[Solved] Old neuroscience event on amusia (being unmusical) at the RSM - anyone know more?

SOLVED
The event was a 'Music and Medicine' student-led academic meeting at the RSM and the details are preserved in this archived copy of diary pages of February 2007 when the event took place. In fact I did hear of it through the psci-com list, I didn't find it when searching as 'amusia' wasn't mentioned in the email to the list.

Thanks to @davemack for pointing me to Prof Lauren Stewart's Goldsmith's research page, seeing info about amusia in her publications list made it clear that it was her name I should be searching for and finding the event on psci-com meant I could tie the timing down for a more productive search in the archives.

could it perhaps have been Prof. Lauren Stewart? (https://t.co/zdFCPIHAUQ)

— David Mackinder (@davemack) January 2, 2018

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Years ago... I think it was before 2010 as I think my mum was still alive... Dad and I went to a really lovely and interesting evening event at the Royal Society of Medicine on Wimpole Street. Pretty sure that's where it was. It was a talk by someone who'd been doing research on amusia (lack of music, really struggling with pitch and melody), with a neuroscience focus. At the end the speaker and another medical person gave a short musical performance - a violin was involved I think but the memories are fading.

The talk was fascinating. The researcher showed us video clips of her research with members of a family in Ireland who were enthusiastic about music. The family included a man who was keen on music like the rest of his family but had always lacked any ability with it. He composed tunes - they were as unmusical as you'd expect but he seemed to derive a lot of pleasure from it.

People born with (congenital) amusia cannot recognise a musical tune and struggle with musical pitch but don't seem to have a problem with pitch in speech, or with prosody (rhythm and emphasis / intonation in speech). It seems to be very specific. People can also acquire amusia following a brain injury.

I don't think this was the researcher who presented (no mention of an Irish family, though I suppose it's possible my memory is incorrect!)
The Genetics of Congenital Amusia (Tone Deafness): A Family-Aggregation Study (2007)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950825/
Anyway I'd love to know who gave the presentation and when the event was. As it was probably 2009 or earlier I think the relevant page on the RSM's website has disappeared. Here are the strategies I've used to try and find out more, so they can be discounted.

Google search - restricted by year
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=royal+society+medicine+amusia&source=lnt&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A1%2F1%2F2004%2Ccd_max%3A12%2F31%2F2009&tbm= - no joy, also tried earlier years.

Royal Society of Medicine website search on the Internet Archive
https://web.archive.org/web/20090907092301/http://www.rsm.ac.uk:80/diar/diary.php - I've crawled backwards through 2009 to 2007 but not found anything yet. Perhaps it was before 2007 (entirely possible) but the website hasn't been captures.

Psci-com mailing list (I thought the talk might have been advertised here, but no)
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=psci-com - searched for amusia and music wimpole.

Folk music transcribathon at Cecil Sharp House this Sunday (29th Nov)

Cecil Sharp House (Camden) is having an all day transcribathon in which participants get together with a laptop and headphones and listen and transcribe the words that people sang in some recently collected folk music songs. I asked my friend Alison what was involved and whether or not people need to be able to read music (or be able to listen to music and work out the intervals of notes). Apparently not, it's just the words... but, in her own words:

"We have a transcription guide to help our volunteers, but generally we put the English word, but if it's a dialect word we'd put that with a translation. 

We respect how they sang it when it comes to their variant of a song in terms of what words they use, e.g. there may be printed versions of a song that differ from what they actually sing, but we are capturing their version.

We can't always make out every single word, so have some guidance on educated guesses.

So it's not always as straightforward as you'd think.  But lots of fun!"

Details in the link above or picture below, for ease of copying and pasting the address is laura@efdss.org

 The Song Collectors website is http://songcollectors.org/

More information on collecting songs, and working with different cultures: http://songcollectors.org/collecting/about-collecting/

Seven songs in seven days - music from my mate Phil

This week my friend PhilPub has been doing '7 songs in 7 days' on Facebook where he posts a YouTube link, says something about the music, and does so every day for seven days. I thought it was rather brilliantly done and asked if I could pinch it and post it here (edited for blog format and removing tagged friends etc).

He said yes - so here are his seven posts plus the videos, on one page. He doesn't have a blog himself (I always think this is a shame but his choice of course!)

In my email to him (suggesting his posts should have a wider audience) I mentioned the new series of Toast (which stars actor and musician Matt Berry) and Phil replied "Matt Berry was on my short list actually, along with Kate Bush, Jefferson Airplane, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Diamanda Galas."

