Blog Archive

The Music of Eric Zeisl (CD Review) (Feb. 27, 2019)

Music Interconnected (Sep. 7, 2017)

Music Everlasting (Aug. 14, 2017)

Catchiness in Music (July 21, 2017)

Literature as Music (June 30, 2017)

The Semiotics of Music (June 6, 2017)

Wrong Notes (May 24, 2017)

The Limits of Transmission (May 4, 2017)

Sound as Object (Apr. 25, 2017)

Goal-Directed Movement (Apr. 13, 2017)

The Original Echo Chamber (Apr. 5, 2017)

Ignoring Noise (Mar. 30, 2017)

The Evolution of Song (Mar. 7, 2017)

Seeking Noise (Feb. 22, 2107)

Gesture Toward the Infinite (Feb. 7, 2017)

Autonomous Art (Jan. 10, 2017)

Between Past and Present (Dec. 22, 2016)

Ancient Echoes (Dec. 2, 2016)

Electronic Music and the Separation from Nature (Nov. 17, 2016)

Nostalgic Healing (Oct. 27, 2016)

Musical Aesthetics (Oct. 10, 2016)

To Jargon or Not to Jargon (Sep. 29, 2016)

Musical (Nearly) Universals (Sep. 15, 2016)

Accuracy and Soul (Sep. 2, 2016)

Wild Beauty (Aug. 11, 2016)

Objective and Subjective Emotions in Music (July 28, 2016)

Conductor as Performer (July 15, 2016)

In Birds as in Humans? (June 28, 2016)

Music to the Rescue (June 14, 2016)

Tastemaking (June 2, 2016)

Whence Came the Musical Bow? (May 19, 2016)

The Useful and the Useless (May 5, 2016)

Recontextualizing Meaning (Apr. 28, 2016)

All is Medley (Apr. 20, 2016)

Art is Not Life (Apr. 14, 2016)

Timeless and Time-bound (Apr. 4, 2016)

Folkalization (Mar. 27, 2016)

Different Sounds (Mar. 17, 2016)

Hybridity (Mar. 4, 2106)

Symmetric Sounds (Feb. 18, 2016)

Childlike Ears (Feb. 5, 2016)

Music and Supernaturalism (Jan. 19, 2016)

Musical Exodus (Book Review) (Jan. 3, 2016)

Fleeting Effect (Dec. 29, 2015)

Ethnomusicologizing (Book Review) (Dec. 13, 2015)

Anthrophony (Dec. 3, 2015)

Listener as Context (Nov. 23, 2015)

Enlightened Entertainment (Nov. 18, 2015)

Soul and Commerce (Nov. 13, 2015)

Sound and Spirit (Oct. 29, 2015)

Gestural Aesthetics (Oct. 16, 2015)

Whistled Speech (Oct. 1, 2015)

Between Reason and Monsters (Sep. 10, 2015)

Unreal, Real, Ideal (Sep. 2, 2015)

The Original Musicology (Aug. 26, 2015)

Default Music (Aug. 12, 2015)

Is Anything Frivolous? (July 30, 2015)

Kris Kristofferson: Country Highwayman (Book Review) (July 19, 2015)

Is All Music Ethnic? (July 15, 2015)

Music Is As Music Does (July 2, 2015)

Research in Jewish Music: A Bibliography (June 22, 2015)

Musical Meanings (June 19, 2015)

The Writings of Cantor William Sharlin: An Annotated Bibliography (June 16, 2015)

Gestalt Music (June 5, 2015)

Revising the Triangle (May 29, 2015)

Songcraft (May 21, 2015)

Traditionalization (May 5, 2015)

Nature’s Soundtrack (Apr. 21, 2015)

Sacred Trash (Apr. 17, 2015)

Musics (Apr. 8, 2015)

Musical Ambiguity (Apr. 2, 2015)

A Windfall of Musicians (Book Review) (Mar. 22, 2015)

Musical Dialects (Mar. 20, 2015)

Songs of House and Home (Mar. 10, 2015)

Five Notes (Feb. 24, 2015)

Speech as Byproduct (Feb. 19, 2015)

Responding to Music (Feb. 6, 2015)

Musical Consequences (Jan. 30, 2015)

Sight and Sound (Jan. 18, 2015)

More than Words (Jan. 5, 2015)

Song to Speech (Dec. 28, 2014)

Simulated Silence (Dec. 18, 2014)

Solitary Listening (Dec. 11, 2014)

Sousa’s Menace (Dec. 5, 2014)

