Have you ever wondered how some musicians are able to craft emotionally rich lyrics and pair them with emotionally moving music so perfectly? (Music is the language of pure emotion, after all.) Yes, it is an art that takes some time to perfect; but there’s also a physiological explanation, or at least a partial explanation. Musicians are more in-tune with human emotions than non-musicians. Studying music (crafting music, not just listening) gives people an advantage over non-musicians in detecting emotional changes through faint changes in tone and pitch that are missed by non-musicians. Musical training involves listening for patterns and nuances in music and knowing how adding something will alter the musical (and emotional) integrity of the whole, and musicians’ nervous systems are better able to identify and utilize relevant patterns in music and speech alike.

Not only that, but musicians are more easily able to filter out background noise to focus on a human voice, meaning that they’re doubly better at detecting emotion in, say, a crowded bar or restaurant. Musical training also involves picking your notes out from all of the others that are played, and identifying which notes are most relevant to yours.

Why is this? Studying music actually re-wires the brain to be this way. It makes us not only more adept at detecting emotions, but also at expressing and thinking about them. Going back to my point of music being a language of pure emotion, just like speech makers have studied rhetoric and know how to quickly and succinctly make their point with their words and their tone, musicians study the emotion that music conveys, and they eventually get much better at detecting subtle variations and manipulations in this emotion. It’s not a stretch to carry this over from music to human interaction.

The effect isn’t like an on/off switch—it’s a part of the brain that’s like a muscle in that it gets stronger or weaker depending on how much and how often you use it. People who play music regularly for years have much more highly developed subcortical sensory circuitry than people who don’t. So picking up the guitar tomorrow probably won’t have an immediate effect, although playing several times a week for a few years will have a significant effect.

I’m hooked on Anamanaguchi. They’re an electronica band from New York. Here’s a clip:

If they sound familiar, it may be because they did the theme song for the recent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

If you think it sounds like an old Nintendo soundtrack, it’s for good reason—they actually use an old Nintendo to play their music. They actually program all of the electronic music, encode it on a chip, and then run the chip through the game system. They also go back and add some live guitar, bass, and drum tracks to thicken up the sound (the Nintendo only allows for five audio channels), but the core is always the Nintendo, which they actually have on-stage with them in concerts.

We figured people might be searching for this song, which we just played at Leadership Institute this morning at Church of the Resurrection. The song is an original called “Let Your Reign Fall Down.” Chords and lyrics are up here, and we’ll be adding an instructional video at some point.

Sorry for the unofficial posting here. I’m Brandon, by the way. I was playing bass.

I’ve talked a bit before about autotuner. I always love creative uses of it, as long as it’s not crappy pop music. Anyway, there’s a group now committed to autotuning the news on YouTube. I thought I’d post a clip that I found amusing.

I debated posting another song on here, because it seems like I’ve been doing that a lot lately, but I can’t stop listening to this one. If you ever thought that nothing good could come from Lady Gaga, you obviously missed this cover song.

The artist is Lissie, a newer artist based out of Los Angeles. I haven’t checked out any of her other stuff, but I will be.

But not like any acoustic music you probably listen to. Allow me to introduce Rodrigo y Gabriella.

I listened to their album a bit and I couldn’t really wrap my mind around how in the hell Gabriella was strumming so fast. Even after watching this video, I have no idea how she’s doing it.

Anyway, apparently, both of them met while playing in a speed metal band (think Slipknot) in Mexico City, and decided to do an acoustic version of that with some Spanish guitar influences, and this is what they wound up with. They actually do covers of Metallica songs and other metal songs in their shows. This is crazy awesome music, folks.

I just discovered The Swell Season. No, not the book—the band. Here’s one of their songs:

I’m really impressed with them so far. Apparently, they almost won a Grammy for the song “Falling Slowly,” which appeared on the Once soundtrack, but lost out to some song from the Dreamgirls soundtrack.

Also, I’ve recently discovered some of Regina Spektor’s other albums (most notably, Soviet Kitsch) and I’m really digging those. I’ve always admired her music, but I’d only heard one album (Begin to Hope), and I couldn’t get into it as much as some of her other stuff.

For those who don’t know, Janelle and I are big Over the Rhine fans. We actually met while attending an OtR show in Cincinnati back in December, 2004, along with other fans of the band from all over the country. Well, this past weekend, Janelle and I made the trek back to Cincinnati to attend the same show we met at, with a lot of the same people that were there the first time around. The weekend was amazing, to say the least.

For anyone who’s seen OtR in the past three years or anyone who’s heard Trumpet Child, you should also know that Mickey, their drummer, is officially retired now (from Over the Rhine, anyway). His last two shows with them were this past weekend.

Fans should know that Over the Rhine will be considering releasing an album of the covers they’ve done throughout the years. Some songs include “Fever,” “Hallelujah” (as made famous by Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright), “Moondance,” and “Orphan Girl” (Gillian Welch cover). There are tons more, but those are all I can think of off the top of my head.

Janelle took some pictures, so I’ll link to those when they go up.

(Links to music videos on YouTube.)

• Florence and the Machine
• Ra Ra Riot
• Ramona Falls

Leave it to the Decemberists to analogize the United Nations to high school:

Sure, they rip off Rushmore. But more things should rip off Rushmore.

Also of note, Mr. Deviant Monk showed me this video a few months ago. I think it’s worth a view as well. (Embedding was disabled, so you’ll have to click the link.)