He can play Genesis's Suppers Ready on guitar and taught me to play a bit of a Radiohead song (can't remember which one) but my hands are too small so I gave up ;)

I've included the band name and song name below the video just in case the video is removed and it's not obvious from the text what song it is.

Day One

ELO - Mr Blue Sky

Phil says: "Right, here we go. I've been nominated to share 7 songs in 7 days. Could be worse, there are no ice buckets involved! Think I'll make it vaguely biographical, so here's a classic from my childhood. My brothers helped shape some of my impeccable music tastes, and this would often be blaring from the "back bedroom". I think it primed me for the later Prog-y tendencies."

Day Two

David Bowie - Quicksand

Phil says: "Some albums have been with me so long that they've probably laid down epigenetic markers in my DNA. David Bowie's Hunky Dory is one such album - released six months before I was born, so there might even have been some pre-birth conditioning going on. One of my all-time favourites."

Day Three

Genesis - Dancing with the Moonlit Knight

Phil says: "I couldn't pass on including some Genesis. (Prog's COOL now, honest!) So I might as well go with the opening of my favourite album of all time, a track which epitomises so much of what I love about the band at their strength, when Mr Collins was a bearded wonder behind the drum kit. Banks's Mellotron (the choir-sounding bits) never sounded so majestic. I'm still taken back to my teenage days, having the album playing in its entirety on the internal jukebox as I'm riding my bike through the North Downs of Kent."

Jo says: Phil has a perfectly ordinary remote control for his hi-fi system. I remember chuckling quite a bit when I spotted that one of the buttons had PROG on it. Explained a lot ;) I was already into early-Genesis before meeting Phil but he's introduced me to loads of other cool stuff and we've seen some amazing Genesis cover bands too, hooray.

Day Four

PJ Harvey - Rid of Me

Phil says: "John Peel died 11 years ago yesterday. I had the pleasure of meeting him precisely once, when he presented a rare Radio 1 gig - Echo and the Bunnymen supported by PJ Harvey, whom he championed from her early days. He signed my ticket and introduced me to his wife. Lovely man!

Peej played a stripped down set accompanied only by John Parish, but also performed this song completely solo (just her and her big Gretsch guitar) and it was one of the best things I've ever heard/seen. She is my favourite artist of all time, and particularly performing live, absolutely mesmerising."

Day Five

Fairport Convention "I Don't Know Where I Stand"

Phil says: "Continuing on the theme of my favourite female vocalists (I'm a bit of a sucker...) I was torn between Sandy Denny and Joni Mitchell, so I thought I'd cheat and go for a Fairport Convention cover of a Joni Mitchell track! For the original, check out Joni's 1969 album "Clouds" which takes top slot for my fave late-night listen after a sherbet or three."

Day Six

The Fiery Furnaces - Chris Michaels

7 songs in 7 days, day 6.
Phil says: "Moving into the noughties, no one had really excited me as much as PJ Harvey until the Fiery Furnaces came along. A bit of a Marmite band I think, but when Matt Friedberger directs his ADD in just the right way they're just brilliant. Here's a crazy little mini-rock-opera from possibly my favourite album so far this millennium."

Day Seven


Field Music - The Rest is Noise

Phil says: "And on the seventh day... I said I'd left the '70s behind, but my favourite band of the last few years can't help summoning up the spirit of times past, and putting a fresh, jangly spin on things. This starts off sounding like the theme tune of something I would've been watching just before Match of the Day, drinking hot chocolate in me jimjams, and ends with some brilliant guitar-duelling. I love Field Music!"

People on the #dontstopthemusic tag might like these Government reports on music in the UK

From the #dontstopthemusic tag last night it seems that lots of people enjoyed James Rhodes' programme in which he tried to get hold of some musical instruments and support a stronger teaching infrastructure for children in schools. Music teaching appears to be ... somewhat undervalued in some schools and, according to snippets of speeches from a music teachers' conference this problem seems to be fairly systemic. Here's a great post from Mark Robinson's Teach Kids Music blog on 5 Valuable Lessons From James Rhodes’ Don’t Stop The Music.

channel4.com/dontstopthemusic - Two-part documentary in which pianist James Rhodes attempts to give schoolchildren the chance to learn a musical instrument by calling for an 'instrument amnesty' (if you've got old instruments to donate, you can).
Campaign website | Campaign Twitter | James on Twitter

There's a petition "Deliver on the Government’s promise to give EVERY child the opportunity to learn an instrument" and he's playing tonight at The Ambassadors Theatre (7.30pm) in London as part of a tour.

There are a few publications from the GOV.UK website that people might find interesting. If you're looking for their publications go to https://www.gov.uk/ then scroll to the end for the Publications link, which as I've linked it you could just click of course, then type in your search terms or browse by topic.

