JUST LOVE THIS SONG!
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Music and
Your Body: How Music Affects Us and Why Music Therapy Promotes Health
Research has shown that music has a profound effect
on your body and psyche. In fact, there’s a growing field of health care known
as music therapy, which uses music to heal. Those who practice music
therapy are finding a benefit in using music to help cancer patients, children
with ADD, and others, and even hospitals are beginning to use music and music
therapy to help with pain management, to help ward off depression, to promote
movement, to calm patients, to ease muscle tension, and for many other benefits
that music and music therapy can bring. This is not surprising, as music
affects the body and mind in many powerful ways. The following are some of
effects of music, which help to explain the effectiveness of music therapy:
·
Brain Waves: Research has shown that music with
a strong beat can stimulate brainwaves to resonate in sync with the beat, with
faster beats bringing sharper concentration and more alert thinking, and a
slower tempo promoting a calm, meditative state. Also, research has found that the change
in brainwave activity levels that music can bring can also enable the brain to
shift speeds more easily on its own as needed, which means that music can bring
lasting benefits to your state of mind, even after you’ve stopped listening.
·
Breathing and Heart Rate: With alterations
in brainwaves comes changes in other bodily functions. Those governed by the
autonomic nervous system, such as breathing and heart rate can also be altered
by the changes music can bring. This can mean slower breathing, slower heart
rate, and an activation of the relaxation
response, among other things. This is why
music and music therapy can help counteract or prevent the damaging effects
of chronic stress, greatly promoting not only relaxation, but health.
·
State of Mind: Music can also
be used to bring a more positive state of mind,
helping to keep depression and anxiety at bay. This can help prevent the stress
response from wreaking havoc on the
body, and can help keep creativity and optimism levels higher, bringing many other benefits.
·
Other Benefits: Music has also
been found to bring many other benefits, such as lowering
blood pressure (which can also reduce the risk of stroke and other health
problems over time), boost immunity, ease muscle tension, and more. With so
many benefits and such profound physical effects, it’s no surprise that so many
are seeing music as an important tool to help the body in staying (or becoming)
healthy.
Using Music Therapy:
With
all these benefits that music can carry, it's no surprise that music therapy is
growing in popularity. Many hospitals are using music therapists for pain
management and other uses. Music therapists help with several other issues as
well, including stress.
Using Music On Your Own:
While
music therapy is an important discipline, you can also achieve many benefits
from music on your own. Music can be used in daily life for relaxation, to gain
energy when feeling drained, for catharsis when dealing with emotional stress,
and in other ways as well. This article on music, relaxation
and stress management can explain more
of how music can be an especially effective tool for stress management, and can
be used in dailly life.
The Battle over Music Piracy
When Amazon.com announced its plan to open a
digital music store to sell MP3s, you had to really work to get excited about
it. It's hard to think of a press release that would be less surprising. At
this rate, my 3-year-old daughter will be opening a digital music store pretty
soon. And Amazon's selling MP3s? It's a digital music store. What else would it
sell?
But Amazon's move was actually a strategic salvo
in the great secret war of the $60 billion music industry, the fight over
Digital Rights Management, usually known by the spine-tinglingly thrilling
abbreviation DRM. What's DRM? An invisible layer of software that bodyguards a
computer file and limits what you can and can't do with it. Buy a song from
Apple's iTunes Media Store, for example, and you can copy the file to five
computers but no more. That's because the song comes with Apple's DRM software,
FairPlay, baked in, and FairPlay has its own ideas about what is and isn't
fair. Most people don't even notice DRM--who puts their music on five different
computers anyway?--but there's something annoyingly unfair about FairPlay even
in the abstract. You paid for the music. Who is Apple to tell you where you can
and can't stick it?
Nobody will admit to actually liking DRM. Consumers
feel retailers are treating them like potential copyright criminals. Retailers
say they use DRM only because the labels make them. The labels blame us, the
customers, for being such filthy music pirates. And around we go. Steve Jobs
even swore that he would de-DRM every track on iTunes if only the labels would
let him. (Jobs did broker a deal with one label, EMI, to sell DRM-free music,
with higher audio quality. But it'll cost ya: DRM-free tracks will go for $1.29
vs. the standard 99¢.) Amazon is saying it's prepared to go skinny-dipping in
the digital music pool: the company will sell all-nude, plain-vanilla MP3 files
stripped of any DRM.
