Tracking Whale Songs

It’s the 23rd century. To save Earth from an alien probe, Admiral James T. Kirk and his crew go back in time to 1986 to retrieve the only beings that can communicate with the probe--humpback whales, now extinct. (Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home)

Welcome back. An international team led by a researcher with the UK’s University of St. Andrews published a study that reminded me of that movie. The reminder is a bit of a stretch since the only connection is the humpback whale song.

Humpback Whale Songs and Transmission
Vocal traditions and vocal learning provide a foundation for studying culture and its transmission whether by humans or whales.

Humpback whale and diver (from
www.therichest.com/buzz/humpback-wale-diver-shark/)

Male humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) perform complex, hierarchically structured vocalizations. A sequence of sounds termed “units” comprises a “phrase,” phrases are repeated to form a “theme,” a few themes are sung in a set order to form a “song” and different versions of a song that contain different themes are called “song types.”

Although songs are constantly evolving, most males within a humpback whale group will converge on a single song type during any particular winter breeding season. Songs are also transmitted between groups. The rapid adoption of a new song from a neighboring group is a striking example of large-scale, horizontal cultural transmission.

Documenting South Pacific Whale Songs
To investigate humpback whale song transmission in the South Pacific, the researchers recorded whale songs during the same breeding season at sites spanning some 6,000 kilometers (3,730 miles). These included the Kermadec Islands, a migratory stopover, and six wintering grounds--eastern Australia, New Caledonia, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia.

South Pacific study area showing Kermadec Islands (near center) and six wintering grounds (L to R: eastern Australia, New Caledonia, Tonga, Niue, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia) (from royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190337).

All humpback whale song recordings were analyzed as spectrograms, which display the vocalization’s amplitude at different frequencies versus time. (In two dimensions, the y-axis is usually signal frequency, the x-axis is time, and signal amplitude is shown as the intensity or color.)

Three song types were identified in recordings from 52 “singers” at the six wintering grounds. One was dominant in the central Pacific (Cook Islands and French Polynesia), the second was the most prevalent in the west (New Caledonia, Tonga and Niue) and the third was only recorded in eastern Australia.

Example spectrograms of humpback whale song type 1 (top), 2 (middle) and 3 (bottom) (from royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190337).

Migratory Stopover Song Transfers
Given that whales from different groups pass the Kermadecs at the same time during their southward migration, there is ample opportunity for song learning and transmission across the South Pacific.

When songs from 39 singers recorded at the Kermadecs were compared to those of the 52 singers from the six wintering grounds, the Kermadec songs could be matched to New Caledonia, Tonga, Niue and the Cook Islands. The matches were supported by genetic and photographic data. The comparative analysis also suggested that singers from French Polynesia and eastern Australia did not stop at the Kermadecs.

Of particular interest was one “hybrid singer” from the Kermadecs that sang themes drawn from two song types. This would be consistent with song learning on migration.

Wrap Up
The researchers conclude that the similarities in songs from the Kermadec Islands and multiple wintering grounds suggest the Kermadec migratory stopover and presumably other migratory stopovers are locations of cultural transmission, active song learning and the potential for cultural convergence after group isolation at the wintering grounds. As with human correlations between genes, communication and migration, humpback whale migratory patterns are written into their songs.

Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home: www.imdb.com/title/tt0092007/
Study of humpback whale song transmission in Royal Society Open Science journal: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.190337
Article on study on New Scientist website: www.newscientist.com/article/2215121-we-can-tell-where-a-whale-has-travelled-from-the-themes-in-its-song/
Examples of humpback whale song types from study’s supplemental material:
Song Type 2 (Niue et al.) - rsos190337supp6.mp3
Song Type 3 (eastern Australia) - rsos190337supp7.mp3

Mosquitoes Interrupted

Welcome back. If there were any doubt, last summer confirmed that Wisconsin’s state bird is indeed the mosquito. To make life worse, the weather was such that Vicki and I finally broke down and installed a window air conditioner. The invading mosquitoes might have slipped through our doorway; more likely, we failed to seal the opening around the air conditioner.

I have never encountered so many mosquitoes buzzing about in a domicile. The hungry females were biting day and night.

Adult female Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti (yellow fever) mosquito—not our biting invader, but the same structure (from www.researchgate.net/figure/FIGURE-B-Dorsal-view-of-adult-female-mosquito-Aedes-Stegomyia-aegypti_fig32_228820694).

Though I fought valiantly with a hand vacuum, we eventually discovered that the mosquitoes thinned out and slowed down when the air conditioner was actually running. At the time, I attributed their retreat and more passive state to the cooler temperature or the effect of the machine’s vibrations on the window opening seal.

