Summary: This energetic program illustrates how unpredictable rhythms punctuate musical pieces, and how different instruments are used to create the effect. The orchestra dissects the two Stravinsky pieces line-by-line, illustrating the composer's use of stark rhythm changes to achieve wondrous musical special effects.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Whenever the pressure of air is changed rapidly-by the beating of a drum, rattling a stick in a can, plucking a string stretched across a box-the ear-brain system detects the pressure changes as sound, which travels from source to listener as sound waves. This program examines sound waves: why some sounds are musical and others just noise, and the relationship of regularity or irregularity of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Opera is unique among musical forms in that it developed over a relatively short period of time, unlike the concerto or symphony. From the birth of opera in Florence with the Camerata to the genius of Monteverdi and beyond, this program looks at how opera grew into both a form of entertainment and a vehicle for delivering incisive social, political, and cultural messages. The operettas of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Using Mozart's lively operatic piece, this program illustrates how composers weave together musical ideas to bring contrast and texture to their music. Abrupt pizzicatos, resounding fanfares, and languid melodies presented as a series of quick edits illustrate the point, along with an uninterrupted playback of a portion of the Overture.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: Pythagoras believed that music originates in nature and that natural harmonies express very distinct mathematical relationships between their notes. From Pythagoras' first scales and the advent of harmony to the standardization of all instruments to equal temperament, this program traces the evolution of the system of tuning that revolutionized Western music. Few musical cultures have escaped...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Music is an art that depends greatly on the quality of the instrument as well as the skill and talent of the performer, the nature of the music itself, and the perceptions of the listener. This program explains how the brain perceives music and why certain melodies seem more appealing than others. The flute is used to show how this instrument has been adapted to different music and musicians at...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: As many non-Western cultures have always known, music affects human development from the womb to the grave-in fact, it may even have specific health benefits. This documentary examines the role music plays in shaping our brains and improving our well-being. Starting with the effect of musical vibrations on premature infants in neonatal intensive care, the film moves on to study the role of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Early musical notation was much like a road map that lacked names or places. The use of neumes gave the basic shape of the tune and a primitive notion of rhythm, but could not tell the performer what note to start on. This program shows how all of that changed around the year 1030, when the choirmaster Guido of Arezzo came up with the simple device of a thin red line: a dot directly on it would...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Singer-songwriter Andrew Bird is a virtual one-man band - along with his vocal talents, he plays the violin, guitar, xylophone, and glockenspiel. The celebrated musician winds his instrumental techniques together with sophisticated electronic looping. Add in his uncanny ability to whistle anything, and he becomes not just a band but an orchestra. This TED presentation by Bird offers an ideal...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: How do musicians find the inspiration to create? Do most songwriters come up with lyrics first, or music? What does it mean to be a composer in today's high-tech world? This program addresses questions young people may have about embarking on a career in music or musical composition. Focusing on current styles like rock, techno, and hip-hop, the video includes interviews with a classically...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Call it the ultimate leadership challenge - to create perfect harmony without saying a word. Could your typical CEO pull that off? Probably not, but it's second nature to an orchestra conductor. After a decade-long career at the podium in his native Israel, Itay Talgam has reinvented himself as a conductor of people in business. In this TEDTalk, Talgam demonstrates the unique styles of six...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Primitive men developed the first musical instruments when they used tubes of bamboo, bone, or wood to produce whistling sounds. The ancient Greeks later played pan-pipes. This program shows what happened as the same principle was applied to a wide range of instruments.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: A close look at such rarities as the dulcimer and the hurdy-gurdy, as well as better-known instruments like the organ, harpsichord, and kettledrums.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: Africans listen to the silence and use it as a dimension in which they can improvise, observes John Collins, an English musician and host of this program. Taking off from the peace of nature, the singing cicadas, and the simple routines of the workday, this program explores a kaleidoscope of musical examples from Ghana: children's games and their musical bands; traditional drums; sensual...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Two groups of instruments use strings as the primary source of sound: those in which plucking sets the strings in vibration, and the bowed strings. This program shows how the demand for more powerful sounds was met, and examines the instruments of Stradivari to determine what science can and cannot reveal about their magic. It also examines the ways in which scientific methods complement the...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: The roots and foreign branches of the guitar-family tree. The program looks at the more important of the many relatives of this instrument.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program is devoted to analyzing the essential features required in any instrument if a usable musical sound is to be produced. The first requirement is for a device that will produce regularity of pressure change, whether a vibration or wobble, a rotation (like the wheel of a siren), vibration of air in pipes, or tightly stretched strings, or more or less flat plates, or hollow vessels...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
View online at AVOD
Summary: This video describes how to recognize and apply inductive and deductive reasoning. Dramatized segments and computer animations involve determining a crime suspect's guilt or innocence based on clues from a series of convenience store robberies; finding a strategy for winning a game played with coins; and matching students to the sports or musical instruments they play as a part of a puzzle.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program, devoted to the 17th century, explains how the St. Mark's sound was first rescued and then enhanced by Claudio Monteverdi, and covers the art of the madrigal, the rise of women composers, and why the world's first public opera house was built in Venice. Live performances in San Nicolo dei Mendicoli and the Ducal Palace.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the 11th century, European musicians tried to make their instruments sound like the human voice. Instead of plucking the strings, they began drawing a piece of wood or bone across them to sustain the tone. By Elizabethan times, the viol was the aristocrat of bowed instruments, while the violin was considered fit only for pubs and parties. This program shows how fashions as well as musical...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008