There’s an excellent pop-rock album by the French band Phoenix, titled “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”. In the song Countdown, lead vocalist Thomas Mars sings “Do you remember when 21 years was old?”. At the time I heard it, I did not, in fact, remember when 21 years was old. That’s because I was not 21 years old at the time, so while 21 years wasn’t necessarily super old to me, it was still older than I [...]

Words have a strange way of losing their meaning over time, or of having their meanings blur together. “Thou” is now evocative of olden times, and pretty much only used to convey period; the only time you’d ask someone “How art thou doing” is if you’re making a joke or hanging out at a Renaissance Fair. Thou has a very practical use, though; it can be used to denote the second person singular, which differentiated [...]

I recently stumbled upon a YouTube channel called “My Analog Journal”. The channel is run by a person living in the UK who has a wide variety of world music. The focus is on Turkish funk and rock music from the 70s, with a special love for the Anatolian region. He also spins records from Japan, Africa, and Brazil. I’m mentioning his channel in part because I absolutely love his mixes, and in part because [...]

One of my favorite albums of 2018 is DJ Koze’s Knock Knock. On one of the most memorable cuts, Music on My Teeth, you hear a man talking about music with a passion so obvious he could be speaking for legions of musicians everywhere. He speaks music, breaths music, lives music; music is so ingrained in him, there’s music on his teeth. This should be the goal for any aspiring musician; music becomes a way [...]

We know that music can evoke powerful emotions; emotions so strong they produce physical effects, like frisson. That’s one of the reasons learning to play music is so wonderful; you can evoke these emotions in yourself, and in those around you, a feeling of being transported to a different plane of existence, for a few brief moments. Great music can be a life-altering, perspective changing experience. Why? How does music evoke such powerful feelings? One [...]

We all have someone in our family we might accuse of tone deafness; it might be a little cousin whose vocals chords haven’t fully developed, or an embarrassing dad trying to hit the high notes in a Queen song. No matter who it is, we might wish they would just stop singing; after all, they can’t carry a tune through a paper bag! Here’s a question for you, though: when you call them on the [...]

Music is powerful; it can make you think, make you feel, make you dance, even make you fall in love. Whether you’re playing or listening, there’s a lot music can do to shift your perception and change your experience; sufficient experience with music can even change your worldview, your way of hearing and understanding the world. The wide array of experiences that come from listening to music can seem hard to categorize, so a researcher [...]