Now I’m wondering if it was simply related to the noise, as suggested by various studies, including the latest on mosquitoes’ reaction to electronic dance music.

Sound Disrupts Mosquito Behavior
It’s long been known that sound and its reception are crucial for reproduction, survival and population maintenance of many animals.

Mosquitoes mating in midair
(photo by C. Walcott, from
blogs.cornell.edu/harrington/aedes-mating/).

Over 150 years ago it was speculated that sound reception was involved with mosquito mating, which usually occurs in-flight. A 2006 study showed that interactive auditory behavior between the males and females--the tones produced by their wing-beat frequency--leads to sexual recognition. That and later studies established that mating success requires the male to harmonize its wing-beat tone with that of the female.

It was thought that the mosquitoes’ hearing mechanism--two feathery antennae--would limit sound reception to short distances; however, investigators from Cornell, Northwestern, Harvard and Binghamton universities recently determined that the sound of female wings buzzing sets males in motion up to 10 meters (about 33 feet) away.

Head of a male Anopheles mosquito; note antennae are inserted into doughnut shaped pedicel, the site of the Johnston’s hearing organ (from
www.nri.org/latest/news/2013/could-the-mosquito-s-buzz-be-its-downfall).

(Unrelated yet of interest, they also found that the frequency of human speech lies in the sweet spot of mosquito hearing sensitivity.) 

Mosquitos Don’t Like Dubstep
All this brings me to the study that found what is music to humans is noise to mosquitoes. A dubstep song by Skrillex had a major effect on mosquito behavior.

(Dubstep is a form of electronic dance music that originated in South London in the late 1990s. Sonny John Moore, known professionally as Skrillex, is an American record producer, DJ, singer, songwriter and musician. He has won eight Grammys, the most by an electronic dance music artist.)

Skrillex, the Grammy-winning electronic dance music artist (from www.magneticmag.com/2015/06/one-image-skrillex-will-change-your-perspective-on-life/).

The study was conducted by an international team of investigators led by researchers from the University of Malaysia, Sarawak. The goals were to provide insight into mosquitoes’ auditory sensitivity and examine the potential for music-based mosquito control measures.

In multiple 10-minute trials with different mosquitoes, the researchers subjected a cage of 10 hungry adult female mosquitoes to two conditions, music on or music off. In the cage with the females were a male mosquito for mating and a hamster as bait.

With the music off, the females visited the hamster much sooner and more often; attacked the hamster much sooner with much greater blood feeding; and copulated about five times more often. In other words, the dubstep music delayed the attack, reduced blood feeding and disrupted mating.

The mean (+/- standard error) time (seconds) before female mosquitoes first visited the hamster when dubstep music was off and on (from www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001706X19301202).

Wrap Up
I should point out that the studies I’ve mentioned generally tested different mosquito species. The dubstep study, for example, used Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, a known vector of yellow and dengue fever viruses and other diseases.

The song used in the dubstep study (see P.S.) was chosen for its mix of very high and very low frequencies. Listening to it, I can understand why mosquitoes might be disrupted. I kind of liked it. See what you think. Anyway, at bedtime, I’d prefer to hear the air conditioner. Thanks for stopping by. 

P.S.
Example studies of mosquito communication:
1980: link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01953800
2006: www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2806%2901636-8
2009: www.nature.com/news/2009/091231/full/news.2009.1167.html
Dubstep mosquito study in Acta Tropica journal: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001706X19301202
Articles on dubstep study on BBC and LiveScience websites:
www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-47770982
www.livescience.com/65125-mosquitoes-dont-care-for-skrillex.html
Mosquito hearing distance study in Current Biology journal: www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)30028-4
Dubstep and Skrillex:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubstep
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skrillex
Dubstep mosquito study music, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSeNSzJ2-Jw

The Change in Popular Music

Welcome back. You probably missed it, but the American Scientist’s digital features editor didn’t. A number of music releases in 2018 reflected STEM topics, you know, science, technology, engineering and mathematics. She identified 11 and expected her list was far from complete. 

K-pop boy-band BTS (video of “DNA”
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBdVXkSdhwU).

Examples are “DNA” by the K-pop boy-band BTS (song explores the relationship between genetics and a sense of destiny) and “The Prawn Song” by Superorganism, an English indie pop band (song has references to behavioral science, evolutionary biology and microplastics pollution).

Notably, only 1 of the 11 songs on her list contains explicit language or mature content. Whether or not you shake your head reading about R-rated music lyrics, I doubt you’ll be shocked to learn that the lyrics of popular music have become more negative over the years.

