What colour is your music?

Are you one of those few people who see music in colors?

When I was a kid, I started piano at four and sang in choirs from eight. I loved singing and playing. There is a huge thrill to be part of a team, a choir, to be part of the vibration of sound, create perfect harmony and to perform. In the choir I always knew when we went sharp or flat. It was just an instinct. I thought everyone knew it. It is hard to describe. I felt or saw music in my head and if it went sharp I felt like the picture went lighter in colur and if we went flat it changed its shade to grey or dark. The more I sang and played, the more I could recognize each note of the piano and started to see colors. Any song I learnt, I was able to recall any time and always starting it on the right pitch. I remember rare incidents when during the concert something went wrong in the choir and we fell apart in a challenging piece. I just waited for the suitable place where the music had some structural cut or a new entry. I made sure that I came in first on the right pitch, leading the choir back where we all felt familiar, saving the performance. If all went well, nobody in the audience noticed it but everyone knew it in the choir and excitedly talked about it as we left the stage. It was a huge risk to take but there was no other solution. It was just a natural instinct. It was not planned, it just happened. Funnily, our conductor knew that someone will save the performance. He just did not know when and how! The same happened to me a few times as a conductor. It is a less ideal situation because when singing comes from the conductor, it is more noticeable, especially if not a choir but an orchestra is falling apart!!! These are behind the scene secrets but everyone remembers them for the rest of their lives. I believe, in medical or scientific terms, I have no absolute pitch nor synaesthesia. I just had good skills and I am a result of a long term, fantastic training and decades of disciplined work.

Seeing Music

What colour and shape is your favourite song? For some people with synaesthesia, it's a pretty straightforward question. Due to connections between different perceptual areas of their brain - like the part of the brain that perceives colour being linked with the area that detects a tone - synaesthetes tend to have two or more of their senses that are connected. With one type of synaesthesia, those affected will see colours and shapes when they listen to music, and may associate a specific colour with each letter and day of the week. Synesthesia runs strongly in families, but the precise mode of inheritance has yet to be ascertained. As many as 1 percent of people have the most recognizable form of synesthesia, studies say. Acclaimed Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote "Lolita," famously had the disorder, as did physicist Richard Feynman and Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt.

Is D Yellow for you?

"You can't get a more yellow key than D, he (Aaaron McMillan) told me as he played the familiar notes of Rachmaninov's Prelude in D. Most ears could not 'hear' any yellow, but for Aaron, every piece of music conjured a distinct band of the color spectrum."

"Aaron McMillan pianist was certain that he did not have the neurological condition synesthesia, which blurs the senses, causing people to taste names or smell colors or see sounds; he simply associated each musical key and its mood with a color. C major was pure white and the other keys fanned out in a rainbow from red A up to violet G. If he were asked to compose while sitting in a green field, for example he knew he would have to write in grassy E flat or the more stridently green E. This was his personal interpretation but he was satisfied to learn that the Russian composer Alexander Scriabin had also linked each key with a color. Aaron was uncomprehending when another composer told him he pictured G as the green key. G could only be violet. "Life In His Hands The true story of a Neurosurgeon and a Pianist by Susan Wyndham

How 8 glasses a day keeps the fat away

HOW 8 GLASSES A DAY KEEPS THE FAT AWAY

Incredible as it may seem, water is quite possibly the single most important catalyst in losing weight and keeping it off. Although most of us take it for granted, water may be the only true “magical potion” for permanent weight loss.

Water suppresses the appetite and helps the body metabolise stored fat. Studies have shown that a decrease in water intake will cause fat deposits to increase while an increase in water intake can actually cause fat deposits to reduce.

GOT TO FILL THOSE KIDNEYS

Here’s why. The kidneys cannot function properly without enough water. When they do not work to capacity, some of the load is dumped into the liver. One of the liver’s primary functions is to metabolise stored fat into usable energy for the body. But if the liver has to do some of the kidney’s work, it cannot work at full throttle. As a result, it metabolises less fat; more fat remains stored in the body and weight loss stops.

