• At least we still have music

    In the midst of the depression and hopelessness that engulf millions of us in America today, I feel compelled to write about something that inspires hope – a program at Walter Reed Army Medical Center called MusiCorps. But allow me a couple of paragraphs to get there. Today the unthinkable has happened and Americans have…

    Read more…

  • Compulsion for music – part II

    Throughout her career, Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie has been an intrepid trailblazer.  She is the most well-known percussionist in the world and the first person in musical history to create a career as a full-time percussionist (a field traditionally dominated by men).   At recent count, over 170 percussion works have been written for her, she was…

    Read more…

  • Compulsion for music – part I

    I saw the film Florence Foster Jenkins a few days ago and haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. I’ve known about Florence since I was a student. She was the stuff of legend, known as the world’s worst singer – with no sense of pitch, no vibrato, frequent register breaks, glottal stops,…

    Read more…

  • Exercise and memory

    There is a beautiful 9-mile trail that runs between the town I live in and a nearby town.  The trail is constructed from a former rail bed and is extremely popular with walkers, joggers, and bicyclists.  It’s an idyllic place for an early morning walk, and I try to walk some portion of it several times a week.  We…

    Read more…

  • Today is Make Music Day!

    Today is  Make Music Day!  Last year there were celebrations in over 700 cities worldwide.  This year – who knows!  It all began in France in 1982 as Fête de la Musique.  Jack Lang, the French Minister of Culture, had discovered that one out of two French children played a musical instrument, and he thought that having…

    Read more…

  • Amsterdam and pianists

    As musicians, we often talk about connections:  connecting emotionally with certain pieces of music;  connecting (or sometimes not) with the audience; connecting with one another when we perform together; and about connections, or networks, within our profession.  And on this blog site I have often written about music and brain connections. So I was delighted to be invited to give a presentation…

    Read more…

The Musician’s Brain

The Musician’s Brain is a blog by Lois Svard, a musician who has written and lectured extensively about the applications of neuroscience research for the study and performance of music. She is Professor Emerita of Music at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and is the author of the book The Musical Brain about music, the brain, and learning.

Subscribe to the blog

Archive

Categories

Absolute Pitch (3) Alzheimers and music (1) Amusia (1) Beat-deafness (1) Benefits of studying music (7) Brain Hardwiring for Music (2) Brain Patterns (1) Celebrate music (1) Cognition (1) Cognitive bias in music (1) Compulsion for music (2) Emotion (1) Exercise (1) Hearing (1) Hearing loss (1) Improvisation (1) Infants and language (1) Infants and music (5) Learning and memory (10) Medical problems of musicians (1) Memory (1) Mirror Neurons (8) Miscellaneous (1) Music and teamwork (1) Music and wellness (1) Music as therapy (1) Music Cognition (3) Music Education (1) Musician's Brain Webinar (1) Musicians' Anatomy (1) Music in times of crisis (3) Musings (2) Neuroplasticity (1) Origins of music (2) Performance (9) Practice (5) Rhythm (1) Sensory Information (0) Sleep (2) Synesthesia (5) Vision (1)