That trend was recently documented by researchers from Lawrence Technological University. They used automatic sentiment analysis to characterize the emotions expressed by the lyrics of the most popular songs over the last six-plus decades. Permit me to explain.

Sentiment Analysis
Natural language processing is a branch of artificial intelligence that aims to help computers understand, interpret and manipulate human language. To bridge that gap, it draws upon computer science, computational linguistics as well as other disciplines.

Sentiment analysis, also called opinion mining, is a field of natural language processing. Its goal is to identify and extract opinions about a given subject from written or spoken language.

Billboard 100 logo.

Research Approach
The researchers applied automatic sentiment analysis to the lyrics of 6,150 Billboard 100 songs from 1951 through 2016. The Billboard chart ranks the most popular 100 songs of the week in the U.S. Popularity was originally based on sales and radio airplay and later expanded to include online streaming activity.

Automatic sentiment analysis was used to associate each word or phrase in each song with the set of tones they express. Combining the tones of each song’s words and phrases determined the song’s sentiment. The sentiments of each week’s Billboard 100 songs for each year were then averaged to arrive at a single measure for each year’s sentiment. Lastly, they compared the yearly sentiments to determine the changes over the years.

Changes Over Time
The lyrics of songs released during the mid-1950s were the least angry. Joy was a dominant sentiment in the late-1950s, becoming less so by 2016.

Anger increased gradually from the 1950s through 2015, with the exception of 1982-84, when songs were markedly less angry, and the mid-1990s, when songs were much angrier.

Sadness, disgust and fear also increased gradually over the years, though less than anger. Like anger, disgust was lower in the early 1980s and higher in the mid- and late-1990s. Fear, however, increased in the mid-1980s and 1998-99 and decreased sharply in 1988 and 2000.

Wrap Up
The trends documented in the study reflect changes in people’s tastes, not changes in music. Like me, you may be curious about the causes, particularly why blips occurred in the early 1980s and again in the 1990s.

I think the general decline from the 1950s would be expected. Other than the Korean War, the 1950s were a time of joy at least for whites. The U.S. could do no wrong, and, hey, rock ‘n’ roll got started.

Our trust and beliefs took a hit in the 1960s and ‘70s with the civil rights movement, the radical and countercultural movements, inflation, Vietnam, Watergate and more. Some phenomenal music by the Beatles and others couldn’t stop the decline.

Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 record, Rapper’s Delight
(video www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUqvPJ3cbUQ).

The first rap record to receive major mainstream radio play, “Rapper’s Delight,” was recorded in 1979. It rose to 36 on the Billboard Hot 100, and hip-hop took off. Beyond that, it’s easy to speculate and even easier to be wrong. So, I’ll stop and refer you to your favorite musicologist. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
STEM songs of 2018: www.americanscientist.org/blog/science-culture/stem-songs-of-2018
Trend in music lyrics study in Journal of Popular Music Studies: jpms.ucpress.edu/content/30/4/161
Articles on study on ScienceDaily and The Oakland Press websites:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190124124737.htm
www.theoaklandpress.com/entertainment/songs-have-gotten-angrier-over-the-years-lawrence-tech-researchers/article_17677f9a-0ae0-11e9-9d14-a776e408e925.html
Natural language processing and sentiment analysis:
www.sas.com/en_us/insights/analytics/what-is-natural-language-processing-nlp.html
monkeylearn.com/sentiment-analysis/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentiment_analysis
Billboard 100: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Hot_100
A bit of history:
www.history.com/topics/1980s/1980s
ourpastimes.com/when-did-rap-music-become-popular-12200036.html

A version of this blog post appeared earlier on www.warrensnotice.com.

Can Music Drive Success?

Poster for 1981 movie,
Chariots of Fire. (Theme on
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSav51fVlKU)

Welcome back. You may have forgotten the theme from Chariots of Fire, but I’ll bet most of us remember the theme from Rocky, even those who never saw the movie.

There’s no way that Rocky’s pulsating, heavy on the horns sound wouldn’t help you run faster, lift more, throw farther, climb the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art or, yes, fly, as signaled by the theme music’s name, Gonna Fly Now.

Or maybe that music wouldn’t really help.

That’s what a study by collaborators from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics and Technical University of Berlin set out to determine.

Part of poster for 1976 movie, Rocky. (Theme on
www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5VHYP1jZho)

Motivational Music
The researchers enlisted 150 participants (average age 23.4, 69% female) to examine whether listening to motivational music (1) improved ball-throwing performance, (2) enhanced self-esteem and (3) led to riskier behavior.

