So being a great thinker of thoughts, I often find myself watching TED talks. If you’re unfamiliar with the venue TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design. Smart people show up and talk about the things they work with. Using a concise talk, that’s less formal than a normal lecturing scenario, the TED talk offers access to a great wealth of knowledge. Take this talk by Michael Tilson Thomas, a renowned conductor and music educator, discussing the connection of emotion and music.
TED Talks on Music
Here are a few of my favorite talks, and I hope you enjoy them. At the end of the post I’ll include information on finding even more great TED material.
Clocking in at just a few seconds over 20 minutes, this video is a great example of what TED offers. You’ve learned about the history of classical music in a nut shell, charted its development over the years, and learned that music has the power of creating strong associative memories. All of that information, packed into a 20 minute video that’s interesting to watch. Here’s another one for our more business oriented type.
That was Itay Talgam, another great conductor, illustrating the principles of a conductor’s ability to make music out of noise. Once again, just a little more than 20 minutes got you an informative talk and novel ideas for applying them to other structures. That is the awesome value of TED, opening up (mostly for free) those fields which we would rarely consider, and disseminates them in digestible chunks.
Perhaps just as importantly, we can’t forget that the music itself is absolutely beautiful. I guarantee that some of these strings masters could make fortunes as private violin teachers for the extremely wealthy.
Above is a brilliant example of some of the entertainment to be found on the site for those willing to look. Sirena Huang, an 11-year-old concert violinist, displays a technically brilliant and moving piece. She’s given a platform that connects her to an audience and you to her performance, expanding both of your horizons. For those of you that are just starting to learn violin, well… I would say there are few better for inspiration.
So, I’d like to challenge some of you Unfinished Men out there to go in for some finishing on the TED site. Take in whatever theme or special interests you have and really open yourselves up to these ideas. Also if you wouldn’t mind commenting below I’d love to hear about your favorite TED Talks.