This won't make Amazon the iTunes killer.
There's no way Amazon will match the silky-smooth user experience of the iTunes
store--I mean, interface design and hardware integration are what Apple
does--or the depth of its song selection. DRM-free music is a nice perk, and
the freedom-loving anti-copyright geekerati will be all over it, but there are
more important things in life. And Amazon doesn't need to kill iTunes anyway.
Amazon's music store will be a handy tool for setting up package deals and
promotional giveaways and such, but that's all it has to be: a loss leader, not
a world beater.
But all this does bring into stark relief a
basic question that haunts the music industry: Can consumers be trusted to
control their own music without pirating the record labels and the artists they
produce right into the ground? The answer is yes. People have been buying and selling
music for years without DRM, in a form you may have heard of called the compact
disc. CDs have never had DRM attached. Off the record, most executives--on the
technology side at least--will tell you that DRM is a dinosaur that's waiting
for the asteroid to hit. It's just a matter of when the music industry will
stop assuming its customers are all criminals.
To be clear: most of us really are criminals.
Almost everybody owns a little stolen music. But a little piracy can be a good
thing. Sure, O.K., I ripped the audio of the Shins' Phantom Limb off a YouTube
video. But on the strength of that minor copyright atrocity, I legally bought
two complete Shins albums and shelled out for a Shins concert. The legit market
feeds off the black market. Music execs just need to figure out how to live
with that. (And count themselves lucky. When it comes to movies, consumers
actually do act like hardened criminals. The real pirate war is being fought in
Hollywood.)
In the end, the real consequences of DRM may
have nothing to do with piracy. One side effect of Apple's FairPlay software is
that music purchased on iTunes plays only on Apple products--i.e., on iPods.
The result is that DRM helps perpetuate Apple's quasi-monopoly in the portable
digital-music-player market, which ironically has a slightly Microsoftesque air
about it. (The European Union is looking into an antitrust suit.) If--meaning
when--Apple drops DRM for good, the playing field on the hardware side will get
a whole lot more level and the iPod will have a whole lot more serious
competition. Zunes, Sansas and other exotic digital fauna will all be able to
play songs from iTunes. Turnabout, as the saying goes, is fair play.
What Does Music Make Us Feel?
A new study demonstrates the power of music to alter our
emotional perceptions of other people
As a youngster I enjoy listening to music. Even though If I don’t
understand a word of different language songs, but was nevertheless enthralled.
Was it because the sounds of human speech are thrilling? Not really. Speech
sounds alone, stripped of their meaning, don’t inspire. We don’t wake up to
alarm clocks blaring German speech. We don’t drive to work listening to native
spoken Eskimo, and then switch it to the Bushmen Click station during the
commercials. Speech sounds don’t give us the chills, and they don’t make us cry
– not even French.
But music does emanate
from our alarm clocks in the morning, and fill our cars, and give us chills,
and make us cry. According to a recent paper by Nidhya Logeswaran and Joydeep
Bhattacharya from the University of London, music even affects how we see
visual images. In the experiment, 30 subjects were presented with a
series of happy or sad musical excerpts. After listening to the snippets, the
subjects were shown a photograph of a face. Some people were shown a happy face
– the person was smiling - while others were exposed to a sad or neutral facial
expression. The participants were then asked to rate the emotional content of
the face on a 7-point scale, where 1 mean extremely sad and 7 extremely
happy.
The researchers found that music powerfully influenced the
emotional ratings of the faces. Happy music made happy faces seem even happier
while sad music exaggerated the melancholy of a frown. A similar effect
was also observed with neutral faces. The simple moral is that the emotions of
music are “cross-modal,” and can easily spread from sensory system to another.
