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Mechanic arm allows drummers to augment their playing. The arm's technology allows the arm to tune into what the human drummer is doing and follow along. Interesting technology that perhaps could find its way into other areas of music (the three handed piano player, or allowing people with one arm/hand to play instruments formerly difficult to play).

Daniel Levitin is the Author of "This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession". He is a musician and neuroscientist and this post is him giving a talk about his research and book at Microsoft Research. One of his main premises from his research is that music may be more fundamental to humans than language.

This is a very riveting talk. I didn't come away with the idea that music might be more fundamental to humans than language, but that music is fundamental, as is language, and that each of us is a musical expert, if not expert performers!

I have continued thinking about this topic...Levitin also intimated that musical capacity is similar to language acquisition in that there is a window of time in which that capacity needs to be triggered in order for fluency in music to be attained. The window for language acquisition is birth to puberty. If your language capacity is not triggered within this time frame, you can't learn to speak as we understand speech. I wonder if this is really true of musical capacity...perhaps, but perhaps not in the way that it is of language. Of course they massive amounts of research have been applied to the question of language.

This is more about using dance instead of technology to teach a concept. Less about integration but I thought it was pretty awesome.

What leaped to mind was choreographed speech...I enjoyed the dancing, but found it also distracting...still an interesting concept.

The end is kind of hilarious. When he proposes that with all the cuts in ed funding for the arts that you will be able to get dancers super cheap thereby making them a cost effective replacement. :). Some people have loved the dancing and others not so much. I am a dancer and I connected immediately. I thought it was hilarious but it was presented as a way to teach concepts to children and I think the context of live movement is so incredibly effective. I certainly understand a super fluid now. I can only imagine if I had actually danced the concept.

Hear and Play Media.com allows anyone to learn how to play piano in contemporary forms the wonderful tutorials on the website.

Hear and Play Media.com allows anyone to learn how to play piano in contemporary forms the wonderful tutorials on the website.

I have used GIMP for years. It is a really powerful image program. But it does have a learning curve, that is well worth climbing. From their website: " It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It has many capabilities. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter, etc. GIMP is expandable and extensible. It is designed to be augmented with plug-ins and extensions to do just about anything. The advanced scripting interface allows everything from the simplest task to the most complex image manipulation procedures to be easily scripted. GIMP is written and developed under X11 on UNIX platforms. But basically the same code also runs on MS Windows and Mac OS X."

Interesting, I actually have this on my computer and never paid any attention to it...I will now!

Lego created their film using CG animation based on stop-motion. Technology meeting childhood toys meeting film.

This was really interesting to me not only because Lego has suddenly taken over my son, body and soul, but also because I am fascinated with the practice of using new, cutting edge technology to make new stuff look old. Amazing! Thanks for posting, really fun to know how it's done!

On U2's 2015 tour, the jem of their stage was the "video cage"; two massive video boards spanning the length of their two stages (linked by a walkway). Whether you are a U2 fan or not, the stage is pretty remarkable. A clip of the screen in action can be found here (start at the 3:30 minute point): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YylDq4BlkRI

Booktrack has created a new genre of digital storytelling entertainment. The patented technology lets anyone add a synchronized movie-style soundtrack-including music, ambient audio and sound effects-to an e-Book or other digital text content, with the audio paced to each individual's reading speed. This innovative platform enables users to create and share stories-on a mobile or tablet device-in a unique and exciting way, transforming the "written" word.

Do you know how to do something? Do you want to share it step by step with other people? This app and website allows you to do just that. You can add pictures and text to explain each step! You can also check out all the other awesome how to guides while you are there!

"Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes except iPhone, iPod touch and nano 6G). Floola Desktop is another freeware application to manage your local PC music library. Both are standalone applications that do not need installation and run underLinux (any GTK2 distro), Mac OS X (10.4 or newer!)" --I have used Floola to retrieve music files off of an old ipod that itunes would not allow me to use the music from. If anyone else has had this frustrating problem, Floola is your friend. It also allows you to use your ipod like an external hard drive and drag and drop files to and from it...no syncing necessary.