SHED WATER WITH WATER

Drinking more water is the best treatment for fluid retention. When the body gets less water, it perceives this as a threat to survival and begins to hold on to every drop. Water is stored in extra cellular spaces (outside the cells). This shows up as swollen feet, hands, and legs. Diuretics offer a temporary solution at best. They force out stored water along with some essential nutrients. Thus, the condition quickly returns. The best way to overcome the problem of water retention is to give your body what it needs-plenty of water. Only then will stored water be released.

If you have a water retention problem, excess salt may be the blame. Your body will tolerate sodium only in certain concentrations. The more salt you eat, the more water your system retains to dilute it. To rid the body of unneeded salt-just drink more water. As it is forced through the kidneys it takes away the excess sodium. The overweight person needs more water that the thin one as larger people have larger metabolic loads. Since we know that water is the key to fat metabolism, it follows that the overweight person needs more water.

Water helps to maintain proper muscle tone by giving muscles their natural ability to contract and by preventing dehydration it also helps prevent the sagging skin that usually follows weight loss. Shrinking cells are buoyed by water that pumps the skin and leaves it clear, healthy and resilient.

Water helps rid the body of wastes. During weight loss, the body has a lot more waste to get rid of – all that metabolised fat must be shed. Again, adequate water helps flush out the waste.

WATER RELIEVES CONSTIPATION

Water can help relieve constipation. When the body gets little water, it siphons what it needs from internal sources. The colon is one primary source. Result!! Constipation. But when a person drinks enough water, normal bowel function returns.

So far we have discovered some remarkable truths about water and about weight loss.

· The body will not function properly without enough water and cannot metabolise stored fat efficiently.

· Retained water shows up as excess weight.

· To get rid of excess water you must drink more water.

· Drinking more water is essential to weight loss

HOW MUCH WATER IS ENOUGH

On the average a person should drink 8 glasses every day. However, an overweight person needs one additional glass for every 12kgs (25lbs) of excess weight. The amount that you drink should be increased if you exercise or if the weather is hot. Water should preferably be cold - it is absorbed more quickly into the system than warm water. Some evidence suggests that drinking cold water can actually burn calories. To utilise water most efficiently try and drink a full glass of water every hour.

When the body gets the water it needs to function optimally, its fluids are perfectly balanced. When this happens you have reached the breakthrough point. What does this mean??? The endocrine gland function improves. Fluid retention is alleviated, as stored water is lost. More fat is used as fuel because the liver is free to metabolise stored fat. Natural thirst returns. There is a loss of hunger almost overnight. If you stop drinking enough water your body fluids will be thrown out of balance again and you may experience fluid retention, unexplained weight gain and loss of thirst. To remedy this situation you have to go back and force another breakthrough.

Taken from the Snowbird Diet by Donald S. Robertson, MD MSc and Carol Robertson

The Fibonacci Sequence in Music - is music mathematical?

The Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 . . .) occurs throughout the worlds of nature, art, music, and mathematics!

Each term in the series is produced by adding together the two previous terms, so that 1 + 1=2, 1 + 2=3, 2 + 3=5, and so on. The sequence takes its name from a famous thirteenth-century European mathematician, Leonard of Pisa (?1170-1250), also called Fibonacci. Fibonacci was one of the first Europeans to use Arabic numbers, whose use he explained in his 1202 Liber abaci.

Arthur Benjamin: The magic of Fibonacci numbers Ted Talks

The basic structures of certain instruments display the use of Fibonacci numbers and the Golden section. The most widely used instrument in music, the piano, displays the use of Fibonacci numbers. For instance, there are 13 notes that separate each octave of 8 notes in a scale. The foundation of a scale is based around the 3rd and the 5th tones. Both pitches are whole tones, which are 2 steps from the 1st note of the scale, also called the root.

The keys of a piano also portray the Fibonacci numbers. Within the scale consisting of 13 keys, 8 of them are white, 5 are black, which are split into groups of 3 and 2. Look familiar? Well, it should, it's Fibonacci! The keys of a piano also portray the Fibonacci numbers. Within the scale consisting of 13 keys, 8 of them are white, 5 are black, which are split into groups of 3 and 2. Look familiar? Well, it should, it's Fibonacci!

