Battle of the Bands: Rise of the Machines
The healthy competition between humankind and its technological creations is being played out on dance floors, concert halls and classrooms: New robots toot their own horns. A web site sings your email message. Students create scrap-metal instruments. And a musician tours with his band of rockin' automatons. The dividing line gets fuzzy: where does the instrument end and the musician begin?  More...

Martin Makes Millionth
What do you call a guitar encrusted with pearl, copper, silver, two colors of gold, and more than 40 gemstones, and sporting a sound hole rosette that looks like a cathedral window? "Number one million."  More...

A Steinway is Born… Finally
For the past 10 months, the New York Times has been following the construction of a single concert grand piano from the Steinway & Sons factory in Queens. The series recently concluded when piano K0862 got its serial number, a new name, and a classy new home in… a basement?  More...


Molecular Basis for Mozart Effect?
Why do rats perform better on learning and memory tests after listening to a Mozart sonata? The answer, suggested by brand new research, may help students of all sorts, brain-damaged patients, and even Alzheimer's sufferers.  More...

Science meets Samba
Next time you want to get approval to visit party-city Rio during its raucous, musical, eye-popping Carnaval, tell people you're there to look at all the beautiful science.  More...

Learning to Burn
Performing comes naturally to a few people, but most musicians need to spend as much time learning about performing as they do about making music itself. Some recent articles share ideas about how to make it happen, through preparation and good coaching.  More...



GADGET: Sloshed Speakers, Carved Phones, Molded Buds
This month's most interesting tech toys include some exotic materials for reproducing sound: wood-coned, booze-soaked speakers; carved cherry wood headphones; custom-fitted ear buds. Prepare to spend serious money.  More...

NATURE: Birds & Bats, A Cosmic B-flat
More wonders about the sounds around us:  Bats could work on a Boy Scout merit badge for tree identification. The Music of Wild Birds has returned -- the book, that is -- to book shelves. And in space, "no one can hear you scream," perhaps, but it's a noisier place than you might think.  More...

POWER OF SOUND: Build Healthy Bones Two Ways!
Some of the latest uses of sound power will help keep bones healthy, directly and indirectly. An experimental device uses sound to measure bone density and detect osteoporosis. Also, Ben & Jerry's has helped develop a thermo-acoustic chiller for keeping their (calcium source!) ice cream cool.  More...

The Ears Have It
Ears are unique, and some are even more unique than others: Some scientists are developing a security system can identify people by the distinctive shape and features of their ears, while others have created an advanced bionic ear to reverse a kind of deafness.  More...



Singles and Jingles
A new crop of songwriters has been honored by the Songwriters Hall of Fame, which showcases the composers and lyricists who create the stuff of popular music. Meanwhile, the country's oldest creator of radio jingles has a special pitch for you - your own personal jingle!  More...

STUDIO CRAFT: Season of the Remix
Mash-ups and remixes have been all over the news, centered on personalities as diverse as Gov. Howard Dean, folklorist Alan Lomax, contemporary artists Danger Mouse and Jay-Z, and old-timers David Bowie, Yoko Ono and the Beatles.  More...

PROFILES: Cassandra Wilson, Neil Young, Les Paul, Sam Miltich
Of the many artists profiled in recent print and web sources, some stand out: jazz guitar pioneer Les Paul, sultry singer Cassandra Wilson, crusty rocker Neil Young, and rising jazz guitarist Sam Miltich.  More...

Workers of the World, Unite!
And Make Some Music, While You're At It!
When business and music collide, the unpredictable happens. What does Martha Stewart think about telephone on-hold music? What goes on inside Toyota's "drum room"? And does the string section of Bonn's Beethoven Orchestra want to get paid by the note?  More...



Find Your Audience: They're on the Phone, Sipping a Latte
Drastic changes in the music industry have led to innovative approaches to finding an audience -- and getting them to actually pay for music. German band Super Smart has released their new album only as mobile phone ringtones, while Starbucks has unveiled an in-store music service.  More...

Radio Art, Radio Silence
New York's P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center has launched what it calls "the world's first internet art radio station," bringing a 24-hour stream of "music, talk and historic spoken-word programs focusing on contemporary art, music and literature from around the world." But careful how you try to access the station in Pocahontas County, West Virginia - that's the National Radio Quiet Zone!  More...

Loads of Downloading
Recent publications have been packed with information about digital music: tips about how to make the most of downloads, the technologies that make it work, how new artists can get themselves found, and how you can actually end up PAYING for silence.  More...



Bach Back
The missing score to the Wedding Cantata (BWV216) has been found in Japan after 80 years on the lam.  More...

What Would the Needle Do?
Old Records Saved by Particle Physics
The music on hundreds of thousands of archived discs and cylinders may someday be heard again, thanks to physicists who have aimed their precision optics at the aging grooves. And speaking of old records, it took only a low-tech, garage-sale connoisseur to bring this rarity to light: a 1962 LP by Sen. John Kerry's prep-school rock band, The Elektras.  More...

Crossroads Revisited - New Takes on Robert Johnson
Few have captured the imagination of modern musicians the way that Robert Johnson has. Some new research is now claiming that overactive imagination may be involved, and that colorful myths about Johnson are obscuring the true story of the origins of the blues. In the midst of this debate, guitarist Eric Clapton has released a new set of Johnson tunes.  More...



Strange Bedfellows
Recent months have seen some unusual couplings. Punks have been sighted playing cellos, and Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" is on the bill at an upcoming pop fest. Some major orchestras have performed music from video games and Middle Earth, while another has been taking a page from the stadium-rockers' playbook.  More...

Flights of Fancy
Composer Steve Reich's latest release is a video opera whose principal characters include the Hindenburg, the famous B-29 "Enola Gay," and Dolly the first cloned sheep. And "as the crow flies" henceforth will mean "in First Class, with a backup guitarist," now that Sheryl Crow has performed a gig on a US airliner.  More...