They had two playlists of 12 motivational music pieces compiled--one by the participants themselves, the other by three musicologists, a sound engineer and an expert on popular music. The latter playlist emphasized motivational lyrics, fast tempi, high level of energy and positive emotional expression.

Experimenter-selected playlist of motivational music (from www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02026/full).

The participants were randomly assigned to listen to either the experimenter-selected playlist, their own playlist or no music, the control, while they completed two phases of a ball-throwing task.

Ball-Throwing Task
For the first phase, which assessed ball-throwing performance, participants threw a volleyball into a basket 10 times from 7 experimenter-defined distances, ranging from 4 to 22 feet. Average scoring ratios (scores/shots) were tallied for each participant, for each distance.

First phase of ball-throwing task (from www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02026/full).

For the second phase, which assessed risk-taking, participants threw the ball 20 times from distances they themselves chose. Success in this phase was incentivized by awarding points and money for points based on the scoring ratios from the first phase.

The researchers also obtained background data and several subjective measures on each participant, such as previous experience in ball games (22% regularly engaged in sports that involved handling a ball) and how they perceived their ball-throwing efficacy.

Effects of Motivational Music
After ruling out significant differences related to age, gender, risk tendency and ball-throwing experience and perceived effectiveness, the researchers concluded that motivational music:

- did not influence overall ball-throwing performance, positive nor negative, though previous experience did predict performance;
- did not influence changes in self-esteem, though it did raise self-esteem among participants who were performing well in the first phase of the ball-throwing task; but
- did enhance risk-taking behavior, the effect being more pronounced with males and with self-selected playlists.

Wrap Up
Wait! What about other studies that found motivational music did indeed enhance performance?

The researchers judged the difference to be that those earlier studies focused on running or cycling, which require endurance and relatively little concentration or mental effort. In contrast, the ball-throwing task required accuracy and motor coordination, which involve more cognitive processing, mental focus and attention. Apparently, it takes more than music to improve those skills.

Send me the results if you run your own tests with or without the Rocky theme. And thanks for stopping by.

P.S.
Study on effects of motivational music in sports in Frontiers in Psychology journal:  www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02026/full
Article on study on ScienceDaily website: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180129110923.htm

A version of this blog post appeared earlier on www.warrensnotice.com.

Sounds Affect Taste

Welcome back. Let’s eat. Wait!

Four plus years ago, I blogged about a Cornell University study that found softening the music and lighting in a fast-food restaurant had no effect on what people ordered, but diners ate less of what they ordered and rated the food more enjoyable (Fast Food Dining). 

That outcome may not have surprised you, but how about this: Research underway elsewhere at the time was learning that sounds affect taste--our five sensitivities, sweet, sour, salt, bitter and umami. 

The five tastes (kitchencounterpodcast.com/introduction-five-tastes/)

Are you with me? Here’s an example of recent work that should help. (Alas, I’m forced to write again about chocolate.)

An international team of collaborators led by an investigator from Belgium’s Vrije Universiteit Brussel had 116 test participants taste the same identical chocolate twice, each time listening to one of two music soundtracks. Although the different soundtracks did not appear to affect the overall enjoyment of the chocolates, the ratings of perceived creaminess and sweetness were higher for one of the soundtracks while ratings of perceived bitterness were higher for the other soundtrack.

None of the participants had synesthesia, the neurological condition in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway (e.g., hearing) leads to involuntary experiences in a second pathway (e.g., vision). The soundtracks were produced specifically to induce the observed crossmodal affects based on earlier research.

Earlier Work
For a glimpse of some of that earlier research, I’ll focus on work by researchers at the UK’s University of Oxford.

In 2010, they published a study in which 34 test participants preferentially associated sweet and sour tastes to high-pitched notes and umami and bitter tastes to low-pitched notes. The participants also consistently matched the type of musical instrument most appropriate for each taste, such as brass with bitterness.

That same year, they also published a status review of laboratory and field research that demonstrated what we hear (i.e., music, sounds we make while eating, or even pure tones or bursts of white noise) can have a marked effect on our perceptions of food and drink, including consumption speed and amounts, preference ratings and flavor assessments.

In 2012, the Oxford investigators published an update on their status review as well as a study that provided the first convincing empirical demonstration that a background soundtrack could modify the taste of a food.

For that study, they had 20 test participants evaluate four pieces of the exact same cinder toffee. The samples tasted while listening to a soundtrack designed to be more crossmodally matched with bitter-tasting food were rated as tasting significantly more bitter than the samples tasted while listening to a soundtrack designed to be more compatible with sweet-tasting food.

