The above video, recorded live at Penn State, is by comedian/musician Rob Paravonian, who has been a favorite on the Dr. Demento Show. He shares his frustration at having Pachelbel’s Canon in D major follow him everywhere. Everywhere.
Everyone including U2, Greenday and other pop music icons recycle the same chords and progression - don’t believe me - watch the video. It is amazing to think that it never struck me - I love the Canon as much as any ordinary classical music geek, but failed to see it all around me, all the time. Since I saw the video, I have picked up the annoying habit of trying to find chordal similarities between pop/rock songs and classical pieces. Annoying habit, I must say.
So apparently the tone and sound of the Stradivari violins are due to the chemicals used to treat the wood the violins were made of. I do not envy the scientist who spent 30 years proving his hypothesis that the unique and rich sound of the violins derive from the treatment done to the wood. Imagine having to collect wood samples from million dollar violins!
Mystery solved
Answering a question that has lingered for centuries, a team of scientists has proved that chemicals used to treat the wood used in Stradivarius and Guarneri violins are the reasons for the distinct sound produced by the world-famous instruments.
The conclusions, published in the current issue of Nature magazine, have confirmed 30 years of work into the subject by Joseph Nagyvary, professor emeritus of biochemistry at Texas A&M University, who was the first to theorize that chemicals – not necessarily the wood – created the unique sound of the two violins. Nagyvary teamed with collaborators Joseph DiVerdi of Colorado State University and Noel Owen of Brigham Young University on the project.
I have often wondered what life would be like as a Synesthetic
Synesthesia (also spelled synæsthesia or synaesthesia, plural synesthesiae) is a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled
Wouldn’t it be fun if you could see different digits (numerals) in different colors, or if you could “see” sounds and “smell” colors. I guess I will never know what it feels like, but I really, truly wish I were synesthetic.
This article from seed, The most beautiful painting you’ve ever heard explores the world of synesthetics - a very interesting article. In it, there is a link to a youtube video of music composed by Ravel. The way it turned out, a synesthetic found out that the photos she was leafing through and the music that was playing (Ravel) were suggestive of one another:
“All of a sudden an adagio came on,” she recalled, “and the music looked exactly as the pictures sounded. I was having it in both directions at the same time. So I thought, I wonder if I could do this on purpose.”
The result is the video. Probably this is as close as I am ever gonna get to feeling what a synesthetic does. Enjoy!
