chords sound good or bad mostly depending on whether the notes being played produce frequencies that are harmonically related or not. Beating didn’t turn out to be as important. Surprisingly, the preference for harmonic frequencies was stronger in people with experience playing musical instruments. In other words, learning plays a role — perhaps even a primary one, McDermott argues.

Whether you would get the same result in people from other parts of the world remains to be seen, McDermott says, but the effect of musical experience on the results suggests otherwise. “It suggests that Westerners learn to like the sound of harmonic frequencies because of their importance in Western music. Listeners with different experience might well have different preferences.” The diversity of music from other cultures is consistent with this. “Intervals and chords that are dissonant by Western standards are fairly common in some cultures,” he says. “Diversity is the rule, not the exception.”

That’s something that is increasingly easy to lose sight of as Western music has come to dominate radio waves all across the globe. “When all the kids in Indonesia are listening to Eminem,” McDermott says, “it becomes hard to get a true sense.”

The researchers include Josh H. McDermott, New York University, New York, NY; Andriana J. Lehr, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN. and Andrew J. Oxenham, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN.

→ 1 CommentTags:

reBlog from weilbaby.com: Mozart’s Melodies Soothe Babies | Weil Baby Blog

May 28th, 2010 · Uncategorized

I found this fascinating quote today:

Mozart’s soothing rhythm A recent post by Dr Weil, Mozart and Premature Babies caught my attention. His blog brought back the memories of my time in the NICU. In Dr Weil’s post he talks about research done in Israel at Tel Aviv University. This study was about measuring the results of the effects on baby’s who were exposed to Mozart, and how his music encouraged these tiny sick babies to grow. The results showed that the babies responded positively to Mozart’s highly-repetitive rhythm much like their mother’s heart-beat in womb.weilbaby.com, Mozart’s Melodies Soothe Babies | Weil Baby Blog, Apr 1970

You should read the whole article.

→ No CommentsTags:

Classes begin at Healing Music Enterprises

May 23rd, 2010 · Announcements

This afternoon begins my series of classes at Healing Music Enterprises, 2720 Frankfort Avenue, Louisville, KY. Our first class will be “An Introduction to using Music as Medicine.” We’ll be looking at some of the history of the use of music for healing purposes and how the early Greeks used music with a wider variety of illnesses and did so very intentionally. Many people know that Apollo was the Greek god of both Music and Medicine and Apollo was the original model for my website http://healingmusicenterprises.com/Apollo.html
If you’re interested in attending some these classes over the next few months, please contact me through the website, Facebook, Twitter, or any of my blogs! I’d love to have you there! Each class is $25!

→ No CommentsTags: