Tag Archives: Music

Of Mice and Music

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I have a clipping from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 28, 1997. It talks about an experiment conducted by David Merrell. His experiment was to observe the effects of music on mice. There were three groups: the Mozart mice, the hard rock mice, and a control group that listened to no music at all. His tests ran for three weeks.

At the end of the experiment, the control group had cut its navigation time in half. The Mozart mice did even better, cutting their time by 8½ minutes. But the hard rock group did much worse — taking 30 minutes to complete the maze, bumping into walls, staggering aimlessly about.

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Did Martin Luther Use Drinking Songs?

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Back in March 2009, the Adventist discussion group FIG posted an article from Christianity Today about Christian worship music. While that article made some good points, it also perpetuated the claim that Martin Luther “composed hymns based on popular melodies, including drinking songs.”

I posted a reply, stating my concern with the Christianity Today article. Another FIG subscriber, Stevan Mirkovich, and I had a short exchange of posts on FIG about this topic. Stevan cited research in a then-unpublished manuscript by Dr. Lilliane Doukam, entitled “In Tune With God: The Challenge of Music in Worship.” Apparently a chapter of that manuscript is devoted to the subject of Martin Luther’s use of contrafacta (popular melodies). According to Doukam, Luther used existing tunes, both sacred and secular, and substituted his own lyrics for “trivial and indecent ones.”

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Free Scripture Songs (MP3 format) by Abigail Miller Music

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I listened to several of these, and they are really beautiful, as Scripture songs go:

Abigail Miller Music – Bible Verses Put To Music

The style is not what some would consider “pure” Scripture songs, because it seems that many of them contain some additional lines along with the words of the Bible. However, they do seem to be based, for the most part, on the KJV. The style is very conservative (no drums). There is almost 100 songs listed, along with lyrics and soundtracks for free download as well. 

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Amarantine

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This is the first of what will probably many review of various music CDs, DVDs, and books. These will come in no particular order, and will focus on no particular topic or genre; they are simply the works that I like. However, my taste in music is mainly split between classical, Christian, folk, and new age. When it comes to DVDs I like true stories and documentaries. And as for books I like theology, history, science, true stories, personal improvement, and those related to my job and hobbies (design, programming, art, writing, etc.).

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