Wrap Up
The research continues, and it extends more broadly to flavor. (Taste refers to our five physically defined sensitivities; flavor is a subjective measure of pleasure, involving taste, aroma, texture and more.)

In his 2015 review of sound and perceived flavor, the lead Oxford researcher described how research has revolutionized our understanding of the importance of what we hear to our enjoyment of food and drink. He cited work on the sounds of mastication (chewing), carbonation, creaminess and even squeaks (certain cheese). 
  

Crispy, crunchy potato chips
(multiple websites)

An example of one study he reviewed and for which he was a co-investigator is a 2004 test of sound and eating potato chips. Although the chips were identical, on biting the chips, test participants rated them significantly crisper and fresher when the sound they heard through closed-ear headphones was increased and, of course, staler and softer when the sound was reduced.

OK, now we can eat. Please choose the music. And thanks again for stopping by.

P.S.
-Belgian-led study on music and chocolate taste in Appetite journal: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666316306134
(You can sample and learn more about the soundtracks at www.thesoundofchocolate.be/)
-2010 Oxford study of sound and taste in Attention, Perception & Psychophysics journal: link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2FAPP.72.7.1994
-2010 Oxford review of sound and taste in Journal of Sensory Studies: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1745-459X.2009.00267.x/abstract
-2012 Oxford review of sound and taste in Physiology Behavior journal: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22579696
-2012 Oxford study of music and cinder toffee taste in Food Quality and Preference journal: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950329311001807
-2015 Oxford review of sound and flavor in Flavour journal:
flavourjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/2044-7248-4-3

Hi-Heel Sneakers Addendum

Athletic shoes have an interesting history. For this addendum, however, it will suffice to note that, in the U.S., the running shoes I mentioned in last Friday’s blog post, High-Heel Shoes, would probably have been called sneakers before, oh I don’t know, the 1970s? More to the point, if you were listening to Top 40 radio or to me trying to play guitar in 1964, you probably would have heard Tommy Tucker’s Hi-Heel Sneakers.

When I was preparing the High-Heel Shoes post, I of course wanted to hear that recording. Do you remember the post Positive Reporting Addendum? That featured artists who recorded the pop standard Accentuate the Positive. When it comes to Hi- or High-Heel Sneakers, it seems there weren’t any rock or blues artists who didn’t record the song.

Today’s addendum offers a sample. Why not listen to Tommy Tucker’s version and at least one other? You’ll find, in order, Janis Joplin, Stevie Wonder, Ike & Tina Turner, Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Everly Brothers, The Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, José Feliciano and Buddy Guy & Junior Wells.

Tommy Tucker’s Hi-Heel Sneakers. (Photo from www.musicstack.com/records-cds/tucker+tommy) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bmbSC9c2ys

Janis Joplin’s High Heel Sneakers. (Photo from multiple websites.) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABmAgbJtZDk

Stevie Wonder’s High Heel Sneakers. (Photo from rateyourmusic.com/release/single/stevie_wonder/high_heel_sneakers___music_talk/) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAkgftQ5d1o

Ike & Tina Turner’s Tight Pants (High Heel Sneakers). (Photo from beatsixties.blogspot.com/2011_11_07_archive.html) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlJcKjmLp-o

Elvis’s High Heel Sneakers. (Photo from www.elvisrecords.com/guitar-man-high-heel-sneakers/) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jkwpFdXvSY

Jerry Lee Lewis’s High Heel Sneakers. (Photo from www.cdandlp.com/en/jerry-lee-lewis/high-heel-sneakers/7inch-ep/r117405785/) Live video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YBiB-mDWEw

The Everly Brothers’ Hi-Heel Sneakers. (Photo from multiple websites) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdSGLwoPvhQ

The Rolling Stones’ High Heel Sneakers. Photo and music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxJIS4MSxbU

Grateful Dead’s High Heel Sneakers. (Photo from jerrygarcia.com/show/1966-11-19-fillmore-auditorium-san-francisco-ca-usa/) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wckoHDsBUqk

José Feliciano’s Hi-Heel Sneakers. (Photo from www.45cat.com/record/310356es) Live video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF3i0qFiPRA

Buddy Guy & Junior Wells’ High Heel Sneakers. (Photo from multiple websites) Music video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZLWOKVKuR4

Musical Instruments Addendum

After last Friday’s tribute to Brian Russell and others who work to keep music in the lives of disabled musicians (Left-Handed Saxophone), I ventured off and found a handful of unusual musical instruments I thought were especially cool. Though none is new, they were to me and maybe to you, too.

