Music

10 Reasons Why You Must Listen to Live Music

1.) You can feel the music. Listening to music on your iPhone simply can’t replicate the powerful feeling of having the bass hit your chest and high-end sounds surround you on all sides. It’s the most primal, ancient way to hear music and there’s simply no substitute for it.

2.) Live performance carries an energy that recordings can’t match— the thrill of musicians performing together in front of an audience, with no do-overs, is a powerful and exciting thing to witness in person.

3.) For aspiring musicians, seeing a live show is an excellent way to see both the work that must be put in to become truly great, and the rewards of that dedication. Seeing live performers at the top of their craft is both inspiring and instructive for learners and budding musicians. Many all-time great artists can point to a specific concert as the moment they knew they were in love with their craft.

4.) Concerts are a communal event— there’s something that changes within a group of people in a shared space who are all enjoying the same performance. It’s an intangible since of community and love that transcends language, culture, or background. And it happens whether you’re in a group of ten or a group of ten thousand.

5.) Concerts cut out the middle man. By the time a recording reaches your ears, it’s been assessed, marketed, changed, adapted for radio, and changed again. But live music is an artist or group of artists performing their craft directly to you. It’s a one-on-one communication that can’t be matched anywhere else.

6.) It’s simply fun! Going out to see a concert featuring a performer you love or a promising up-and-comer with your friends is an amazing, uplifting way to spend an evening. You’ll come away feeling energized in a way that you can’t imagine.

7.) You have a chance to enjoy the performance element of art. This might seem like it goes without saying, but live performance can often bring an entirely new visual and dynamic element to music that you can’t obtain with recordings. The truly great artists can even come to be known even more for their live performances than for their recordings.

8.) You’re surrounded by people like you! Even if you’re in a room full of strangers, you’re all united by one thing— your love for whichever artist you’ve bought tickets to see. You’ll look out at the sea of t-shirts and posters that you recognize and feel at home with people you’ve never met. It’s incredibly powerful.

9.) Merch! Live shows often feature merchandise that you can’t find anywhere else— tour shirts, exclusive recordings, posters and other keepsakes that you can use to commemorate your experience and profess your love forever.

10.) They’re romantic— many a great love story has began at a concert. If you’re looking to share a special moment with that special someone, or maybe even meet that special someone, there are few places more romantic than a beautiful concert featuring emotionally stimulating music. So go to a concert, and fall in love!

Dementia Takes; Music Gives Back

“Music is no luxury to them, but a necessity, and it can have a power beyond anything else to restore them to themselves, and to others, at least for a while.” – Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, Neurologist

At the MacPhail Center for Music in Minneapolis, the Giving Voice Chorus offers a break from the disappointment and frustration of life with Alzheimer’s Disease. Caregivers and patients gather to celebrate, sing, and connect.

Sixty percent of the care facilities in Wisconsin use personalized playlists as part of the care routine for patients with dementia. Ranked #4 for lowest use of psychotropic drugs in nursing homes in the country, the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Association credits the use of music for their advanced position.

Parts of the brain that process music, spared during even advanced stages of dementia, come alive when exposed to music from a person’s formative years. During the filming of the 2014 documentary, “Alive Inside,” director Michael Rossato-Bennet says that 75% of the dementia patients he filmed and spoke with during the making of the documentary showed huge and immediate improvement after listening to music. Personalized playlists are a great benefit to people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.

Research continues at George Mason University in Virginia. A group of scientist led by Catherine Tompkins plans to explore personalized music intervention on mood and behavior. A grant awarded to the college in September of this year will allow them to expand their studies to include residents of five adult day centers in Fairfax County. The subjects struggle with dementia.

As part of the study, three undergraduate Sociology students will interview the participant’s families to determine which types of music they most enjoy. Each participant will listen to music several times each week throughout the six-week study period on an iPod. At the conclusion of the study, the scientists will leave the iPods with the patients as a gift.

The care facilities involved are Music & Memory Certified Care Organizations. This non-profit organization’s goal is to introduce the advantages of listening to music to every care facility in the United States by offering elder-care professionals, nursing staff, and even family members of care facility residents, educational opportunities that will help them make digital music accessible to people with dementia. The organization hopes to have iPods in every care facility for residents to enjoy.

Judging from the research, both scientific and anecdotal, favorites songs may literally be Life Savers.

The Fall from Artist to Performer: Lady Gaga's Painful Wakeup call

“We are not actually communicating with each other. We are unconsciously communicating Lies.”

-Lady Gaga

A recent guest speaker at Yale University’s Emotion Revolution Summit organized by the Yale Centre for Emotional Intelligence and the Born This Way Foundation Stefani Joanne Angeline Germanotta (Lady Gaga) had a lot to say about the music industry and how its generic and completely fabricated culture takes so much from artists leaving them exhausted, disillusioned, and even ready to quit.

Never one to shy away from controversy, Lady Gaga experienced a fast rise from unknown musician to superstar pop music artist when Rolling Stone called her “the defining pop star of 2009.” Her Monster Ball Tour took the world by storm, but bankrupted Lady Gaga. The next year, she received three Grammys and released, “Telephone” with Beyonce. If you say the words “meat dress” in a crowd, someone will certainly recall the famous and fragrant frock of the 2010 VMA’s. No one remembers what any other artist wore that night. The fifth woman to reach over one million album sales in less than a week, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” was a smash hit right out of the gates. The “Born This Way” tour was one of the highest grossing tours of 2012.