Anyway here are some Government reports (bold bits boldened by me):

Music Education in England: a review by Darren Henley for the Department for Education and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport
Department for Education and Department for Culture, Media & Sport
7 February 2011

Music education in England: the government response to Darren Henley's review
Department for Education and Department for Culture, Media & Sport
7 February 2011

The importance of music: a national plan for music education
Department for Education
25 November 2011- this document is referenced in the petition above.

National curriculum in England: music programmes of study
Department for Education
11 September 2013
- also "Further music resources are available on the TES website. This is free of charge to schools and teachers but they will have to register with the website to use it."

Government spend on school music department instruments since 2009 (FOI release)
Department for Education
19 September 2013
- you can also find other examples of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act at WhatDoTheyKnow.com for example a request made to Fife Council about Music Education Cuts

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As it happens I was lucky enough to go to a school where music was a big thing, however I'm afraid to say it did nothing for me and I was frankly a bit rubbish at it. Unfortunately I was the not-very-musical daughter of very musical parents. The only instrument I took up voluntarily was the flute but there was compulsory violin and piano and, being reasonably tall, cello (the decision to include me in cello lessons was made by the music teacher turning up to an art class, getting us all to stand up and picking the four tallest in the room). I also managed to get into the choir - the teacher employed a sort of 'exception reporting' system, assuming that all of us were choirable until proven otherwise. Sadly I was able to pick out the middle note from a three-note chord and hold a tune so I got roped into that too.

However as an adult I love listening to it, buying it and going to see it performed live - I don't think my childhood experiences have any impact on that, as I rarely wish I could join in ;)

There's an awful lot of flannel written or spoken about music and the developing brain and I'm wary of an over-reliance on functional MRI (fMRI) and other brain scanning techniques used to propound the idea that learning a musical instrument is great 'because we can see how the brain lights up'.

I'm not wary of fMRI otherwise (just on overextrapolating conclusions) or of the idea that learning a musical instrument is great, it is - though not for me. Here's a post from violinist Eos Chater which talks about a range of personal and social benefits of learning music Ten Lessons for Life through Music Education.

How to enjoy media files on iPhone without using iTunes (and using Dropbox instead)

I have to assume this works for most smartphones and tablets.

You will need

• a free Dropbox account* 
• an iPhone or similar
• the Dropbox iPhone app installed on your iPhone
• wifi connectivity

*or you can use my referrer link and give me extra space which is always nice
https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTQwMDAxMDQ5?src=global9 - note that this shares your email address with me, so think about your own privacy too, possibly it shares my email address with you as well!

Instructions

• Save the media file into your Dropbox folder on your computer
• open up the Dropbox app on your iPhone, navigate to the file and play it
  (you'll need the wifi to synchronise with the Dropbox server and to maintain playback - however if you favourite the file you can probably listen to it offline).

I've been listening to mp3s on my iPhone via Dropbox since November 2010 as I find it easier to handle files via Dropbox than iTunes. I just save them in Dropbox and when I open the iPhone app there they are and they play fine.

Yesterday I was rather pleased to discover that it also works for video files and I managed to play a 700mb .avi file as well as a 176mb .wmv file (it's the same programme but the larger one is nearer to broadcast quality).

Not surprisingly the first time I tried to play the larger file it kept cutting out every 10 seconds and seemed to be not working very well at all but a bit of patience was all that was needed. The iPhone did something to it to 'optimise it for mobile playback' no idea what but about 10 minutes later it played all the way through.

Dropbox's own help pages have a list of files that will play including music and video:
https://www.dropbox.com/help/80/en and they also have a more advanced page for trickier filetypes and how to convert them https://www.dropbox.com/help/83/en (they suggest Handbrake - I've only used Zamzar and Real Player).

Media filetypes that I've successfully played on my iPhone via Dropbox

• .avi
• .flv
• .m4a (these are meant for iTunes, but work fine)
• .mp3
• .wmv 

Music files listed on Dropbox help files that should work: .mp3, .aiff, .m4a, .wav
Video files listed on their help files that should work: .mov, .mp4, .m4v

Filetypes that I've not had much luck with

• .m4r - ring tones, but these can be converted to .mp3 files via http://www.zamzar.com (I've just tried it, works fine)

If you've ever heard this piece of music in a chainstore this is probably why

A few years ago I was in a chainstore and heard a piece of music that sounded so unlike any piece of music that I'd have expected to hear in such a place that I paid a bit more attention to it.