Eigenharp

Talk about awesome. The Eigenharp is basically a portable controller, played by keyboard, tap-pad and mouthpiece, which can generate a phenomenal range of sounds from stored software. Different versions of the instrument offer different levels of flexibility and capability. (Video of 2010 demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9qPf31xYnY)

Alpha model of Eigenharp by Eigenlabs. (www.eigenlabs.com/)

Wheelharp

Have we got strings for you. The Wheelharp offers a full chromatic scale of 61 bowed strings, played by a keyboard and foot-controlled motor. (Video of 2013 demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MT4OxLLI4m4)

Wheelharp by Antiquity Music. (antiquitymusic.com/wheelharp/)

Hapi Drum

The Hapi Drum--“Hapi” is an acronym for hand activated percussion instrument--is like a well-tuned, lap-size steel drum. Its melodic tones are created by tapping vibrating steel tongues with hand or soft mallets; each tone being accompanied by resonant harmony. Hapi Tones offers different size drums tuned to different scales. (Video of 2012 demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHL9HgfVkeI)

Hapi Drums by Hapi Tones (hapidrum.com/ or www.hapitones.com/)

BeatBearing

If you’d like something unique in a percussion instrument, it would be hard to beat…sorry, you should try a BeatBearing. Placing ball bearings in different holes gives preselected types of percussion with visual feedback from a CRT display. What’s really special is that you can build it yourself--and many have--following plans the inventor, Peter Bennett, published in MAKEzine. (Video of 2007 demo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wreP8FMupyM)

BeatBearing from demonstration video. (www.beatbearing.co.uk/)

Ocarina

When I and, I think, my daughter were growing up, ocarinas were quite common. Now that we, well, she has a smartphone, she can add an Ocarina app. Smule designed an app for iPhones that converts the phone into either a keyed-only ocarina-sounding instrument or--more ocarina-like--a keyed instrument that converts huffing and puffing into sound intensity. Other companies offer ocarina apps for Android devices. (Video of 2012 demo of Smule’s Ocarina 2: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbg6GRRamNQ)

Ocarina 2 from video by Smule (www.smule.com/apps)

hipDisk

I doubt you’ll find this “instrument” in your local music store or possibly anywhere, but being a fan of exercise, I couldn’t resist including the hipDisk, created in 2007 by Danielle Wilde of Australia.

The instrument consists of two large polypropylene disks, each of which has 12 switches spaced along their circumference. Bringing a pair of corresponding switches in contact completes the circuit and plays one of 12 notes of a chromatic scale.

One plays the hipDisk by wearing the two disks--one on hips, one above waist--and bending, twisting, stretching or otherwise contorting oneself to get the correct disk edge locations (i.e., switches) to touch. (Video of demo: vimeo.com/32954581)

hipDisk in action from video. (www.daniellewilde.com/dw/hipdisk.html)

P.S.

Primary link for most of the instruments featured:
weburbanist.com/2009/11/17/the-future-sounds-like-this-10-magnificently-modern-musical-instruments/

Links to articles on interesting musical instruments:
mentalfloss.com/article/27451/8-odd-and-awesome-musical-instruments
mentalfloss.com/article/52212/7-more-really-weird-musical-instruments
www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/21/10-strangest-musical-instruments
www.popsci.com/science/article/2012-11/archive-gallery-strange-musical-instruments-pages-popular-science

Additional links for instruments featured in the addendum:
Eigenharp
www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcVqJh0qEMc
Wheelharp (Kickstarter campaign video)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTSaKKzTLh8
HapiDrum
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW-GZ05htLE
BeatBearing
makezine.com/projects/make-17/the-beatbearing-tangible-rhythm-sequencer/
Ocarina
vimeo.com/70660724
play.google.com/store/search?q=ocarina&c=apps&hl=en
hipDisk
www.gizmag.com/hipdisk-wearable-musical-instrument/19264/

Left-Handed Saxophone

Welcome back. I haven’t seen you at the Saturday morning coffee klatch. Here’s something you may have missed: Owen’s son produced what’s probably the first left-handed saxophone. I don’t mean saxophone music for left hand; I mean a sax modified to be played with only one functional hand, the left. 

Some regulars at the Saturday morning coffee
klatch in January 2012. Owen is in blue jeans.
(from Saturday Coffee Hour)

I’ve blogged about the coffee klatch my father-in-law hosts in his shop alongside the project(s) he or someone’s working on--homebuilt airplane, Model T Ford, cat tree (see P.S.). I’ve also commented on the broad flying and engineering expertise of the regulars who attend. Owen Russell is an exemplar.

