The Power of Music Thinking

The Sound of a Toy Dolphin - Special Episode - The Power of Music Thinking

Listen to an incredible sonic project by a Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE)  graduate: Louis Moeckel. Hear the story about the supply chain of the production of a Toy Dolphin and the creation of research into an artistic Vinyl record. If you like Techno and the Berghain Club in Berlin you will like this. See the show notes to pre-order this unique Vinyl record.

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The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation. 

Standing still with Alexander Refsum Jensenius

What is the use of standing still for 10 minutes? I was asking myself when I saw a post on social media. It was a double picture of a man with a mobile phone around his neck displaying some data, and another picture showed the view he saw at that moment. I learned that he stood there for 10 minutes without any movement, listening to the sound that was already there. There were many pictures like this, and I decided to get in contact.

So, today, we are in Oslo. We speak with Alexander Refsum Jensenius, a professor of music technology at the University of Oslo, a book author, a music researcher and researching musician working in the fields of embodied music cognition and new interfaces for musical expression. 

Alexander shares with us his experiences while performing and testing with artistic methods of embodied listening and how people experience music and sound. This goes from experiments with and without the conductor of a Symphony Orchestra to the sounds of our kitchen appliances.

We talk about his motion capture lab, where a person’s exact location and micro-movements can be detected while they hear different kinds of music, and how the researchers can understand what moves them. 

Alexander shares insights about the Norwegian Championship of Stand Still, where until now, 1000s of people have participated, and the winner is the person with the lowest average velocity on standing the stillest over some time. 

Alexander explains the interplay of body and mind and reveals some secrets on how to move people, for example, on the dance floor or to calm them down. It all has to do with our bpm, the average heartbeat of about 60 beats a minute. 

Show Notes

• Connect with Alexander on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexarje/
• Follow his still-standing on Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/tags/StillStanding 
• Standstill database: https://www.uio.no/ritmo/english/research/labs/fourms/database/oslo-standstill-database/ 
• Analysis of Research Concert with Stavanger Symphony Orchestra UniOslo_RITMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpiEVkys-Tk 
• Check out his book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544634/ 
• Mentioned by Christof: Noisy appliances. How loud is your house: https://www.quietmark.com/news/noisy-appliances-how-loud-is-your-house 

Show support

Please choose one or more of the 'three ways to support the show'!

1. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps! I appreciate your support; it helps the show!
2. Tell your friends about the podcast and musicthinking.com
3. Buy the book The Power of Music Thinking and/or the Jam Cards.

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

 

Sonification with Mike von der Nahmer

Mike von der Nahmer is a sound researcher, music therapist, scientific collaborator at the German Aerospace Center and composer. 

With over 30 stage works and 100+ compositions, he holds international recognition. He has collaborated with GRAMMY, Kenwood, Sony BMG, Rolls Royce and BMW, and his music has been featured in TV series like NOVA.

Mike shares with us some sonification projects in various domains, such as weather patterns, language, the brain, and sound design in autonomous vehicles. For example, he gives us insights into his work at the German Aerospace Center (the German NASA), where he works on the sonification of air traffic control.

Today, you will not only hear us talking but also experience different sound worlds. Because Mike brought some sound files to the conversation, we hear different sound layers from an air traffic game and examples of what he calls 'mood compositions' for Rolls Royce, BMW and Mini that are central in the sound strategy of these car brands. 

We end the conversation with a longer piece of about five minutes of sonification of curves that Mike co-created with two outstanding mathematicians in Luxemburg. 

So be prepared to hear about pioneering thoughts connecting sound, science, and human experience.

Show Notes

• Connect with Mike via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-michael-mike-von-der-nahmer-0780964/ 
• Sonification in Air Traffic Control, German Aerospace Center (DLR): https://www.dlr.de/fl/en/desktopdefault.aspx/tabid-1149/1737_read-74107/ 
• “ReShape”, Sound of Data - Science meets Music, sonification of curves: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9l_oTHr-_w  
• Mashrabiya ReShaped, painting curves to music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci0uISK2KAA 
• Mike von der Nahmer, Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@mikevondernahmer5051 
• Mentimeter questions on sonification: https://www.menti.com/altpihgk8vfp/0 
• Beethoven's 5th mapped in a Customer Journey software: https://www.smaply.com/blog/cx-professional-interview-christof-zuern

Show support

Please choose one or more of the 'three ways to support the show'!

1. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps! I appreciate your support; it helps the show!
2. Tell your friends about the podcast and musicthinking.com
3. Buy the book The Power of Music Thinking and/or the Jam Cards.

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

 

Musical Mind Hacking with Jeena Earthiva

Today we are in Mumbai. We talk with Jeena Earthiva. Jeena is a Transformational Coach, a Producer with a master’s in Computer Science, an ex-Bollywood singer, the Founder of Conscious Music Code, and a ‘Mind DJ’.

Jeena conveys her story of a successful Bollywood singer who lost her voice at the top of her singing career and how she found and developed the ‘Conscious Music Code’ that helped her get back on track and start a new career as ‘Mind DJ’.

We talk about the broad field of music between India and the West, and analogies between music and business. And the Koan of her mentor Dr Daisaku Ikeda, which became her life motto: “Transforming the life state of humankind”. And, ta-daa, – this is a first – Jeena is singing live in this episode a Bengali folk song mixed with a Persian poem.

And be also prepared for a 6-minute musical mind hack exercise at the end of the recording that Jeena is performing for us. So, lean back and enjoy; if you are listening in from your car, we suggest you take a break or do the exercise at another moment.

Show Notes

• Connect with jeena via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeenaearthiva/ 
• Website: https://jeenaearthiva.com/
• All other links and Social Media in one place: https://linktr.ee/jeenaearthiva 

Show support

Please choose one or more of the ‘three ways to support the show’!

1. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps! I appreciate your support; it helps the show!
2. Tell your friends about the podcast and musicthinking.com
3. Buy the book The Power of Music Thinking and/or the Jam Cards.

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Sound Strategies and how things go together with Michael Spencer

• Why can elements from music be applied for the benefit of communities or companies?
• How do you effectively use music and music thinking as a tool? 
• What does Beethoven's 9th and Japanese woodwork have in common?

We are in the in-between space, between music and business, education and performance, listening and understanding, and London and Tokyo. 

So, today we talk with Michael Spencer. Michael is the founder of Sound Strategies Ltd, TEDx speaker, Visiting Professor at Ueno Gakuen University (Tokyo), and the Communication Director of the Japan Philharmonic Orchestra.

He was Head of education at the Royal Opera House in London and, as a member of the London Symphony Orchestra, worked with Leonard Bernstein, Deep Purple and on the Star Wars soundtracks with composer John Williams.

Michael gives us a deep dive into why music functions and shares the elements and learnings he used, for example, in the townships in South Africa and his work with companies like Unilever, BASF, IHG (Intercontinental Hotels Group), Daikin, and Fujitsu.

So, we talk about making better connections and how musical systems, timing, and structure help us to understand how things go together. And that music comes from the fact that it is some co-created system for creating relationships.

There is a lot to learn today - not only about music, but also about business and society - so let’s get into it.

Show Notes

1. Sound Business Tokyo: 
   https://www.soundstrategiestokyo.com/ 
2. Sound Business London:
   https://www.sound-strategies.co.uk/about
3. Japanese woodwork: 
   https://japanobjects.com/features/japanese-joinery 
4. Beethoven 9th Symphony - with 10000 Japanese Choir
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wzXZRd087I 
5. Michael Spencer at TEDxWWF:
   https://vimeo.com/61710533?share=copy

Please consider the 3 ways to support the show!

1. Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps! I appreciate your support; it helps the show!
2. Tell your friends about the podcast and musicthinking.com 
3. Buy the book The Power of Music Thinking and/or the Jam Cards.

 

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Leading an Orchestra of Leaders with Harvey Seifter - Part 1 - Music Thinking

This episode is about art, innovation and leadership. 

What is the relationship between art-based learning, innovation and co-creation? How do you lead an ensemble of leaders? And why do people often use the metaphor of a conductor when discussing leadership? Or, is a conductor actually just a middle manager?

So, today we are in New York and talking with Harvey Seifter. Harvey is the founder of The Art of Science Learning, a US National Science Foundation-funded initiative that uses the arts to spark innovation in science, technology, engineering and education.
And Harvey is also a classically trained musician and formerly served as Executive Director of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. The only orchestra in the world that rehearses and performs without a conductor. 

Harvey shares with us insights on giving directions as a ‘decision maker of last resort’ - as he calls it -   stimulating co-creation and what this means for the innovative power of the organisation. 

