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How Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor Became Halloween’s Theme Song
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How Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor Became Halloween’s Theme Song

In Bach’s era, the pipe organ was one of the world’s most technologically advanced instruments. Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images Imagine a grand house on a hill, after dark on an autumn night. As the door opens, an organ pierces through the thick silence and echoes through the cavernous halls. The tune that comes to...

AI Helped Create ‘Last Beatles Record,’ Paul Mccartney Says
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AI Helped Create ‘Last Beatles Record,’ Paul Mccartney Says

Artificial intelligence has been used to extract John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to create “the last Beatles record,” Paul McCartney said Tuesday. McCartney, 80, told the BBC that the technology was used to separate the Beatles’ voices from background sounds during the making of director Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary series, “The Beatles: Get...

Science Shows Why Our Taste in Music Can’t Be Siloed into Catch-All Genres
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Science Shows Why Our Taste in Music Can’t Be Siloed into Catch-All Genres

Liking certain things or styles is an important aspect of peoples’ identities and social lives. Tastes can influence the ways humans act and judge. How to best describe musical taste reliably is – due to the ever-changing diversification and transformation of music – difficult and open to debate. Using an approach which also considered sub-genres,...

Music Class in Sync with Higher Math Scores — but Only at Higher-Income Schools
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Music Class in Sync with Higher Math Scores — but Only at Higher-Income Schools

Daniel Mackin Freeman, a doctoral candidate in sociology, and Dara Shifrer, an associate professor of sociology, used a large nationally representative dataset to see which types of arts classes impact math achievement and how it varies based on the socio-economic composition of the school. Schools with lower socio-economic status (SES) have a higher percentage of...

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What Is Cultural Appropriation and Why Is It So Harmful?

Die Antwoord is a South African band that uses hip-hop music to create a style it calls “zef”. Since it first appeared in 2009, Die Antwoord has been criticised for cultural appropriation (using cultural elements of a minority group in an exploitative way). It’s accused of copying the lyrics and styles of Cape Town artists...

100 Years of Pop Music in Nigeria: What Shaped Four Eras
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100 Years of Pop Music in Nigeria: What Shaped Four Eras

The global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the early months of 2020 shut down nearly all physical and social human activities. For musical practice this meant near death. Performing music is, after all, one of the oldest forms of social human engagement. In Nigeria, the shutdown of concerts and public music performances was swift....

Roe V. Rap: Hip-Hop Artists Have Long Wrestled with Reproductive Rights
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Roe V. Rap: Hip-Hop Artists Have Long Wrestled with Reproductive Rights

Hip-hop culture is often recognized as being born on Aug. 11, 1973. That was about seven months after Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that protected the right to choose to have an abortion. Accordingly, reproductive rights have long been part of the discourse in rap music, which has always sought to hold a mirror...

Iowa State Designer Turns Sound into Graphics in Partnership with Maestro Guitar Pedals
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Iowa State Designer Turns Sound into Graphics in Partnership with Maestro Guitar Pedals

Keith Richards’ opening guitar riff to “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” has sent throngs of Rolling Stones crowds into screaming fits since the song debuted nearly 60 years ago. The riff introduced something else: the Maestro fuzz-tone guitar pedal. Decades later, an Iowa State University designer has expanded his research – creating visuals out of...

Is It Possible to Listen to Too Much Music Each Day?
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Is It Possible to Listen to Too Much Music Each Day?

I love listening to music. I love music so much I decided to study it in college. I’m earning a doctorate in music history, for which I have researched everything from early 20th-century French music to 1960s funk. I make and perform music as well. I have played drums in rock and pop bands and...