Sunday, 29 April 2012
The Wanted Out To Prove Boy Bands Make Good MusicIt's not always easy being in a boy band. There are a lot of preconceptions for the five guys who choose to sing catchy pop tunes and dance in formation for a living. Given that boy bands have come in and out of fashion once every decade for the last few years, it should come as no surprise that we are knee-deep in a brand-new boy-band bonanza. This one is being led by this generation's 'NSYNC and Backstreet Boys: One Direction and the Wanted
It's not always easy being in a boy band. There are a lot of preconceptions for the five guys who choose to sing catchy pop tunes and dance in formation for a living.
Given that boy bands have come in and out of fashion once every decade for the last few years, it should come as no surprise that we are knee-deep in a brand-new boy-band bonanza. This one is being led by this generation's 'NSYNC and Backstreet Boys: One Direction and the Wanted.
When MTV News sat down with the Wanted to premiere their "Chasing the Sun" video, they chatted a bit about being labeled a "boy band."
"Eventually, we were, like, over it," Jay McGuiness explained. "If you like us despite it or because of it, then we're happy."
Well, something is working for the guys. Their lead U.S. single, "Glad You Came," has topped the charts, and they are once again getting people dancing with "Chasing the Sun," from their just-released debut U.S. EP. It's a good time to be in a boy band, thanks to all the love out there for them. And it's an even better time to be in the Wanted.
It seems that their success might have a lot to do with the way they've approached their boy-band career thus far. "We went out there and we're like, 'You know what? I think we can change people's perspectives of the '90s boy bands,' " Tom Parker explained. "And that was our aim: just to make good music."
Voting in round two of MTV's Battle of the Boy Bands runs until noon ET on Monday, April 30. Winners are determined by fan votes, so if your favorite band made the cut, make sure you keep voting. Tune in to AMTV and MTV Hits for their boy-band video takeovers each day and make sure to spread the word on Twitter using the hashtag BBB and like us on Facebook for updates!
Pitbull Goes 'Back In Time' On 'Men In Black' Video Set
Not only does the "Men in Black" movie franchise boast great acting and stunning visual effects, each of the three films features a pretty kicking soundtrack as well. For "Men in Black 3," which hits theaters May 25,Pitbull contributes the lead single, "Back in Time."
MTV News caught up with Mr. Worldwide on the Los Angeles set of the"Back in Time" video and he gave us a pretty cool walk-through
"What we're doing here, to sum it up in layman's terms, is making history," Pit said. "The concept is basically all about the movie. The slogan for the movie is 'Back in Time.' In the record I say, 'In order to understand the future we have to go back in time.' "
The clip not only features "MIB3" movie scenes, it was actually filmed on the movie set, blending the Miami rapper's performance shots seamlessly into Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones' action shots. "As far as the sets that you see right now, it's just integrating and running parallel with everything that you see in the movie," Pitbull explained.
It was the Fresh Prince himself who recorded the theme songs — 1997's "Men in Black" and 2002's "Black Suits Comin' " — for the first two installments of the "MIB" trilogy. For the upcoming flick, Pit took over and used a sample of Mickey and Sylvia's 1950s classic "Love Is Strange" for inspiration
Now that he's clocked his first collaboration with Big Willie, Pitbull hopes that they can work together some more. "I would love to follow in Will Smith's footsteps," he said. "We're working on the music for the movie, and hopefully, one day, we'll work in a movie together."
Monday, 23 April 2012
Justin Bieber Inadvertently Smashes Photographer's Camera At Heathrow Airport.
Justin Bieber clashed with an onlooker as he fled a mob of screaming girls in the U.K. on Monday.
The Baby hit-maker jetted into Britain overnight on Sunday but after touching down at London's Heathrow Airport, he was met with dozens of hysterical teenage girls.
As he tried calmly to pose for pictures with his fans, a lone security guard struggled to control the crowd, and Bieber was eventually forced to break into a run in a bid to flee to safety.
As he did so, a passer-by who was taking pictures of the mayhem accidentally got in the young singer's way, and Bieber careered into him, sending the man's camera smashing to the ground.
