Boston Globe reporter Marc Hirsh writes about a performance of David Bowie’s final album “Blackstar” at Kresge Auditorium, conducted by Prof. Evan Ziporyn. Hirsch notes that the “orchestra’s approach took advantage of the rich, jazz-infused harmonic palette of ‘Blackstar.’”
Prof. Evan Ziporyn and Visiting Artist Maya Beiser speak to Arun Rath of WGBH about their work at MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and their performance of David Bowie’s final album. Ziporyn explains that CAST’s purpose is to “energize cross relations between those disciplines, which is something MIT has had going on basically since it was MIT.”
Prof. Evan Ziporyn speaks with Jeremy Goodwin of WBUR’s The Artery about his orchestral arrangement of “Blackstar,” David Bowie’s final album. The key to this arrangement isn’t recreating the album, it’s about “finding the feel of each of the movements and finding how are you going to get that to function with live players in large forces,” Ziporyn explains.
Linda Poon of CityLab writes about Prof. Tod Machover’s latest project turning the sounds of Miami and Philadelphia into symphonies, using audio and video captured by local residents. “There's an incredible kind of liveliness, a combination of restaurants and people talking with the open ocean on one side and streets on the other,” says Machover of Miami’s sounds.
Boston Globe reporter Andy Rosen writes about a new MIT study examining how the brain perceives rhythm that finds people tend to reorganize random series of beats into familiar patterns. “We think that these biases on rhythm, they probably are really important to how you hear music,” explains Prof. Josh McDermott.
Grace Leslie, a Media Lab visiting scientist, is creating music using the signals produced by the electrical activity of her brain and changes in her heart rate, writes Richard Gray for BBC Future. Leslie believes that this new form of musical expression “could be used to help those who have difficulty interacting with the world, such as those with autism.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott dispels the theory that musical preference is rooted in biology, writes Jacqueline Howard for CNN. "We need to accept and document the differences in how other cultures hear the world. The opportunities to do so are rapidly diminishing with the diffusion of Western music around the world,” says McDermott.
Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Akst writes that MIT researchers have found that our musical tastes are culturally instilled. The researchers played consonant and dissonant chords from members of a remote Amazonian tribe and found that “they had no preference for one sound over the other—unlike the large majority of North Americans and Europeans, who prefer consonance.”
Taste in music is based on culture and not biology according to a new study by Prof. Josh McDermott, writes Emily Reynolds for Wired UK. The Tsimane' tribe the researchers surveyed plays music one line at a time, not simultaneously like Western countries, and they had no preference for dissonant and consonant sounds.
A new study co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott finds that musical preference may stem from cultural origins, writes Vivian Wang for The Boston Globe. “It raises the possibility that things vary a lot more from culture to culture than people might have wanted to accept,” says McDermott.
A paper co-authored by Prof. Josh McDermott examines the musical preferences of a society with minimal exposure to Western culture, writes Chelsea Leu for Wired. “Maybe an innate bias for consonance exists, but that doesn’t mean every culture develops it,” Leu writes regarding the society’s lack of preference for consonant or dissonant sounds.
By studying how people from different cultures respond to consonant and dissonant chords, MIT researchers have found that musical tastes may be rooted in cultural origins, not biology, writes Sarah Kaplan for The Washington Post. The results “underscore the degree of variation that exists across cultures in terms of how people hear and evaluate music," explains Prof. Josh McDermott.
Atlantic reporter Ed Young writes about a study by MIT researchers that finds musical preferences may be cultural in origin. The researchers examined the musical preferences of remote Amazonian village and found they “don’t care about consonance or dissonance. They can tell the difference between the two kinds of sounds, but they rate both as being equally pleasant.”
A new study by MIT researchers finds that culture and not biology may be responsible for our musical tastes, writes Amina Khan for The Los Angeles Times. The researchers found that “people who haven’t been exposed to Western music don’t find certain ‘discordant’ sounds unpleasant at all,” suggesting that musical preferences are not innate.
Jordan Graham of the Boston Herald writes that the Open Music Initiative - a new collaboration between MIT, Berklee College of Music, and the music industry - will create a new standard method of calculating and tracking how artists, rights holders, music labels, and distributors get paid in the internet era.