The Timbre Effect (Nov. 26, 2014)

Wagner and the Music of the Jews (Nov. 13, 2014)

Music and the Myth of Free Will (Nov. 6, 2014)

Pop as Folk (Oct. 30, 2014)

Music of the Squares (Oct. 23, 2014)

Terrestrial Sounds (Oct. 16, 2014)

Hard (Melodic) Cases Make Bad (Melodic) Law (Oct. 9, 2014)

Improvisation and Origination (Oct. 1, 2014)

The Exclusion of Smell (Sept. 23, 2014)

The Perils of Transcription (Sept. 18, 2014)

Minimal Beauty (Sept. 11, 2014)

Art and Humanness (Sept. 4, 2014)

Numinous Noises (Aug. 29, 2014)

Isomorphic Sounds (Aug. 21, 2014)

The (Non-)Problem of Genres (Aug. 14, 2014)

Two Pockets (Aug. 5, 2014)

Ethnomusicology: A Very Short Introduction (July 28, 2014)

Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel (Book Review) (July 15, 2014)

Genres and Lyrics (Review Essay) (July 7, 2014)

Music as Journey (July 3, 2014)

Musical Enough To Be Music (June 26, 2014)

Musical Suspension of Disbelief (June 18, 2014)

The Worm-Eaten Clavier (June 9, 2014)

Listen and Learn (June 2, 2014)

Beauty Before Content (May 22, 2014)

Walk Like a Composer (May 16, 2014)

Music Complete and Incomplete (May 7, 2014)

Hearing the Sacred (May 1, 2014)

The Musician’s Burden (April 23, 2014)

Schoenberg vs. The People (April 17, 2014)

Inventing the Supernatural (Apr. 9, 2014)

Spirituality of the Human (Apr. 2, 2014)

Art Everywhere (Mar. 25, 2014)

Hearing Averages (Mar. 19, 2014)

Art Is Not Artist (Mar. 11, 2014)

The Social Basis of Singing (Mar. 6, 2014)

Music Shapes the World (Feb. 26. 2014)

Creativity Within (Feb. 21, 2014)

The Invention of “Art” (Feb. 16, 2014)

Empathy and Art Appreciation (Feb. 11, 2014)

The Great Animal Orchestra (Book Review) (Feb. 6, 2014)

Beauty and Human Potential (Feb. 4, 2014)

Object and Motion (Jan. 31, 2014)

The Rudiments of Music (Jan. 22, 2014)

The Short Life of Music (Jan. 21, 2014)

Sound in Wax (Jan. 16, 2014)

From Source to Self-Reference (Jan. 15, 2014)

Musical Ideologies (Jan. 5, 2014)

(Not) Defining Music (Jan. 2, 2014)

Tension and Resolution (Dec. 29, 2013)

Practical Creativity (Dec. 23, 2013)

Real Music (Dec. 19, 2013)

Seasonal Separations (Dec. 17, 2013)

Scripted Thoughts (Dec. 10, 2013)

Is All Music Functional? (Dec. 5, 2013)

Art and Apartness (Dec. 3, 2013)

Before Speech (Nov. 30, 2013)

The Music Instinct (Nov. 26, 2013)

The Myth of the Gift (Nov. 18, 2013)

Funktionslust, Birdsong and Beauty (Nov. 12, 2013)

What You See is What You Hear (Nov. 5, 2013)

The Chronologic Art (Oct. 29, 2013)

Comfort Music (Oct. 21, 2013)

Radical Conventions (Oct. 18, 2013)

Essence and Non-Essence (Oct. 15, 2013)

We Sing a Body Eclectic (Oct. 10, 2013)

Theory and Practice (Oct. 7, 2013)

The Role of the Listener (Oct. 3, 2013)

The Sound of Zero (Sep. 30, 2013)

Useful Boredom (Sep. 23, 2013)

The Most Emotional Art (Sep. 20, 2013)

Civilizing Soundscapes (Sep. 18, 2013)

The Body Thinks (Sep. 11, 2013)

Prejudicial Listening (Sep. 8, 2013)

Surviving Context (Sep. 2, 2013)

Subjective Sounds (Aug. 30, 2013)

Score is Not Territory (Aug. 28, 2013)

Baseball’s Greatest Hit (Book Review) (Aug. 22, 2013)

Music as Work (Aug. 21, 2013)

Taste Matters (Aug. 18, 2013)

Judge for Yourself (Aug. 16, 2013)

For Human Consumption (Aug. 12, 2013)

