Google’s AdSense nonsense, responsible for so much of the marketing bombardment that makes the web almost unusable at times, has now been deactivated from this site.
Oh yeah, it makes me come over all nostalgic: artists manning the digital barricades against the nouveau-imperialistic arrogance of the likes of Google and Amazon. Roll on the revolution, again. And don’t take no bull from the man.
I’ve set up a direct purchase link for Spirits of Place & Time on RouteNote for those who don’t like to contribute to the profit margins of iTunes, Amazon and the other usual suspects. PayPal is the purchase method.
Science has (again) caught up with what we knew all along. Listening to low-quality compressed music is not good for you. Specifically a study by the Audio Engineering Society on the effects of lossy compression on the ‘timbre spaces’ of a variety of instruments has found that listening to low bit-rate bilge boosts negative emotions (scary, sad etc) and kicks the legs from underneath positive ones (happy, calm, heroic etc).
Sounds like a good reason to keep your inner emo under control and go for FLAC or insist on 320kbps downloads.
Heads up to the good people at gear4music.com whose news section alerted me to The Grauniad’s piece on how music beats all those tedious “brain training” apps and software.
The piece talks about software companies having their asses sued for being economical with the truth about their products boosting brain power. Hmm, wonder if the TrumpistaBrexiteers have been investing in such software?
On similar lines 9 Ways Learning An Instrument Strengthens Your Brain spells out in detail the benefits for all – from babies to those recovering from stroke, from multi-taskers to mindful individualists.
Bottom line: playing and learning to play musical instruments produces long-lasting cognitive grooviness in the brain. Tune on, tune up and get jamming.
Back in 1989 the comic Brain Damage slid into the shops. My first ranty column for it was so popular that the editor ramped it up and I got a whole page per month for the next year.
Plenty of activity in the studio at the moment – I’m about about a third of the way into a new ambient instrumental album, with another couple of instrumental pieces on the back burner. Where’s a lottery win when you need to buy more time?
Verbally led relaxation exercises are a good way to achieve a relaxed state of mind and a healthy state of body – which is why they are often used in situations such as antenatal classes. According toresearch in the German Medical Association’s journal Deutsches Ärzteblatt International, however, music therapy has been found to be even more effective in improving the health of palliative care patients. Medical Daily cites that music of all sorts was reported by patients as boosting levels of relaxation and well-being. The self-reports were corroborated by researchers using physiological measurements in a double-blind trial.
I saw a bit of Sir Alan’s “You’re fired” nonsense the other night. Frankly, I’m perplexed. Surely if people want to watch this, it’d be just as quick to put a mirror over the toilet seat and peer down as you squat over it.
