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Mp3s: Invisible Opera Company of Tibet; Musicians' brains work differently

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October 4, 2008 10:29 am
By Sheila Lennon

DAiocotFrs.jpgDaevid Allen's Invisible Opera Company of Tibet. Live at Alzano Lombardo, Italy, November 2, 1988. A soundboard recording.

Irresistibly catchy band name.

"The music is a mix of Gong tunes and chants in both acoustic and electronic settings. While not the Age of Aquarius, it predates all the Tibetan chant music by a decade or two. Hopefully, this music will keep you peaceful and full of grace come Monday morning when we all go back to the ugly real world."


Related: Musicians use both sides of their brains more frequently than average people

Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person.

...One possible explanation the researchers offer for the musicians' elevated use of both brain hemispheres is that many musicians must be able to use both hands independently to play their instruments.

"Musicians may be particularly good at efficiently accessing and integrating competing information from both hemispheres," Folley said. "Instrumental musicians often integrate different melodic lines with both hands into a single musical piece, and they have to be very good at simultaneously reading the musical symbols, which are like left-hemisphere-based language, and integrating the written music with their own interpretation, which has been linked to the right hemisphere."


I can either play the right piano notes or play with feeling, but I can't do both. I partially blame my early piano teacher, a martinet with a metronome. I'm working up to switching to a simpler instrument, but I may just be all writer: Writing feels like blowing a horn and the thoughts come out fully formed. The divergent thinking is something I glimpse going on in the background.

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