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Articles on The science of music

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Mute Synth, a collaboration between Dr John Richards and Mute Records. MuteSynth creditphoto GeorgeBenson Stereographic

DIY music comes of age with new ways to collaborate

Following the explosion of do-it-yourself music in the 1990s, aspiring DJs and producers have been spoiled rotten. Home studios are increasingly commonplace now that there is such a wealth of affordable…
Music affects all of us – even in utero. Petar

The rhythm of life

Music psychologist and jazz pianist David Hargreaves of Roehampton University is probably the only professor to have opened the bill for Chuck Berry. But last week he beat even that. At a time when the…
If the new Marilyn Manson video showed a young woman disembowelling herself with a large sword because she had lost her lover it would be banned instantly. But this same scene is tolerated nightly in opera house performances of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly. EPA/TOR ERIK SCHRODER

“!ti od em edam nataS” … does rock ‘n’ roll really make kids kill themselves?

As Jane Austen probably wanted to say, it is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good Black Sabbath CD must be in want of a shotgun. We are so encultured to believe that…
Ronan the sea lion was able to keep a musical beat, even when hearing a song for the first time. American Psychological Association

Dancing seal is first non-human mammal to keep a beat

US scientists have trained a seal to bob its head in time to music, in a study that the researchers say presents the first ever evidence that non-human mammals can keep a beat. It was previously thought…
Feel free to bust out some tunes, but you won’t fool the children of the evolution. Verano y mil tormentas

DarwinTunes: when you get that feeling it’s, uh, sexual hearing?

What transforms noise from album filler to dancefloor killer? Why do some tracks turn us on while others make us tune out? DarwinTunes, a computer program that employs the principles of natural selection…

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