Not only the piano, but also the violin is constructed through the use to the golden section. 

The proportions of the violin conform to the ratios of the golden section or the Fibonacci sequence.

The Fibonacci sequence can also display the preference of the human ear to music. The following is some Fibonacci music. It consists of the first eight Fibonacci numbers. For each new number that is performed, the note length is decreased rotationally by 1/2 or 1/3. After four steps of the sequence are completed the tune starts over at the root, one octave up, while the other one continues, so there is an overlapping effect.

Fibonacci numbers occur many times in the natural world. Plants tend to have a number of leaves that is a Fibonacci number, and flowers have a Fibonacci number of petals. Seeds in a flower head are often arranged in spiral patterns that are related to Fibonacci numbers (for example, the number of spirals that curve to the left and the number of spirals that curve to the right will be adjacent numbers in the Fibonacci sequence). Spiral shells also exhibit patterns related to the Fibonacci sequence.

Fibonacci numbers are also important in art and music. The ratio between successive Fibonacci numbers approximates an important constant called "the golden mean" or sometimes phi,which is approximately 1.61803. The higher you go in the Fibonacci sequence, the more closely the ratio between two successive numbers in the sequence approximates phi. (By the way phi2=phi + 1!)

A rectangle whose sides are in the proportion 1 : 1.61803 is supposed to be the most aesthetically perfect rectangle (the "golden rectangle"). The Parthenon in Athens has such a rectangle as its face, and phi is said to have figured in the construction of the Great Pyramids. The "golden section," in which a line is divided into segments of lengths in the ratio 1 : .61803 is supposed to be an aesthetically ideal way to divide a line.

Numerous artists have used the golden section in their works, as well as composers, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Satie and the Hungarian Bela Bartok.

Fibonacci Fingers?

Look at your own hand:
You have ...
2 hands each of which has ...
5 fingers, each of which has ...
3 parts separated by ...
2 knuckles

Is this just a coincidence or not?

Golden Ratio in Human Body video

However, if you measure the lengths of the bones in your finger (best seen by slightly bending the finger) does it look as if the ratio of the longest bone in a finger to the middle bone is Phi?

What about the ratio of the middle bone to the shortest bone (at the end of the finger) - Phi again?

Can you find any ratios in the lengths of the fingers that looks like Phi? ---or does it look as if it could be any other similar ratio also?

Why not measure your friends' hands and gather some statistics?

For some amazing pictures of examples of the Fibonacci series in nature please watch this video:

1.618 Phi, The Golden Ratio, God Creator of Heaven and Earth

The healing power of sound - join a choir or play in an orchestra!

Singing is as old as human cultures. Why do we enjoy singing, playing an instrument, being member of a choir or an orchestra or listening to music so much? Why opera is the most complex and most powerful art form? It is said that music can get to places in our body where nothing else can.

Sound Healing is based on the scientific principle that all matter vibrates to a precise frequency. In your body, every cell, tissue, organ, and energy center vibrates at its own frequency. Like instruments in an orchestra, when one organ in your body is out of tune, it affects your whole body. Powerful resonant sound vibrations can restore an innate frequency and even rearrange molecular structure. As a result, it's quite possible for seemingly miraculous things to occur-vertebrae align, muscles relax, chronic pains disappear, energy centers are balanced, traumas and blockages are released.

For instance, Tibetan Buddhists have used singing bowls for centuries to fine-tune the body’s energy fields, or chakras. The effect is a balanced alignment between the emotional mind and the physical body.

Sound bypasses the mind and intellect, so it can make progress in healing regardless of the client's state of mind.

The power of sound has helped patients dealing with a variety of physical and emotional illnesses. No wonder sound is used in hospitals and doctors offices around the world. London's Royal Marsden hospital calls it knifeless surgery, and uses it on liver cancer and organ tumors.

Sound Healing combines safely with any medication or protocol and is safe for everyone, including young children and the elderly.

To read more visit: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sound-healing.htm

Who is saving troubled youths through music?