Van Gogh painted two version of this infamous "Bedroom in Arles". Thanks for a recent technology called "X-ray fluorescence", the original colors of the paintings can be seen for the first time.

This is amazing! "He described it in a letter to his brother Theo: "I have painted the walls pale violet. The ground with checked material. The wooden bed and the chairs, yellow like fresh butter; the sheet and the pillows, lemon light green. The bedspread, scarlet coloured. The window, green. The washbasin, orangey; the tank, blue. The doors, lilac. And, that is all." "Casadio said Van Gogh had a room ready for Gauguin and he had worked for weeks to decorate the walls with art. "In the myriad letters he wrote to his brother Theo and friends, he said the color has to do the job here," she said. "When he was finished he slept for two days." And now there is an Air BnB where you can stay in his room! ( I'll post about it!) I'm in, he's a favorite of mine! Great post, thanks!

This article is about Art.sy, which is an artwork bookmarking site similar to Pinterest. Here you can bookmark favorite art pieces from museums and galleries around the world. (You can actually bookmark favorite pieces in Pinterest). Artsy.net is an automated guidance system for art lovers that does for art what Netflix does for videos or Pandora does for music. It allows the user to sift through parameters using keywords to discover artworks from around the world. http://artsy.net/

The GUI has been redesigned with a great new look and many time-saving enhancements! The Toolbars and Song Title Area have been redone, and the chord sheet now has a "Real" looking handwritten font for chords. We've added UserTracks. Now you can make your own RealTracks to add to your song.

I think this is kind of cool tool, it gives a new look to music and is a way to customize your work a little. Saves time.

I purchased this software several years ago and found it interesting. The RealTracks sounded clean and followed my chord and time changes as good as could be as expected for a computer program. Sadly, my computer was not powerful enough to run the program without it jamming/freezing/lagging. I think with a proper computer system, a lot of time, and some creativity you could produce a pretty professional backing track for gigging out or creating your own studio tracks without the help of other musicians.

Here is an article on new technology that a named museum is planning to use to make 3D replications of paintings by masters - to have a limited edition of and sell at exclusive pricing. The article notes that as this technology advances it will become harder and harder to distinguish copies from the real. Fascinating but not applicable to me - the artist.

Visual News is a wonderful website collecting unique and interesting collections of art. This particular piece features photographs of abandoned NASA stations and offices, offering a unique glimpse into America's space age.

"So you can thank photographer Roland Miller, who, for 25 years, has traveled to more than 15 NASA launch and research sites across the country to document their current state." Wow, so beautiful and sad... and i think we will only see more of this. Thanks for posting.

One thing I love about my family is that there never seems to be a shortness of creativity floating around. My wife Kristin works with her mother Lori running a website over at Katie's Rose Cottage and this project was really just right up their alley.

"We want to scan you, all of you, your body, your face, your emotions, your laughter, your tears. We want to sample you, preserve you. We want to own this thing called Robin Wright." I remember when I watched Star Wars with Friends no one could believe that Peter's Cushing's character was CGI. It is amazing to think of how far CGI has come and it will be interesting to see how it changes movies in the future

Researchers at Johns Hopkins conducted a study on the neuroscience of creativity and our response to art. They have established a new field called "neuroaesthetics." The BSI website is really a thing of beauty: http://www.brainscienceinstitute.org/

Very interesting, it seems to me that these scientists are looking beyond the aesthetics of art towards it use as language or even medicinal. Look at an Escher and a Klimt and call me in the morning :)

The ability to create art and to think creatively is something that truly sets us apart yet they still know so very little about how it occurs in the brain. What exciting and important research!

I love playing around with browser based music creators. I recently found this one, and it's pretty great. It's all royalty free loops and effects, and it's easy and fun. I wouldn't use it for writing music or anything I would try to promote, but it's an easy tool to get some ideas going.

OK now! Your giving me too many cool distractions, I'll never get my work done at this pace.

I have decided to share this, because of the impact that tiny desk concerts from NPR have made on today's music scene. Being able to share intimate performances in a digital space is incredible. I highly recommend perusing through their YouTube page and even subscribe on ITunes.

LOVE all of these guys. Great link !