Owen and Son Brian

Owen retired as an engineering director about 20 years ago. By that time, he had earned a bachelor’s and master’s in mechanical engineering and spent 46 years in engine design, development and application with a half-dozen major car, snowmobile, aircraft and outboard marine companies. Among his cooler achievements was designing, building and campaigning three racing sports cars and, post-retirement, building two experimental aircraft.

One of Owen’s current projects is rebuilding a 1981 Fiat X1/9 sports car. That’s a joint effort, at most a couple of evenings a week, with his son Brian.

Brian grew up with an interest in music and--who would've guessed?--a mechanical aptitude. After college, he focused further study, apprenticeship and employment on musical instrument repair and restoration in Washington, DC, and Wisconsin, earning in-depth experience and certification with various wind instruments.  

Brian Russell at the lathe in his
shop in Winneconne, Wis. (from
russellwinds.com/index.html)

In 2009, Brian opened his own business, offering wind instrument maintenance and repair as well as the more challenging wind instrument customization.

One-Handed Sax Player

Brian’s greatest and most gratifying challenge came in 2011 when Greta Borzillire called from New York State.

Until a massive stroke affected her husband Charlie’s right side seven years earlier, Charlie had been a successful musician, music teacher and gifted performer who, onstage with his saxophone, could wow a crowd of thousands.

Charlie’s professional career as a saxophone player began at age 14. It continued in the Army, when in 1969, he became only the second person to be drafted directly into the 158th Army Band. He later majored in instrumental performance and composition at Boston’s Berklee College of Music.

Charlie’s long and arduous recovery was led by Greta and rehabilitation specialists, abetted by family and dedicated friends, and driven by music. On his second day in the hospital, he failed a feeding evaluation. To avoid use of a feeding tube, Greta suggested priming him with the mouthpiece from his sax. It worked; it triggered his feeding responses.

By 2008, Charlie had progressed playing a sax with left hand alone to join a local band program; within two years, he was soloing with a jazz band. In 2011, a grant from New York State enabled Greta to contract with Brian for a custom saxophone.

Although this 2011 photo is of Charlie Borzillire
playing the sax Brian would later rebuild, the
photo is from a music-only video in which
Charlie plays the partially modified sax.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbFetjom6pM)

Brian began by making minor modifications to a sax from Charlie’s high school days, so Charlie could play a broader range while Brian worked on the main tenor sax. Over the next 14 months, Brian diverted as much time as possible from other clients to develop a left-hand-only fingering system and rebuild the sax to enable the left hand to control all keys over the instrument’s full range. Charlie was thrilled with the final product.

Wrap Up

The first one-handed sax is not well documented, but it was likely built in the 1920s by C.G. Conn Ltd., a U.S. musical instrument manufacturer. Brian’s left-handed sax is thought to be a first, and he was influenced by David Nabb and Jeff Stelling’s right-handed sax. Nabb is a professor of music at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, who like Charlie, suffered a stroke, and Stelling, like Brian, operates a brass and winds instrument shop.

Online, I saw an instrument maker in Germany who built a right-handed sax and one in the Netherlands who advertises one-handed saxophones for either hand. I expect there are others who rose to the challenge of helping musicians continue to make music.

What’s noteworthy for me is that I know Brian’s father. I met Owen at the Saturday morning coffee klatch. You should try it. Thanks for stopping by.

P.S.

Links to Retired—Now What? Blog posts: Saturday Coffee Hour; Model-T Ford Photo Addendum; Cat Tree Construction.

Brian Russell:
-Brian’s business website: russellwinds.com/index.html
-Video (8:46 min) on the left-handed sax modification: www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_PYrO0PhiA
-Saxophone forum thread Brian started to assist others undertaking a similar project: forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?187042-Left-Hand-Only-Tenor-Sax&highlight=Borzillire
-Blog post on Brian’s accomplishment: bassic-sax.info/blog/?p=36523

Local NYS newspaper articles on Charlie Borzillire recovery:
-From Dunkirk, NY, The Observer (13 Jan 2013), following delivery of left-handed sax: russellwinds.com/charlie-article.html
-Earlier article on Charlie playing with partially adapted sax Brian modified: www.starnewsdaily.com/local/community/story/Monday-Morning-Memo-Week-of-September-4-2012-09-04

David Nabb, Jeff Stelling and Univ. of Nebraska Kearney’s One-Handed Woodwinds Program: 
www.kennedy-center.org/education/vsa/programs/soloists_award_achievement.cfm
onehandwinds.unk.edu/
www.ebility.com/articles/one-handed-woodwind-musicians.php#a1
bassic-sax.info/blog/?p=24561

Websites of example European instrument makers:
flutelab.com/flutelab.com/
www.musik-foag.de/Englisch/frameset.htm

Positive Reporting Addendum

Last Friday’s blog post, Reporting Exercise Research, suggested that media reports should be more positive to encourage their readers or at least make them happy. Even if you weren’t around in the 1940s when the song came out, you’ve probably heard "Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive," music by Harold Arlen, lyrics by Johnny Mercer.