Called El Sistema by its members, the programme is celebrating 30 years of making classical musicians out of half-a-million young Venezuelans, and it has transformed the lives of many underprivileged and at-risk youths in the process.

"I wish players in the US were here to hear the conviction with which you play," Gwyn Richards, dean of Indiana University's School of Music, told a Caracas youth orchestra after it played Dmitri Shostakovich's Festive Overture in honour of his visit.

"No-one is just walking through it, watching the clock," he said later. "When they play, they really mean it."

Visitors say the children play with unusual conviction

The young musicians' excitement stems from the programme's social mission, which its founder Jose Antonio Abreu describes as helping "the fight of a poor and abandoned child against everything that opposes his full realisation as a human being".

One of Mr Abreu's musicians is Lennar Acosta, 23, who six years ago was already making his ninth visit to a Caracas correctional facility after a history of heavy drug use and armed robbery.

While the facility denied Mr Acosta's request to return to school, the youth orchestra took him on as a student and soon gave him a scholarship.

He now earns his living at a music institute, has played a dozen times in the nation's famed Teresa Carreno music hall, and is studying to perform Mozart's clarinet concerto.

"One of the biggest emotions I've felt was when they gave me a clarinet," Mr Acosta said, sitting with his instrument in hand in a Caracas music conservatory.

"El Sistema ended up straightening me out. It is my family, like my home."

To read more visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4457278.stm

Healing power of music

"A study conducted at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital between 1999 and 2002 found the level of the stress hormone cortisol was forty-eight per cent lower in patents who had been exposed to soothing visual art or live music than in those who had not experienced either. Anxiety was thirty-two per cent lower and depression thirty-one per cent lower in patients after listening to music. A German doctor, Ralph Spintge, has in recent years assembled similar data on one hundred and fifty thousand surgical and pain patients. He found that if he played music during certain clinical procedures he could reduce the patents' subsequent drug dosages by half because the biochemistry of their blood was altered. " Life In His Hands, The true story of a Neurosurgeon and a Pianist by Susan Wyndham

Twelve Benefits of Music Education

1. Early musical training helps develop brain areas involved in language and reasoning. It is thought that brain development continues for many years after birth. Recent studies have clearly indicated that musical training physically develops the part of the left side of the brain known to be involved with processing language, and can actually wire the brain's circuits in specific ways. Linking familiar songs to new information can also help imprint information on young minds.

2. There is also a causal link between music and spatial intelligence (the ability to perceive the world accurately and to form mental pictures of things). This kind of intelligence, by which one can visualize various elements that should go together, is critical to the sort of thinking necessary for everything from solving advanced mathematics problems to being able to pack a book-bag with everything that will be needed for the day.

3. Students of the arts learn to think creatively and to solve problems by imagining various solutions, rejecting outdated rules and assumptions. Questions about the arts do not have only one right answer.

4. Recent studies show that students who study the arts are more successful on standardized tests such as the SAT. They also achieve higher grades in high school.

5. A study of the arts provides children with an internal glimpse of other cultures and teaches them to be empathetic towards the people of these cultures. This development of compassion and empathy, as opposed to development of greed and a "me first" attitude, provides a bridge across cultural chasms that leads to respect of other races at an early age.

6. Students of music learn craftsmanship as they study how details are put together painstakingly and what constitutes good, as opposed to mediocre, work. These standards, when applied to a student's own work, demand a new level of excellence and require students to stretch their inner resources.

7. In music, a mistake is a mistake; the instrument is in tune or not, the notes are well played or not, the entrance is made or not. It is only by much hard work that a successful performance is possible. Through music study, students learn the value of sustained effort to achieve excellence and the concrete rewards of hard work.

8. Music study enhances teamwork skills and discipline. In order for an orchestra to sound good, all players must work together harmoniously towards a single goal, the performance, and must commit to learning music, attending rehearsals, and practicing.

9. Music provides children with a means of self-expression. Now that there is relative security in the basics of existence, the challenge is to make life meaningful and to reach for a higher stage of development. Everyone needs to be in touch at some time in his life with his core, with what he is and what he feels. Self-esteem is a by-product of this self-expression.

