Playing – Musicably

January 30, 2024

Piano and the Clash of Cultures

This one will be political. We live in strange times, when almost anything could become a contentious political topic. Even such a seemingly innocuous thing as a piano placed in a public space for anyone to play it freely. I had been browsing YouTube the last […]

July 31, 2023

Matteo Mancuso – Guitar Virtuoso

It was a long time ago, when as a beginning music journalist I went to see a concert of a jazz guitar phenomenon Stanley Jordan. Myself, as well as the large part of the audience couldn’t believe what we had experienced. Jordan’s playing technique was absolutely […]

March 31, 2022

Music Is Like Transportation

I like analogies and recently the following one came to my mind: What if we would consider music to be similar to cars and to moving around – like for transportation? So here is the situation: – Everyone who learns the rules and gets tested for […]

June 30, 2017

If Multitasking, You Do It Like Musicians.

If multitasking capability really exists, musicians must be the best multitaskers. Take, for example, the organ player in the Finale of the Symphony No. 3 from the French composer Camille Saint-Saens. He uses all his four limbs to play music on five keyboards – at the […]

June 14, 2017

Why You Should Not Forget Your Music Education

Stress is damaging still younger and younger people. Now even teenagers. Average age in onset of depression is 13; it used to be 42! This interesting information presented neuropsychologist Dr. William R. Stixrud at the seminar on Transcendental Mediation organized by the David Lynch Foundation. He […]

May 9, 2017

Why Music (Education) Matters

A YouTube algorithm delivered an interesting video to my computer screen. Colored only in black&white it looks depressing, even morbid. Actually it is not a video, because all what you can see for six minutes are three words – Why Music Matters. What you can hear […]

May 2, 2017

How to Persuade You to Start Musicking?

Recently I finished reading the book Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade from renowned psychologist Robert Cialdini. His specialty is persuasion and marketing. In the book he writes also about the research program designed to answer the question “What is language principally for?” Cialdini […]

March 9, 2017

Unlock the Musician Within You!

Is music important for you? What role does music play in your life? Aside from being a listener, there are other possible scenarios about your relationship with music. And they may have one common denominator – you feel that music is in your veins and heart. […]

March 7, 2017

How playing an instrument benefits your brain.

A picture is worth a thousand words. How many words is worth a video then? In under five minutes this animated movie from TED-Ed explains many benefits of playing a musical instrument. They compare playing to the brain’s equivalent of a full body workout. The reason […]