However, the teen idol clearly saw the funny side of the whole incident, as he later took to hisTwitter.com blog to write, "Wow. Airport was crazy getting to London! All worth it for my beliebers. Some people always tryna (trying to) ruin it for the fans. Not today Swaggy."
Rihanna Is The Best-Selling Artist Online
R&B star Rihanna has been crowned queen of the downloads after becoming the best-selling artist online.
The hitmaker's fans have flocked to own virtual copies of the star's music, and officials at Nielsen SoundScan have revealed her sales stood at more than 47.5 million at the end of 2011.
The Black Eyed Peas were named the second most popular act with 42.4 million downloads - their 2009 hit "I Gotta Feeling" racked up 7.6 million alone.
Eminem and Lady Gaga came in a close third and fourth with 42.2 million and 42 million, respectively, while Taylor Swift rounded out the top five with 41.8 million sales.
Katy Perry, Lil Wayne, Beyonce, Kanye West and Britney Spears make up the rest of the top 10.
Billboard Award Nominations
Adele, Rihanna, LMFAO, Lil Wayne & Katy Perry Lead Billboard Award Nominations!
Adele's amazing 2012 has just reached new heights - she has landed 18 nominations for the upcoming Billboard Music Awards.
The multiple Grammy winner, who was named among Time magazine's most influential people earlier this week, will compete for the Top Artist, Top Female Artist, Top Billboard 200 Artist and Top Hot 100 Artisttrophies among others.
Rihanna, LMFAO, Lil Wayne and Katy Perry are also nomination leaders for the prizegiving ceremony, which will take place in Las Vegas on May 20.
Competing with Adele, Rihanna and Perry for Top Artist honors will be Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, who will also fight it out for Top Male Artist with Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, Drake and Bruno Mars.
Adele, Rihanna, Perry, Gaga and Nicki Minaj will battle for the Top Female Artist crown, while the Top Duo/Group category will be contested by The Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Lady Antebellum, LMFAO and Maroon 5.
In other major categories, Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift, Take That, U2 and Roger Waters will compete for theTop Touring Artist award, and The Black Keys, Coldplay, Foster The People, Foo Fighters and Mumford & Sons will fight it out for both the Top Rock Artist and Top Alternative Artist trophies.
Carrie Underwood and Justin Bieber have confirmed performance slots at the Billboard Music Awards.
The multiple Grammy winner, who was named among Time magazine's most influential people earlier this week, will compete for the Top Artist, Top Female Artist, Top Billboard 200 Artist and Top Hot 100 Artisttrophies among others.
Rihanna, LMFAO, Lil Wayne and Katy Perry are also nomination leaders for the prizegiving ceremony, which will take place in Las Vegas on May 20.
Competing with Adele, Rihanna and Perry for Top Artist honors will be Lady Gaga and Lil Wayne, who will also fight it out for Top Male Artist with Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, Drake and Bruno Mars.
Adele, Rihanna, Perry, Gaga and Nicki Minaj will battle for the Top Female Artist crown, while the Top Duo/Group category will be contested by The Black Eyed Peas, Coldplay, Lady Antebellum, LMFAO and Maroon 5.
In other major categories, Bon Jovi, Taylor Swift, Take That, U2 and Roger Waters will compete for theTop Touring Artist award, and The Black Keys, Coldplay, Foster The People, Foo Fighters and Mumford & Sons will fight it out for both the Top Rock Artist and Top Alternative Artist trophies.
Carrie Underwood and Justin Bieber have confirmed performance slots at the Billboard Music Awards.
SHAZAM THE BEST MUSIC PLAYER FOR YOUR SMART PHONE
SHAZAM JUST UNLEASHED YOUR NEW MUSIC PLAYER!
Shazam just released today what might be the perfect music player. I've used a number of players, so I don't say that lightly...
The company famous for providing you the ability to name (and download) that song you're hearing in the mall or on a car radio, released last June the additional feature of LyricPlay, which displays the lyrics of any enabled song you are listening to. At the time, I smelled Karaoke in the air.
Today, Shazam changed everything, releasing a whole new app, an incredible feature-rich offering called Shazam Player.
Things just got interesting.