10. Music study develops skills that are necessary in the workplace. It focuses on "doing," as opposed to observing, and teaches students how to perform, literally, anywhere in the world. Employers are looking for multi-dimensional workers with the sort of flexible and supple intellects that music education helps to create as described above. In the music classroom, students can also learn to better communicate and cooperate with one another.

11. Music performance teaches young people to conquer fear and to take risks. A little anxiety is a good thing, and something that will occur often in life. Dealing with it early and often makes it less of a problem later. Risk-taking is essential if a child is to fully develop his or her potential.

12. An arts education exposes children to the incomparable.

Source: http://childrensmusicworkshop.com/advocacy/12benefits.html

 

Breakfast - the most important meal of the day

After going 10 - 12 hours overnight without food, energy reserves are low and your body and brain need fuel. What you choose to eat at breakfast can affect your mood, physical and mental performance, weight and your general and long-term health. Most nutritionists consider breakfast to be the most important meal of the day. Researchers in Nottingham investigated the effects of skipping breakfast on energy metabolism and found that skipping breakfast led to higher cholesterol levels and lower insulin sensitivity both risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Breakfast can help weight control If you miss breakfast you are much more likely to get hungry mid morning and end up grabbing a snack that is high in calories and fat but low in nutrients and fibre. Studies show that children who regularly eat a cereal-based breakfast are healthier and less likely to be overweight. In fact teenagers who ate breakfast cereals more than five times a week weighed less, had a smaller waist size and lower blood sugar levels than those who rarely ate cereal. Research among adults shows that people who eat breakfast are more likely to be within the ideal weight range than people who skip breakfast. Breakfast can boost brain power Several studies have shown that children who skip breakfast in the morning perform less well in problem solving tasks. Verbal fluency, creativity and the ability to recall newly acquired facts are similarly affected. More than 1,300 children took part in an online study conducted by leading cognitive research unit, Cognitive Drug Research Ltd, as part of Farmhouse Breakfast Week 2004. The results clearly showed that children who eat breakfast have superior cognitive function and therefore pay more attention and respond more quickly to given tasks. Teachers in Scotland reported that concentration in class improved as a result of introducing breakfast clubs while the children said that it helped them enjoy school more. But it is not just children that perform less well if they miss breakfast, other studies show that adults who ate breakfast tended to work faster, made fewer mistakes in logic tests and had better memory recall compared with breakfast skippers. A healthy, balanced breakfast provides vital nutrients Breakfast provides an important boost to our intake of vitamins, minerals and fibre, and studies show it can be difficult to make up on these nutrients if you miss the opportunity at breakfast. People who eat breakfast are more likely to meet the recommended intake for iron, calcium and B group vitamins than those who skip breakfast. Breakfast helps keep us happy and healthy A study carried out at the University of Cardiff suggests that breakfast eaters are less likely to suffer from colds and 'flu. Studies carried out at the University of Bristol examined the breakfast habits of 126 volunteers between the ages of 20 and 79 and assessed their mental health. The results revealed that, even taking into account that fact that breakfast eaters tended to have healthier lifestyles, those who ate breakfast everyday were less depressed, less emotionally distressed and had lower perceived levels of stress compared with those who skipped the first meal of the day.
To have the ultimate fast, yummy, versatile and most nutritious breakfast to manage your weight and improve your health try our Herbalife Formula 1 Shake that comes in 4 different flavours, French Vanilla, Dutch Chocolate, Berry and Tropical. You will never want to start the day without a Herbalife Shake ever again! To read more and shop online please visit www.herbabodyshop.com

What is your chance of becoming a Millionaire?

I had a fabulous day today. I learnt at the business section of the Herbalife Success Training Seminar that an ordinary person has 1 in a million chance of becoming a Millionaire, maybe by winning on the Lotto or something like that. 