Well, you can say we have learnings here for any organisation.

By the way: we recorded this episode via Zoom when Harvey returned just a few days from his Ted talk in Madrid; before the talk, he lost his voice and finally did the TED talk without repetition. 

To spare his voice and energy, we stopped the recording at a certain point and agreed to have a second conversation in the very near future.

So listen to Part One with Harvey Seifter and how you lead an orchestra of leaders.

Show Notes

• Connect with Harvey via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hseifter/ 
• Orpheus Chamber Orchestra: https://open.spotify.com/artist/35pZsti1RSA5Zv98jAm8kX?si=FIjGn4yeTPKzZvD46PTdVA
• Art of Science Learning: https://www.artofsciencelearning.org/

Like this show?

Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps!
I appreciate your support; it helps the show!

There is more about Music Thinking: a book, a blog and many more podcast episodes.

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Support us

Tell your friends about musicthinking.com and consider buying the book and/or the Jam Cards.

 

Listening to the Field - Special Episode

This is a special episode about listening in the field and some activities I did last month. 

Hear more about a short field recording in the middle of the most dangerous roundabout in the Netherlands, about the visit to my birth town in the South of Germany, where I have recorded the Turmbläser, which are performing a sonic ritual since 400 years high above the belfry on all four balconies every Sunday. 

And I also share some news, development, and info about the Listening Day at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.

 

Special thanks to the Turmbläser for allowing us to listen high above the belfry and Cordula and Onkl Hanzl for all the info.

 

Show notes 

• Info about Möckmühl / Germany: https://www.moeckmuehl.de/startseite
• Kaiser Karel Plein, Nijmegen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uguJjfFFuo
• Conducting Design with Raf De Keninck / Design Academy Eindhoven: https://musicthinking.com/conducting-design-with-raf-de-keninck/ 

Like this show?

Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps!
I appreciate your support; it helps the show!

There is more about Music Thinking: a book, a blog and many more podcast episodes.

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Support us

Tell your friends about musicthinking.com and consider buying the The Power of Music Thinking or the Jam Cards.

 

Sound pictures with Charles Brooks

Today we touch base on the intersection between music and photography, and that in many different ways. 

My guest today is Charles Brooks, an exceptionable photographer and  musician, that for the last 20 years has been New Zealand’s most successful orchestral cellist. Charles held principal positions in Australia, China, Chile and Brazil, with concerts worldwide. 

He also gives us insights in the organisation and culture of professional symphony orchestras and shares personal stories about the life of an orchestra musician that played with Lang Lang and for celebrities like Tony Blair and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

While his music career took him around the globe at an early age, photography was always there. Charles refined his photographic craft of making musician portraits, astrophotography and landscapes until National Geographic took notice in 2011. 

In the pandemic, he prototyped and developed a spectacular new way of photographing the inside of a variety of musical instruments, literally opening up a new space and visual world that give insights in the craft of the most formidable luthiers and instrument makers. 

And these got picked up worldwide by magazines like The Telegraph, classic fm, Domus, France Musique, Daily Mail, and just recently Die Zeit in Germany. 

Please find a selection of the photographs on the episode page of the music thinking website:
https://musicthinking.com/sound-pictures-with-charles-brooks-photography

Now, sit back, relax and be prepared for a long episode on all things creative.

You will also have a chance to navigate through the different chapters, give it a try and let us know how this works.

Show notes 

• Connect with Charles via LinkedIn:
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-brooks-a9773a30/
• Charles Brooks Photography:
  https://www.charlesbrooks.info/ 
• The software Charles is using for focal compression / focus stacking:
  https://www.heliconsoft.com/heliconsoft-products/helicon-focus/
• Lloyd Webber Theme and Variations:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1lpCszsOMU 
• Disturbed's version of The Sound of Silence:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg 
• Highlights from Thais, the last opera Charles performed with the Sao Paulo Symphony: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QlGfCzPZN0 
• First realisation of a Zaha Hadid Architecture: Fire Station
  https://www.vitra.com/en-ca/about-vitra/campus/architecture/architecture-fire-station

Like this show?

Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps!
I appreciate your support; it helps the show!

There is more about Music Thinking: a book, a blog and many more podcast episodes

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Do you like books?  Check out the new book: The Power of Music Thinking

 

How Music Speaks with Ben Pelzer

Today we are in Singapore; we talk with Benjamin Pelzer, Assistant Professor of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University. 