Shazam Player is now available for iOS devices in the iTunes store as a free download. When installed, it accesses your iTunes library and playlists, so you can play your music through the new app.
Here's where it gets fun...
Key up Aerosmith's Dude Looks Like a Lady, and you can use Shazam Player's built-in LyricPlay feature to channel Steven Tyler, as you sing along to Shazam Player's beautifully scrolling lyrics. Don't want the scrolling version? Click to view the static Lyrics Sheet.
When I started up the app, it asked to scan my iTunes collection, which took about a minute for my paltry 500 songs. Approximately 50% of them had viable LyricPlay-able sound tracks, as found by Shazam Player.
I miss Pandora having social sharing options, a feature they released once, then unfortunately took back. Well, social sharing is back with a vengeance on Shazam Player.
Click on the YouTube button and watch their official music video, or share what you're listening to with your social network "peeps".
If you feel the need for some in-person songification, you can even look up possible tour dates for the musician you're enjoying - a feature which reminded me that Tyler's too busy with American Idol to come to a town near me anytime soon.
Foo Fighters to Tackle the Didgeridoo for Their Next Album?
The Foo Fighters may be known as a rock guitar band but deep in their rehearsal studio they could be experimenting with a new down under sound.
When Jody Deamer, director of the Bouddi Gallery of Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Australia, found out that the didgeridoos she had been asked to source were for the Foo Fighters, she went to one of Australia's most famous masters for the charitable band who supported Australia in its time of greatest need.
The globally recognized didgeridoos, called “Yidakis” in the traditional language, were crafted by Aboriginal tribal elder Djalu’ Gurruwiw who has a worldwide reputation as a master “Yidaki” maker and player. Now thought to be in his eighties, Djalu’s international cult status has taken him to the USA and Europe to teach and perform.
The Foos seemed inspired by the story of Djalu’ and the deep cultural significance of the thank you gifts given by their promoter to mark the end of their recent Australian tour: "I was told that they said they were 'rad' and couldn't wait to 'jam' with them," said Jody.
The tour was the second time the Foos had been in Australia last year. The band raised over one million Australian dollars (USD 1,067,000) in charity concerts in the wake of the Queensland floods and the Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand.
In what was described as one of their most memorable shows, their Australian promoter said the Foo Fighters were determined to help after the terrible disasters.
It seems a bit of Australia may have rubbed off on the Foos, so don’t be surprised if one or two tracks on their next album has a distinctly down under tone.
Sunday, 22 April 2012
Pitbul getting the Latin Award
Rapper Pitbull was the toast of the BMI Latin Awards on Friday as he was presented with the prestigious President's Award.
The "Give Me Everything" hitmaker, who was honored for his career achievements and influence on the music industry, was also named the joint winner of the Songwriter of the Year title, alongside Wisin & Yandel and Espinoza Paz.
The BMI Latin Song of the Year was awarded to Horacio Palencia for writing La Arrolladora Banda El Limon's popular track, "Nina de mi corazon".
Previous recipients of the President's Award - the Las Vegas event's highest trophy - include Juanes and Gloria Estefan.
The "Give Me Everything" hitmaker, who was honored for his career achievements and influence on the music industry, was also named the joint winner of the Songwriter of the Year title, alongside Wisin & Yandel and Espinoza Paz.
The BMI Latin Song of the Year was awarded to Horacio Palencia for writing La Arrolladora Banda El Limon's popular track, "Nina de mi corazon".
Previous recipients of the President's Award - the Las Vegas event's highest trophy - include Juanes and Gloria Estefan.
Thursday, 19 April 2012
Wednesday, 18 April 2012
Monday, 16 April 2012
The Three Stooges (2012)
MY RATING
MOVIE INFO
Left on a nun's doorstep, Larry, Curly and Moe grow up finger-poking, nyuk-nyuking and woo-woo-wooing their way to uncharted levels of knuckleheaded misadventure. Out to save their childhood home, only The Three Stooges could become embroiled in an oddball murder plot...while also stumbling into starring in a phenomenally successful TV reality show. -- (C) 20th Century Fox
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