That was my chance despite studying all in my life to become a professional musician. I love my profession. I have worked hard. I became successful in my profession in the last 25 years. Although I always earned well and had a nice lifestyle, I definitely did not become rich the way I dreamt about it as a child. Instead, I worked endless hours because I loved what I was doing. I became more and more tired, exhausted. Not from music but all the other duties I did not enjoy doing. Became quite disillusioned by the education system, especially the tertiary music system in Australia. When I thought of doing the same for another 25 years I realized that I need to start looking. Twice in my life I decided to get out and run my own business. It was great. I had an even better lifestyle and made my business a success. Unfortunately, I was conditioned in a certain way. Being associated with a well-known educational institute and having a salary still felt safer and more prestigious than working for myself. So when I was offered a great position, both times I threw my business away. Big mistake. However, I had to learn that through my own experiences! An opportunity always appears when you are looking. This is how Herbalife came into my life. The products are helping me back on the path of good health, increase my energy and seem to slow down the aging process. I had no idea about nutrition before. The business opportunity provided a chance for unlimited personal growth and an income without ceiling. What was even better, I was mentored and trained in a step by step system and I was able to get started very part-time, with totally flexible hours. I remember how I felt when I made $1564 sale in my first ten days in the business. On top of my full-time salary! It was all lifestyle money! In my fourth month in the business I got a cheque of $779 from Herbalife. At first I thought it was $77.90 and screaming from happiness I called my mentor in Brisbane. It was my first royalty cheque for mentoring someone in the business. My mentor told me that it was $779 royalty cheque. I was speechless. It was on top of my monthly retail profit. My yearly very part-time income was half of my full-time salary for which I studied all in my life and worked for 25 years. That made me think very seriously where I should put my time. By going to the training, I knew that there is much more achievable for anyone who has the desire of helping people and building a business. I made a decision. I could never fully quit music because it is a lifestyle, just like Herbalife. Anyhow, my priorities are very different now. I happily spend the next few years of my life working hard to become financially independent that after I never need to worry about my finances and can life my life in total freedom doing the things I love doing!

By joining Herbalife, the largest nutrition company in the world, a Herbalife Distributor increases her/his chance of becoming a Millionaire to 1 in a 13,000. By getting ahead in the business and becoming a Work Team member my chances have increased to 1 in 500!!! How cool is that!

However, I am not stopping half way, I am going to the top. A President's Team member, who earns $40,000-50,000 per months in our business has a 1 in 6 chance of becoming a Millionaire. I will be one of them. 

What is your chance of becoming a Millionaire, live your life in freedom and doing great things with all that money and make a difference in the world? 

Why not give a chance to yourself at least and have a look? www.globalwork.biz

The Brains of Professional Musicians

"The brains of professional musicians have recently been found to have more grey matter than amateur and non-musicians in the three areas dealing with motor skills, auditory stimulation, and visual and spatial data. "

"it appears that the younger a child takes up music, the greater the development in the auditory cortex." 

"Anatomists today would be hard put to identify the brain of a visual artist, a writer, or a mathematician - but they could recognise the brain of a professional musician without a moment's hesitation."

I just wanted to share a few fascinating thoughts from the book I am reading. 

Life In His Hands, The true story of a Neurosurgeon (Dr Charlie Teo) and a Pianist (Aaaron McMillan) from pages 19-20. 

It is never too late to start learning music!

In Memory of Michael Jackson

I had a little time to reflect on the strange coincidence of starting my blog on the day of the death of Michael Jackson. Although I am a classical musician, in my opinion he was a genius as an artist.  I am watching the program on him and his music on Channel 9. It brings back a lot of fond memories. My little brother, Palko was born in 1975. I remember, we were sitting in the living room glued to the TV watching Michael Jackson's video clips when my brother was just a few years old. He absolutely adored Jackson and as a consequence, so did I. Jackson turned video music into an art form. Looking at the old clips, I just realize how good looking he was before he went into serious plastic surgery. Incredible music, dance, image, pictures. He definitely revolutionized pop music. On his transformation: he was an artist. He was creating an image, an ever changing image that finally went too far.

I tried to buy his music yesterday. It was all sold out everywhere I looked. I need to have his albums. http://www.michaeljackson.com/

Day 1

Adventures of a Hungarian conductor in Australia