Ben is trained in Music Theory and Psychology. He works as an assistant professor and scientist with expertise in the methods of cognitive neuroscience, machine learning, computational social science, and empirical psychology.

And Ben is teaching a one-of-its-kind course in the world of research on music as a sort of socio-cultural phenomenon and is using techniques from the field of communication and applying them to the field of music.

Our Conversation

We talk about how music and sounds can drive a particular scene of a film in two opposite ways, using a positive or negative valence soundtrack. And that music is almost uniquely powerful in its deeply emotional impact and ability to evoke complex or more profound, lasting emotions.

Ben shares with us that there are some universal features of music, like low tones are connected with sinister or aggressive emotions that are part of the evolution when big animals were a severe threat. 

A little survey

And he conveys insights from a little survey he did with the multicultural students of his music course for The Power of Music Thinking podcast about how they listen to music in the context of Asia. 

In his music course, Ben also reflects with his students questions like If you were alive 1000 years ago, what role would music have played in your life? And the realisation that for people outside of wealth and royalty, it would be folk instruments or just the human voice. 

Ben shares with us some strategies of music; for example, if you use happy lyrics with happy music, you get less happiness than if you have happy lyrics with neutral music. 

 

Good to know

For some themes we talk about, I have put links in the show notes, and if you have a look at them, please consider subscribing, make a comment and give us a rating. This will help a lot to get the show going.

We had some connection issues, so please excuse the little dropouts near the end.

 

Show notes 

• Connect with Ben Pelzer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benjamin-pelzer/
• More about Olivier Messiaen and his Turangalîla-Symphonie : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9r4eeMZBInY
• And the Ondes Martenot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp4mBmsV6Xk later also used extensively by Radiohead.
• Mentioned episode: Glenn McDonald (Spotify) and his Every noise at once website
• Mentioned episode: Steve Keller (audio alchemist) and his research on Sonic Discrimination

Like this show?

Subscribe to the podcast. Leave us a review — even one sentence helps!
I appreciate your support; it helps the show!

 

There is more about Music Thinking: a book, a blog and many more podcast episodes

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Do you like books?  Check out the new book: The Power of Music Thinking

 

 

World-building and empathic storytelling with Eelko Lommers

What are the links between daily work for a multinational company, an omnichannel fantasy story and playing in a band?

My guest today is Eelko Lommers, Global Director Product Experience Design at IKEA, creator, designer, writer of a (not yet published) novel and a musician in a post-hardcore band.

We talk about empathy with clients, personality in a brand context and global operations that need adaptations in different markets. And that a lot of a country's culture is directly related to its original music. 

We discuss the endless loop of listening, tuning, playing and performing, how stories change while we tell them to the world, and how the audience plays an active role.

Eelko shares with us the strategy of promoting his band with a limited budget and how this relates to a global design strategy because every data has a context of delivery for the right moment and audience under the right circumstances.

And he conveys with us some details about the novel he just finished writing, a fantasy story about magical places in Germany and mythological creatures that live in a parallel world. As an extension of the book, he plans a whole ecosystem of multichannel media like locative art, TikTok videos and a 3D omni verse. Every chapter has an emotion, including colour and a song that connects with the essence of the chapter.  

He explains this world-building and how he uses generative AI to build his characters to brief and guide an illustrator to make the final design.  

So technology, content, storytelling and design are not separate activities but an integral part of the total product experience and customer satisfaction. True satisfaction and customer delight happen when all of it comes together to create experiences that solve people's needs in a way worthy of praise, remembrance and advocacy.

 

Show notes 

• Connect with Eelko via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eelkolommers/ 
• Phoenix’ Ashes on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7bPfZO3cREmap4Z4Mpnb39?si=LqNvRT_mRYmU6pCItmtwSA 
• The String Theory article mentioned in the talk:
  https://www.theinteractivist.com/home/2022/9/21/the-two-strings-theory
• Idoru by William Gibson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idoru
• Baroque Cycle by Neal Stephenson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baroque_Cycle 

 

More about Music Thinking: a book, a blog and many more podcast episodes

The Power of Music Thinking is brought to you by CREATIVE COMPANION specialised in facilitating leaders, teams and organisations in customer experience, change and innovation.

Do you like books?  Check out the new book: The Power of Music Thinking

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