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Singing about Stonehenge

In England, schoolchildren are learning about historic landmarks by singing about them. It’s all part of the country’s national singing program "Sing Up" which strives to incorporate singing into all aspects of school and community life.

 “The idea is to get children singing specially written songs before and after visits to educational attractions,” writes Alex Rumford in a June 10, 2010 article in The Independent. So on the bus ride to Stonehenge, for example, the children sing the song "Moving the Stones" which explores the origins of the landmark. Other sites the schools are visiting—and singing about—are the Jorvik Viking Centre in York, Canterbury Cathedral, and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

The article points to studies in which young children who receive vocal music instruction show significantly higher gains in phonemic awareness – the ability to distinguish different sounds in words – than those who do not.

So what songs might you compose about historic landmarks in your community?

Singing and sports

In another project connecting singing with national life, Argentina and the United Kingdom are assembling mass choirs to sing about a subject that unites the two nations—sporting activities. It’s all part of the celebration of the bicentenary of the May Revolution, a series of events that paved the way for Argentina’s Independence in July 1816.

The Sporting Nations Community Choirs will perform concerts this fall in three Argentine provinces, featuring six to eight traditional and popular songs sung by sport’s fans on terraces and in stadiums of sporting events in Argentina and the United Kingdom. Mari Morgan, a member of Chorus America, is the artistic director and conductor. 

Go to the project’s website to learn more.

Choral singing is good…for your bowels?

This just in from the website www.GoodTherapy.org: A recent study in Sweden found that singing in a chorus helped improve the symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS, an ailment that is often linked to stress and anxiety. Read more about the study in a May 19, 2010 article in the Swedish newspaper The Local.

Musicians discover iPad

Gadget lover Rik Fairlie has found a great use for his new Apple iPad: reading music. “The brightness of the screen made it easier to read the notes and there was no need for a lamp,” he writes in a June 25, 2010 article in the New York Times. “A finger swipe lets you quickly turn pages without fumbling or having to weigh down fly-away pages. And no more chasing loose pages around the room when they fall from the piano.”

Scan the article’s comments for a slew of tips from other singers and musicians using the iPad. A high school choral director named Chris in the Twin Cities says the iPad works great for choral scores, as they are usually in octavo format.

“The iPad and the coming tablet offerings will revolutionize how we purchase, use, and store music,” he writes. “Eventually, schools will buy subscriptions to music libraries rather than purchasing physical copies.”

What do you think? Can you imagine yourself holding an iPad at your choral concerts?

Do cockatoos have rhythm?

Perhaps you are among the millions who watched a YouTube video of a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Snowball dancing, quite expertly, to the beat of “Everybody” by the Backstreet Boys. (There are many Snowball videos now, but check out the one that started it all.)

Well, little Snowball and his dancing friends have become the subject of serious science. Aniruddh Patel, a senior fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, was thunderstruck when he saw Snowball’s groove and proposed to his owners an experiment: Let’s play the song at different tempos and see what Snowball does.

“For 9 out of the 11 variations the bird moved to the beat,” Patel told interviewer Claudia Dreifus in a June 1, 2010 New York Times article, “which meant that he’d processed the music in his brain and his muscles had responded. It was the first documented case of a nonhuman animal who, without training, could sense a beat out of music and move to it.”

What is the significance of this? It means that birds, and perhaps other vocal learners like dolphins, seals and songbirds, might have circuits in the brain similar to humans. “Before encountering Snowball,” Patel said, “I wondered whether human music had been shaped for our brains by evolution--meaning it helped us survive… Snowball doesn’t need to dance to survive, and yet he did. Perhaps, this was true of humans, too?”

A scientific article of Patel’s research is in Current Biology.