The Power of Music Thinking

Better English with Jam Cards and Anita Prestidge

How cool is this? You develop a multisensory product to let people experience your ideas about music thinking and then someone comes along and uses your product for something completely different.

So today, we speak with Anita Prestidge, an English trainer with experience in theatre, directing, and education. When Anita picked up the cards, she had another idea of what to do with these cards and developed her own unique method. So, if you want to speak better English while using the Jam Cards, connect with Anita online.

Show Notes

• Connect with Anita on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anita-prestidge/ 
• A Video Introduction by Anita Prestidge for potential students: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHly19lnmCo 
• Get the Jam Cards: https://musicthinking.com/jam-cards/ 
• Behind the Cards stories: https://musicthinking.com/?s=behind+the+cards

 

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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 the Jam Cards at a 20% discount using musicthinking20 at the check-out of the BIS Publishers website only.

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.

 

Science and Music dialogue with Carolin Seiferth

Today, we are in Sweden, and we speak with Carolin Seiferth - a PhD student at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, where she does research on the island of Öland.

Carolin combines scientific research with music to raise awareness about sustainability issues around the Baltic Sea. In this way, she inspires the audience to take action to address challenges related to a changing climate.  Carolin shares some insights with us about her research and the creative production that led to the musical piece “Dialogues” as part of the Baltic Sea Festival Science Lab.

We talked about her creative and dialogue-based approach with local actors in different workshops and how she transformed the results of her investigation into a poem that was a central part of the musical composition. 

We reflect on the different sound qualities of rainfall and her curiosity to explore other ways of combining art-based approaches with scientific research in the future to create opportunities for engaging with sustainability questions on a much deeper level.

Show Notes

• Connect with Carolin on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/carolin-seiferth-a64333170  
• Watch Carolin’s performance (Performance 1: Sense of place, Carolin’s part starts at minute 36):
  https://www.berwaldhallen.se/en/play/experience-research-on-sustainability-set-to-music/ 
• Read more about Carolin’s research:
  https://www.stockholmresilience.org/meet-our-team/staff/2022-07-22-seiferth.html 
• Curious about the Baltic Sea Festival Science Lab?
  https://www.berwaldhallen.se/en/the-baltic-sea-festival-science-lab/ 

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 the Jam Cards at a 20% discount using musicthinking20 at the check-out of the BIS Publishers website only.

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.

Rewind 2023 - The Power of Music Thinking - Podcast

Welcome to the Rewind 2023 of The Power of Music Thinking podcast, where I have conversations with extraordinary people from all over the world who are also musicians or use music in the broadest sense of the word to learn, teach, inspire and collaborate meaningfully. 

This year, we had 15 episodes, and virtually, we travelled from Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where all podcasts are recorded, to Berlin, Braunschweig, Zürich, London, Oslo, New York, West Virginia, Nashville, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Singapore, Tokyo, Mumbai and New Zealand.

What were the themes?
The overarching themes were leadership, co-creation, creativity, and how music can be used as an analogy to explain the world and work more meaningfully together.

We had some unique themes and zoomed into subjects like health, sound healing, city policy, political journalism, sonification of data, sonic branding, storytelling, AI, and photography.  

more on musicthinking.com

 

 

How Music Can Make Your City Better with Shain Shapiro

Today, we are in Nashville, and we speak with Shain Shapiro - a globally recognised thought leader at the convergence of music, culture and urban policy. 

Shain is the CEO of Sound Diplomacy - a global research and strategy consultancy, and he also leads the non-profit Center for Music Ecosystems, which commissions research to help solve local, national and international challenges using music as a tool.

Shain has authored reports on the role of music in cities, tourism, the nighttime economy, real estate and recovery, including the most extensive guide to music and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in partnership with the United Nations. 

We are talking about his brand-new book, This Must Be The Place: How Music Can Make Your City Better, which was published in September 2023. 

Note: Unfortunately, there was a very poor Wifi, so please excuse the quality.

Show Notes

• Connect with Shain on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shainhouse/
• Sound Diplomacy: www.sounddiplomacy.com 
• Music Cities Events: www.musiccitiesevents.com
• His book: This Must Be The Place: https://www.shainshapiro.com/book

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.

 

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.

Show support to the Podcast

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. 

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/

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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.