Normally I'm a bit NIMBYish about music in shops and restaurants and have often asked them to turn it down (or ideally off). I love live music but songs that are thoughtlessly piped into shops as audio wallpaper, particularly if they're a bit too loud, tend to make me shop elsewhere. I'm not alone in this NIMBYism and my mum used to be a member of Pipedown (I think Stephen Fry's a patron) - she had tinnitus and found having to contend with shit music didn't help the experience.

Anyway...

This music sounded a bit prog rock lite and while I might not rush out and buy it I was curious as to who had generated it, but the staff were acclimatised to the sound background and hadn't even noticed it.

Recently I was in another shop and heard it again - but nowadays I have Shazam to help me find out what a bit of music is and... it's Christian rock ;)

Band: Iona, Song: Matthew the Man, Album: The Book of Kells

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Matthew-The-Man/dp/B0030B6EPQ

aka "The Instrumental music that plays in lots of retail shops" - this video below explains what's going on rather nicely. There's a device called an Imagesound AHD1 which does the actual piping of the piped music via the internet. When the connection drops it defaults to playing its 'holdingstream' which includes the Iona song. If you just want to go straight to the song it's at 37s in or you can hear it from the Amazon link above.

If it says it's restricted because of EMI copyright then you click on the YouTube icon in the playing window you can watch this video from within YouTube on Cameron's RediffusionMusic channel (see comments below).

One mystery down... the internet is immensely useful for this sort of thing :)

Downloading files via mild geeky skills

Every now and again I remember a song I heard years ago via 3wk.com (http://www.3wk.com) - I don't get to listen to music radio in the background these days as much as I'd like but sometimes I remember that I enjoyed hearing a particular song, and want to hear it again.

Generally I go straight to YouTube as most stuff's there, or Last.fm, or imeem.com (before it was bought by MySpace and shut down - I'm afraid that regardless of what Cory Doctorow has to say about MySpace it's not going to convince me to assault my eyeballs and visit it) or one of the other places. You can nearly always hear a snippet of a tune at amazon.COM although not so often at amazon.CO.UK and iTunes is usually worth a visit.

The track I was after is from - Antarctica - a band that apparently lasted a year, releasing one EP and an album and were last heard from in about 1998. I'm not a particular fan but I really liked the beginning of the song, Hallucinus, which was this electronic synth thing that then went a bit indie. Quite annoying whiny vocals come in a bit later too.

Anyway, bit of googling later and I found that I could listen to it here http://pizza.saur.us/ but what I really wanted to do was to download it. The format of the 'mp3 listening bar' on that page is used on plenty of other pages and usually lends itself quite well to downloading an mp3 with a 'right-click, save as' manoeuvre. However on this occasion I was thwarted by Flash.

More generally some pages don't make the downloading (or 'playing in another window') link obvious - perhaps deliberately but probably not - but you can usually uncover the file's real, individual URL by clicking VIEW / VIEW SOURCE - this usually gives you the full html coded text for the entire page you're looking at, including all the links and sources of files.

I was quite pleased that I managed to download the track by searching within this 'source code' for the word 'Hallucinus', which appears a handful of times, then selecting the relevant string of text that looked most like an URL or filepath, which was this:-

http%3A%2F%2Fpizza.saur.us%2Fdelivery%2F%3Ff%3DAntarctica%20-%20Hallucinus%26e%3D1

Punting this over to a fresh browser window didn't work because all of the %xyz stuff - I don't really understand what this is all about, and notice it only as an annoyance that crops up every now and again that needs trimming out.

I think it's pretty obvious that %3A is going to be : and that the two %2F strings are going to be // but I wasn't too sure about the rest, so I googled %2F and found http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding which told me what should replace the %bits. Quite a lot like code really, as I just looked up %3D and found that it should be the = sign.

That gave me this:-

http://pizza.saur.us/delivery/?f=Antarctica+-+Hallucinus&e=1

Once the URL was reconstituted correctly I put that in a new window and it automatically downloaded as the mp3, and is saved to my desktop - listening to it now.

Another thing to be aware of is that the filepath might include only the bit after the domain name, eg /deliver/?f=... in which case you need to manually add in the domain name yourself (http://....) so it'll work.

I've collected a few files in this way, although websites that hide much of their code in Flash etc make this a bit harder.

Probably the only reason I know this stuff is that I played around under the bonnet of html code a bit in the early 90s and picked up / absorbed some helpful skills from doing so, while creating basic web pages. It had really never occurred to me that everyone else didn't tweak URLs to suit themselves until I read this article by Snyder Consulting, called "Seven tricks that web users don't know" http://www.snyderconsulting.net/article_7tricks.htm

Anyway, like Ray Mears I'm hoping to keep the old skills alive :)