But in 2013, she admitted, “I’m not longer an artist. I’m a performer.” How often do we really contemplate the difference between the two? After finishing “ARTPOP” she commented, “I feel empty and sad.”

Maybe other artists feel the same way. On the way to fame and fortune, they lost their sense of passion and their sense of direction and became performers feeding the insatiable appetites of their fans, the music industry, and even their own warped egos. In the age of social media, the rise to fame can give an artist a serious case of whiplash. Musicians go from unknown to ultra-famous in a matter of hours as videos go viral and the powerful influencers of Hollywood or Nashville see in them the potential to create revenue for the biggest machines.

 Disengaging from the music industry machine is nearly impossible. To make the transition from artist to performer is a combination of timing and talent. But finding the way back to an artist who pursues their passions is a complicated and difficult process.

So how shall we unwind ourselves from these destructive forces of social media, social pressures, and social expectations? Lady Gaga says it’s simple, but not easy.

“I started to say No. I’m not doing that. I don’t want to do that. I’m not taking that picture. I’m not going to that event. I’m not standing by that. Because I don’t believe in that.”


10 TED Talks Everyone Must Watch

You know TED talks as the small bites of information that can transform the world.  From science to technology and even religion, they have the ability to impact the world around you.  But as a musician, I can tell you that TED has more rhythm than you might think.  I present you 10 TED talks every musician needs to hear.

1. Yes, the one and only Sting takes you through his journey, but more importantly, he takes you through his own writer’s block.  For the man who spent much of his life telling his own stories and revealing his own emotions to the world found his muse again in the stories of others.  For we must ask ourselves as musicians, is the joy in telling our own stories or those of others? 

2. Folk Singer Joe Kowan made it clear that stage fright was not a choice for him.  He acknowledges his irrational fear of the stage and provides a unique insight into the path of those seeking to overcome it.  In hilarious fashion, he shares is musical journey that led him from physically incapacitating fear to giving his very own TED talk for you all to see. 

3. Mark Ronson is a British musician, DJ, singer, and record producer, but let me go ahead and simplify things for you by telling you he is the guy from the Uptown Funk video with Bruno Mars.  Chances are, if you stop at a red light only to see some high school kids cutting a rug in the car next to you, it is probably to Uptown Funk.  But lest you think Mark is merely the muse of rhythm challenged kids across this nation, you might want to hear his take on “sampling” as it is known in the industry.  For he argues it is not the theft spawned by a lack of creativity you might have envisioned.  But rather, it is the injecting oneself in the story and music of another to tell it from a unique and unheard vantage. 

4. Kirby is a New York based film maker who would take Mark Ronson’s claim that borrowing is not theft and take it to the next level to say that all creativity is borrowed.  Utilizing iconic singer Bob Dylan he makes it clear that we all borrow, steal, and transform to make the genius we see today.  This spans not only music but technology all the way to the very IPhone on which you might be viewing this.  For they claim it is the words that matter and if you must sing high when they sing low or sing fast when sing slow to make it your own, do so with pride.

5. Michael is an American conductor, pianist, and composer who passionately speaks to the transcendence of music and emotion through time.  He muses watching kids play baseball in Brooklyn only to see them replicate 18th century Austrian aristocratic music as their triumph march.  How did that get passed on he asked?  In what world, would a kid from Brooklyn chant aloud the music of 18th century Austrian aristocrats?  For the story that could take music along this path is one well worth enjoying.

6. Amanda Palmer is a musician who is as eccentric as she is creative.  But then again, aren’t the two one in the same.  She describes her journey from street artist to massively successful crowd funding musician.  She makes it clear that it is time to start insisting that others pay for music and rather finally give them the opportunity to simply let them pay for music.  Pop stars allow the many to enjoy from a distance but artist allow the few to enjoy from up close. What say you?

7. But let’s talk about creativity.  Beardyman would describe himself as polyphonic and his desire to not be limited by human anatomy when it comes to music.  Through the use of technology, he will not only enlighten you to the new world of music technology can bring but he will open your mind to what the full capacity of the musician’s mind has to offer.

8. Music composer and associate professor of music composition, Mark Applebaum takes you through the journey of who he is as a musician and makes it clear he wears many hats.  He is more than who he seems and he would claim that you as a musician are indeed more than who you seem.  He creates his own instruments and instantly declare himself to be the world’s best musician at the very instrument he just created.  Take note musicians, and enjoy.

9. But let’s not forget about the story.  Often as musicians, it is easy to forget that we are indeed telling stories.  Sting has awakened you to the endless muse that other’s stories can be.  Michael Tilson Thomas has spoken to you about how it can transcend centuries.  But listen to Emmanuel Jal.  Listen to this child solider from Africa speak to you about the power of telling stories that others cannot tell for themselves.  My fellow musicians, let us consider how we give voices to the voiceless.

10. Finally, I will leave with this talk from Benjamin Zander.  For Ben speaks of possibility like few others I have ever heard.  He explains classical music to others and by the time he is done, you can’t help but think he has converted the entire crowd.  There is a story we tell as musicians and these 5 TED talks remind us of this impact.  And as Mr. Zander so succinctly brings it home in this video, we are speaking to the part of each person who believes in the possible.  I have seen that same look in the eyes of the most affluent citizens of America and in those of the most impoverished children in Guatemala.  Possibility is a fascinating event when it takes hold of the heart through music.  Keep writing, keep playing, and keep living life my fellow purveyors of possibility.