The ‘Stroop Effect’ as Applied to Trombonists [new study]

A new variant of the psychologists’ stock-in-trade ‘Stroop test’ has been discovered – applicable only to trombonists. Background: The ‘Stroop Effect’ (a cognitive interference where a delay in the reaction time of a task occurs due to a mismatch in stimuli) is named after John Ridley Stroop who wrote the first academic paper (in English*) about […]

Facial Pain and the Instruments of Finnish Orchestra Musicians

Aki Savolainen writes: “I found this one article my father was working on a year ago, which found out that musicians with sleep bruxism experience pain related to the severity of their symptoms (surprise), and the instrument they happen to be playing has no effect on the amount of pain experienced.” The study is: “Oro-facial […]

Science/Music Pairing: Dark Eyes

Here’s another in our series that combines published research papers with musical performances that suitably accompany them. “Dark eyes in female sand gobies indicate readiness to spawn,” Karin H. Olsson, Sandra Johansson, Eva-Lotta Blom, Kai Lindström, Ola Svensson, Helen Nilsson Sköld, and Charlotta Kvarnemo, PloS ONE , vol.12, no. 6 (2017): e0177714. “Dark Eyes,” performed […]

Hedgehogs at a Music Festival

While others study pictures at an exhibition, Wanja Rast, Leon M.F. Barthel, and Anne Berger study hedgehogs at a music festival. They wrote this report about it: “Music festival makes hedgehogs move: How individuals cope behaviorally in response to human-induced stressors,” Wanja Rast, Leon M.F. Barthel, and Anne Berger, Animals, IX/7 [2019] pp. 2–19. (Thanks […]

The mystery of the whirly tube’s missing fundamental mode [study]

The musical instrument shown above is known by various names e.g. the whirly tube, the corrugaphone, the bloogle resonator, the voice of the dragon, the hummer, and even, according to American composer (and parodist) Peter Schickele the “Lasso d’Amore”. For acousticians, it’s noteworthy because the fundamental acoustic mode, that’s to say the note that one […]