April 1, 2024
Recently I have found an interesting research in the Psychological Science journal, titled An Emphasis on Brilliance Fosters Masculinity-Contest Cultures. Although quite a ‘woke’ topic, it cought my interest after I had a better look at the graph depicting the Relationship between perceived emphasis on brilliance […]
February 29, 2024
Every year in January a lot of electronic technology professionals and enthusiasts gather in Las Vegas, Nevada for an annual trade show called Consumer Electronics Show or CES. There a visitor can see, what has the electronics industry prepared for the next year, wheather there are […]
January 30, 2024
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 […]
December 30, 2023
It has been quite recently that I realized, that Pinterest could be a great source for information about music and, surprisingly, music research. Especially when searching for pictures, graphs, and infographics. I know, this shouldn’t be a surprise. But I thought, that Pinterest as a visual […]
November 30, 2023
The end of October 2023 had been very busy for many reasons. One of them was, that the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship organized a three-days inaugural conference in London, England. An event considered by some as a conservative equivalent of the WEF annual gathering in Davos, […]
October 31, 2023
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you probably know, that the main theme of my effort here is to write about intersection of music, health, and wellbeing. I strongly believe that music, especially the active music-making, or musicking, has a lot of […]
September 30, 2023
“If one should desire to know whether a kingdom is well governed, if its morals are good or bad, the quality of its music will furnish the answer.” This quote by Confucius keeps comming back to me. So for this blog post I have decided to […]
August 30, 2023
Watched this video about how “Nobody knows what music is anymore” by Wings of Pegasus. There you can hear and even see a graphical analysis of a human singing voice, that is automatically tuned and corrected by a computer program. The truth is, that I haven’t […]
July 31, 2023
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 […]
June 30, 2023
One of my first blog posts was about How playing an instrument benefits your brain. Since then there has been a lot of new research done on this topic and also there are new videos about it on YouTube. As this is exactly the theme Musicably […]
May 25, 2023
I have seen Tina Turner live in concert twice, back in the nineties, and her musical energy was absolutely impressive. Older generations’ music legends are slowly leaving this world. But their music remains. That was my first thought when I heard the news last night, that the […]
April 30, 2023
Please have a look at the two photos above and let me know in the comments below, which vases do you think are older. Left or right? To make it easier for you – or, maybe to confuse you more, I can reveal here, that there […]
March 30, 2023
As is quite common here on my blog, inspiration for this post came from a posting on social media. This one was about a mother, who asked on TikTok if her 10-year old daughter’s first music composition can be really played. She showed the three-line piece […]
February 28, 2023
Yesterday my daughter came from the orchestra rehearsal with a tiny piece of plastic instrument – kazoo. Young players got those apparently to broaden their musicality. What a great idea! While I had been driving my daughter home, she showed me, giggling, her new music instrument. […]
January 31, 2023
It was exactly a year ago that I wrote a post about interesting music books published in the previous year (link). As I liked the time I spent browsing through dozens of new published books related to the broad topic of music, following is my new […]
December 31, 2022
This Christmas season I have had a unique opportunity to attend and experience two school Christmas concerts. And they couldn’t be more different, although at the same time both of them had a rather interesting similarities, especially regarding the message I try to emphasize here at […]
November 30, 2022
The idea for this post comes from a YouTube video, as is often the case on my blog. In the video a social anthropologist James Suzman offers quite different view on the crucial theory of the human development, originally presented by Charles Darwin some 160 year […]
October 31, 2022
In this post I would like to introduce to you my favourite way to gather and organize information and ideas, so that once in a while I am able to pick some of them, write a blog post, and publish it here. From the very beginning […]
September 30, 2022
This is not going to be a posting about music. Still, I couldn’t resist writing about my recent experience. Because it was strange and, frankly, hard to understand — if I don’t want to try to look at it through a political prism. Which I don’t. […]
August 31, 2022
I have been planning for quite a while to read one of the books about the music philosophy by Roger Scruton. While researching this conservative English philosopher and writer, I came across an interesting text, that Sir Roger reads himself here on YouTube. (If you prefer […]
June 30, 2022
First – a definition: Hikikomori (from Japanese), also known as acute social withdrawal, is total withdrawal from society and seeking extreme degrees of social isolation and confinement. Hikikomori refers to both the phenomenon in general and the recluses themselves. Hikikomori have been described asloners or “moder-day hermits”. […]
May 30, 2022
I function as a channel through which music emerges from the chaos of noise Vangelis These words characterize the best one of the most important electronic musicians of the last five decades.
April 30, 2022
Very rarely happens to me, that I am willing to watch one movie more that once. In fact, I could count repeatedly watched movies just on fingers of my two hands. A very special position in such a list belongs to the movie Once Upon A […]
March 31, 2022
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 […]
February 28, 2022
There is a new book published just recently, in January 2022, that I believe is worth your attention. Especially if your interests include music psychology, performance science, musicology, and music education. Its title is The Oxford Handbook of Music Performance and the editor of the publication […]
January 31, 2022
I was watching the YT video by my favourite globetrotter Eva zu Beck the other day, and her experiences from Iraq. At one point her guide Abo Haider, an old fisherman and peasant, starts singing and then explains his motivations: When I sing, I feel that […]
December 27, 2021
The end of a year is usually the best time to evaluate results of the previous twelve months in many fields and areas. Here are twelve books that, for me, represent the best and/or the most interesting, what has been published on topics related to music. […]
November 30, 2021
New album from the legendary Canadian brass quintet, playing their own renditions of famous Canadian authors. This is their 108th album on the 51st anniversary of the group. Here is a collection of songs from famous Canadian authors like Joni Mitchell, Rush, k.d. lang, Bruce Cockburn, […]
October 31, 2021
Recently, at the ‘Neighbourhood Chilli Cooking Competition’ our kids had a chance to present their musical achievements. They showed how accomplished both of them are. Victoria, who just turned 13, played a violin concertino, while Martin (8) played an ‘ad-lib’ improvisation based on his previous practicing. […]
September 30, 2021
Playing a music instrument has become an activity mostly done by kids or professionals. It is like bringing kids to a playground and watching them play while sitting comfortably on a nearby bench. We know that kids need some activity and so we are willing to […]