Lois Svard

Tag: auditory-motor loop

  • Memory and falling dominoes

    The Starry Night is regarded as one of Vincent Van Gogh’s best works and is probably one of the most well-known images in art, having been appropriated for everything from mugs to mouse pads to desktop wallpaper. I recently happened upon a very unusual version of Starry Night – a video of the iconic image created by falling dominoes.  As I…

  • Myth or reality: mirror neurons and music, part VII

    A few months ago I wrote several posts about the importance of mirror neurons in the study and performance of music.  Mirror neurons, as you recall, are the cells that fire both when we act and when we see someone else making the same action, and multiple studies have been conducted that specifically explore mirror neurons in musicians.…

  • Listening as practice: mirror neurons and music, part V

    I still remember Sue’s performance of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata on her senior recital.  I knew from hearing her earlier in a masterclass that her concept of the sonata was epic – distant machine gun fire in the opening repeated chords, various musical depictions of war in the first movement, death in the second, and angels in heaven in the…

  • Setting the stage for auditory mirror neurons: the auditory-motor loop

    Ohad (Udi) Bar-David, cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, says that when he first began playing with Arab musician Simon Shaheen, it was difficult to play the microtones that are prevalent in Arab music. “But,” he says, “when you start hearing it, your fingers just take you there.” Your fingers “just take you there” because of…