Today’s addendum offers links to a more-or-less chronological sample of the many that have performed the song over the years. You might listen to one or compare a few. At the moment, I’m kind of partial to Ella Fitzgerald’s and Dr. John’s versions. Contrary to what I was sure I remembered, the song was not used in any Disney animated feature. (A link to the lyrics is appended.)

Johnny Mercer recorded the song with The Pied Pipers and Paul Weston's orchestra on October 4, 1944. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3jdbFOidds)

Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters recorded the song on December 8, 1944. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZUmAbi0Vm4) That year, he also sang it with Sonny Tufts (both in blackface no less) in the movie, Here Come the Waves, for which it was a 1945 academy award nominee for best song.

Here’s a recording of Louis Armstrong and his orchestra performing the song live at New York City’s nightclub Zanzibar on New Year’s Eve, 1945. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=BC7DO-luqYw)

Peggy Lee performed the song many times, especially between 1949 and 1955. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUdFIPknB_Y)

Sam Cooke recorded the song for his Encore album, 1958. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnErt_ff8-w)

Perry Como added the song to his Saturday Night with Mr. C album, 1958. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=gifkCgoJ7SY)

Ella Fitzgerald included the song on her 1961 Harold Arlen Songbook Album. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo6VVt7XvAI)

Aretha Franklin recorded the song for Columbia Records’ The Electrifying Aretha Franklin album in 1962. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IP9h40z0sk)

Dr. John played and sang the song for the movie, The Mighty Ducks, 1992. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqEx9rZ7jTI)

P.S.

Background and Lyrics:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate_the_Positive
www.lyricsmania.com/accentuate_the_positive_lyrics_johnny_mercer.html

Frog Courting Addendum

As I was writing last Friday’s blog post, All For Love, I kept thinking there should be new verses in the Frog Went A-Courtin’ folk song, verses about water ripples and bat echolocation. Since I couldn’t remember the current verses, I checked and found the song has a history that’s worthy of an addendum.

Cover of Randolph Caldecott’s 1883 book, A Frog He
Would A-Wooing Go, from Project Gutenberg,
www.gutenberg.org/files/14077/14077-h/14077-h.htm

Wikipedia traces the song to a Scottish book printed in 1549. While there were many text versions of the ballad, the earliest musical version was 1611, The Marriage of the Frogge and the Mouse.

Frogge, Mr Frog, Froggy and Froggie are some of the names the frog has gone by, and there have been a variety of song titles. Though we in the U.S. favor “a-courting,” the British use “a-wooing.” As for my thought about adding new verses, one website has already compiled over 170 different verses to the song.

Picture from page 11 of Project Gutenberg's A Frog He
Would A-Wooing Go, Randolph Caldecott’s 1883 book.

Picture from page 16 of Project Gutenberg's A Frog He
Would A-Wooing Go, Randolph Caldecott’s 1883 book.

Many singers have recorded the piece, including Elvis and Dylan and Springsteen. The Brothers Four’s parody about the hip Frogg heading to the Coconut Grove is the one I remember best, but probably the most popular versions were by Burl Ives and Pete Seeger.

If you followed folk music, you’ll appreciate Woody Guthrie’s recording; and country-western fans, especially those who remember Tex Ritter’s movies, will like his take. Having seen Doc Watson at a folk concert in the early 1960s not long after the Brothers Four version came out, I enjoyed his version.

An unmailed postcard with a picture from Randolph Caldecott’s
1883 book. (michelesworld.net/dmm2/frog/wooing.htm)

P.S.

- Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_Went_A-Courting
- Words and music to earliest (1611) musical version: www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ravenscroft/melismata/mel37small.html
- Compilation of over 170 verses: home.earthlink.net/~highying/froggy/froggy.html
- English and French words to a common children’s version of the song: www.mamalisa.com/?t=fs&p=1152&c=23
- YouTube links to selected recordings of the song:
Burl Ives: www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXhO0fitW7A
Pete Seeger: www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZM4CsauUjE
Tex Ritter: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFJLbMVgS-E
Doc Watson: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vjDMaJdQYk
Brothers Four: www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QiuxyTW0kc