Playing Favorites (Aug. 8, 2013)

Always Art (Aug. 4, 2013)

From Thin Air (Aug. 1, 2013)

Moved from Within (July 28, 2013)

Evaluating Music (July 25, 2013)

Creativity’s Conditions (July 22, 2013)

Economy of Notes (July 14, 2013)

Music of Mine (July 7, 2013)

Concentrated Feelings (July 5, 2013)

Musical Motivation (July 3, 2013)

Absolutely Not (June 30, 2013)

Feeling Belief (June 26, 2013)

Music Non-Lovers (June 24, 2013)

No Definition (June 20, 2013)

Feeling Voices (June 17, 2013)

Mythic Melodies (June 12, 2013)

Self-Sounds (June 10, 2013)

Art Made and Unmade (June 6, 2013)

Music in Animals (June 2, 2013)

The Three-Minute Rule (May 29, 2013)

Pots and Pans (May 27, 2013)

Music of Champions (May 26, 2013)

Sound and Feeling (May 22, 2013)

Shpil: The Art of Playing Klezmer (Book Review) (May 20, 2013)

Collective Voice (May 17, 2013)

Heart Song (May 16, 2013)

Seeking Patterns (May 13, 2013)

Never Heard Twice (May 8, 2013)

Reflecting on Experience (May 5, 2013)

Audible Analogies (May 1, 2013)

Boundaries of Freedom (Apr. 29, 2013)

Acoustic Anatomy (Apr. 24, 2013)

Believing the Best (Apr. 19, 2013)

Sound Stories (Apr. 15, 2013)

Is It Musical? (Apr. 8, 2013)

The Musician’s Mentality (Apr. 5, 2013)

The Limits of Language (Apr. 3. 2013)

Imitation of Voice (Apr. 1, 2013)

The Rhythm of Survival (Mar. 28, 2013)

After the Song (Mar. 24, 2013)

Expressing Expression (Mar. 18, 2013)

The Art of Tune (Mar. 15, 2013)

Music and Coherence (Mar. 13, 2013)

Above Noise (Mar. 11, 2013)

Music as Contagion (Mar. 6, 2013)

Live Musically (Mar. 3, 2013)

Spirit in Sound (Mar. 1, 2013)

The Rise and Fall of Melody (Feb. 21, 2013)

Musical Characters (Feb. 18, 2013)

Romantic Reverberations (Feb. 13, 2013)

Reviving Tones (Feb. 11, 2013)

Everyone’s a Critic (Feb. 7, 2013)

Musical Peaks (Feb. 5, 2013)

Consciousness, Cognition and Music (Feb. 1, 2013)

Lessons from the Ear (Jan. 30, 2013)

Less is More (Jan. 27, 2013)

Instability and Control (Jan. 24, 2013)

The Universal Non-Universal Language (Jan. 22, 2013)

Necessary Cheesecake (Jan. 20, 2013)

A Higher Noise (Jan. 17, 2013)

Listening to Ourselves (Jan. 15, 2013)

Music Itself (Jan. 13, 2013)

That’s All Folk (Jan. 9, 2013)

Music Good and Bad (Jan. 6, 2013)

Musical Canons (Jan. 3, 2013)

Eternal Song (Jan. 1, 2013)

Musical Worlds (Dec. 30, 2012)

Emotion, Spirit and Sound (Dec. 26, 2012)

Ritual Chickens and Musical Eggs (Dec. 22, 2012)

Is It Music? (Dec. 20, 2012)

Theurgy and Concentration (Dec. 18, 2012)

Words, Words, Words (Dec. 16, 2012)

Tuneful Bones (Dec. 13, 2012)

Bad Vibrations (Dec. 9, 2012)

Parties and Piety (Dec. 6, 2012)

Composing Legends (Dec. 3, 2012)

Songs of Derision (Nov. 30, 2012)

Inventing Hymns (Nov. 25, 2012)

Music as Rhetoric (Nov. 16, 2012)

Beauty and Function (Nov. 12, 2012)

Loving Love Songs (Nov. 7, 2012)

Singing About Singing (Nov. 1, 2012)

Terrifying Tones (Oct. 30, 2012)

Sound Science (Oct. 21, 2012)

Not Music Alone (Oct. 16, 2012)

A Musical Species (Oct. 11, 2012)

Surprising Sounds (Oct. 5, 2012)

Singing the Self (Sept. 30, 2012)

Ear of the Beholder (Sept. 23, 2012)

Sing an Old Song  (Sept. 18, 2012)