Christmas music and music psychology queries
Hello Dear Reader
Once again I am in the position of making apologies for my absence of late. Most of my time the last few weeks has been devoted to the completion of my baby – my book. I am pleased to say that other than a few tweaks we are now finished with the manuscript and it will soon be heading to the printers.
In total it has been 18 months from the day I started writing to the day I sent off the final proofs. A long time, but a wonderful experience. I feel like I have consolidated so much of what I have learned over the last ten years of music psychology study. It has been an enlightening journey and one which I will always cherish, whatever happens with the book from this point.
And my baby has a due date – March 6th!
On top of this I see that I am already on discount in Amazon – gosh, my colleagues and I had a good laugh when we saw that. But I am a Yorkshire girl so have no qualms about being good value for money 🙂
I am running behind with my work commitments as a result of a rather obsessive final few weeks of reading the manuscript, so I am afraid that I don’t have a normal blog about a paper for you today. Instead I thought I would share a couple of audio files with you.
It just so happens that I have completed two interviews recently, one which focused on questions of Christmas music and one which was a broader interview about lots of issues in music psychology, including development, emotion and of course, the ubiquitous earworm questions! I thought you might like access to them, so have placed them in this blog.
The first interview was conducted by the lovely Madeleine Richards, who works for Brigham Young University Radio. are a nationally broadcast radio station featured on Siriux XM 143 and iTunes Radio. She was interested in doing an interview with me on music psychology, specifically on Christmas music and the hotly debated topic of when is too early to begin playing Christmas Music. Here is the link to the interview.
The second interview was with the charming Charlie McCarron. According to his website Charlie “…writes and produces music, videos, and the podcast Composer Quest“.
On his website Charlie can be found “...nerding out about music composition, production, sound, and psychology“.
I really like Charlie’s podcasts as his interviews are always insightful. For example, in the past he did a great one with Diana Deutsch about music illusions, which I have often used as class materials for my students: http://www.charliemccarron.com/2013/04/musical-illusions-with-dr-diana-deutsch/
In my interview Charlie posed the following questions, amongst others:
Why do babies have an innate sense of rhythm?
Why did Clive Wearing, a severe amnesiac, retain his ability to perform music?
When did humans start playing instruments?
He also asked about those illusive earworms, and what we know so far about why they might stick in our heads.
In the recording you can even hear a performance on a replica of the oldest instrument yet found from archaeological sites, a 43,000 year old bone flute. I had not heard this before the interview and found it fascinating! Here is a link to the interview, which lasts around 20 minutes: http://www.charliemccarron.com/2013/12/how-to-compose-earworms-and-fetal-music-with-dr-vicky-williamson/
Okay, that is it for now, dear reader. I will be back with a last normal blog next week, before the holiday festivities commence. Take care.