Liquindi: The art of Playing The River Like A Drum To Make Beautiful Music

'Liquindi' is from the Baka Forest People in Central Africa, who live near the Cameroon and Congo border. It’s a type of Pygmy music in Africa that is also referred to as 'Yelli'. The Baka women perform yelli, a traditional song, only early in the morning before a hunt. They perform the pre-hunt song in the dawn hours so as to enchant the rain forest and also attract animals leading to a successful hunt. 

Image Source: www.baka.co.uk

Normally, Pygmic music in central Africa comprises of choruses and harmony accompanied sometimes by a percussion instrument. The Liquindi however derives its melody and harmony from nature. The Baka people use the river as a drum when creating these beautiful sounds. In the Western World, Liquindi is commonly known as ‘Water Drumming'.

Water Drumming is not in any way the hydraulophonic style of making music. In the hydraulophonic style, a percussive sound is produced during direct physical contact with water. It’s different since sound is produced by the fluid in contact with the fingers of the player. In Liquindi on the other hand, sound is produced when a person standing in water hits the surface of water using their hands, in a way that air is trapped in the hands to produce a percussive effect which arises due to the sudden change in air pressure of the air trapped. The sound does not exist in water entirely since the air-water boundary is needed as a surface to be struck.

In the Liquindi piece, one voice starts, another follows, then another…Each voice has its own repeating melody. Every singer has their own rhythm and cycle but the voices culminate eventually to form one song. It’s like each sound is reacting to the others to make the intonations of the voices in sync with the rhythm. Every clap is in sync with the tone and this complex polyphonic style of music is rich and characteristic of Western African music.

[source : www.baka.co.uk]

Video: How Music Would Look Like If It Could Actually Be Seen

A new scientific ‘tool’ will help you see what music looks like and it depicts sound waves while in water.  Every note appears to have a unique ‘signature’ (fingerprint) of its own. The CymaScope device can record vibrations that are produced by each single sound that’s on the surface of distilled water. Vibrations caused by the sound harmonics leave a ‘mark’ that is perfectly visible due the water’s high surface tension.

Image Source: www.learning-mind.com

In the same way every snowflake usually has a unique shape, sound has a unique fingerprint. The CymaScope device was recently used for the first time to visualize piano notes after a request by Shannon Novak, a New Zealand artist. It’s also been used to record vowel sounds produced by the human voice in pictures and music tracks like ‘welcome to the machine’ by Pink Floyd.

Creation of this tool began in 2002. The scientists tried using a PVC film, a film of latex until they finally settled on water as the ideal medium. Images that resulted from the experiment showed that sound can provide both audio and rich visual spectacle.

“If our eyes could see music we would not see waves, as many believe, but beautiful holographic bubbles with amazing shapes resembling a kaleidoscope. The CymaScope allows us to see this hidden beauty.” writes John Stuart Reid and Erik Larson, the tool’s creators.

Impressively, a recent experiment with the CymaScope showed that words can be recognized by dolphins based on these ‘signatures’. The dolphins use their sonar as a supplementary eye to ‘see’ using ultrasound. They then transmit a sound picture to each other.  Jack Kassewiz, a Miami based researcher did this experiment using the CymaScope. He recorded the sounds a dolphin produces when it ‘sees’ objects like an inflatable duck, a plastic cube or flower pot.

He turned the sounds into images and later showed them to the dolphin with no sound accompaniment. The intelligent mammal recognized the objects that corresponded with the images with an accuracy of 86%. Impressively, when Mr. Kassewitz showed these same images to another dolphin that was not part of the experiment, the same accuracy was noticed in recognizing the objects. This shows that the cetaceans use sounds when communicating to each other in the similar way we use words.

An ambitious plan titled SpeakDolphin, by the researcher seeks to use the images after deciphering the language, to start a basic conversation with the dolphins.
[Source: www.learning-mind.com]

You May Forever Doubt Your Ears After This Audio Illusion

You may never ever believe anything you hear again! This audio will make you have trust issues with your ears, henceforth.

This audio proves that your ears can be manipulated and tricked easily just like all other senses. Our brains have an uncanny ability to process incomprehensible information using new information.

Image source: www.wallconvert.com

In this experiment, audio filters are used to turn a spoken sentence into complete gibberish. That’s what your brain registers on hearing the audio for the first time. After you listen to the original unprocessed version, the brain suddenly makes sense of the gibberish version.


This is almost similar to what happens with optical illusions. Your eyes will see only a specific image until all other details are revealed. The brain applies this same processing to things you hear but you may not have realized this until now.
[Source: www.gizmodo.com]

10 Amazing Ways Music Affects Our Brains, #5 is Intriguing

Music holds tremendous power on emotions and thoughts. It could make your somewhat ordinary day Magical or spiritual. Music can provide solace, help you purge and cleanse, create a diversion, revitalize you, entertain, and so much more. The influence of music spreads from our genetic codes, through our bodies and thoughts and out into our relationships.

Image source: www.keene-equinox.com

1. Verbal IQ improvement 

When you practice the piano, you improve not only your musical abilities but also verbal and visual skills.  A study by Forgeard et al., 2008 found that, students aged 8 to 11, who had extracurricular music classes over time developed higher visual abilities and verbal IQ when compared to those who did not get any musical training. Benefits of studying a musical instrument therefore are not only purely musical but they extend to visual perception and cognition.

2. Feeling the chills

I bet you’ve felt the chills down your spine as you listened to music. In fact, a study done by Nusbaum and Silva (2010) shows that 90% of people have. How much of the chills, however depends on personality. People high on ‘openness to experience’, one of the five personality dimensions, are likely to feel them more. The study shows that people with this dimension, (openness to experience) will most likely play a musical instrument and will more often rate music as being important to them.

3. Happiness is amplified by active listening.

To get the chills if you are not feeling them, you should try harder. This is because; a recent study shows that when you try to feel happier actively, you do feel happier.  Ferguson and Sheldon (2013) did a research that showed that, participants who tried actively to feel happier while listening to Aaron Copland’s upbeat classical compositions felt their moods being lifted more as compared to those who listened to the music passively. So, engage the music next time you are listening and you will experience that extra emotional power.

4. When we sing together we are brought together

Music is a social activity and when we sing together, we are brought together. Finnish students who took extended music classes were studied and it was found that they reported higher satisfaction while in school even in areas that were not related to music classes. (Eerola & Eerola, 2013). When people sing together, affiliations are increased and people tend to like each other more than they did before.

5. Music as a cure to heart diseases.

It does help reduce the anxiety and stress that’s associated with treating coronary heart disease. In a review of 23 studies that covered almost 1500 patients, listening to music helped reduce blood pressure, heart rate, and anxiety in patients with heart disease (Bradt & Dileo, 2009).

6. Music lifts you up when sad

People love music because it helps them manage their moods. It has a cathartic effect while for some people listening to sad music, under the right circumstances, can improve their mood. A Kawakami et al. (2013) study found that people enjoy sad music because it produces a mix of emotions; some positive, some negative. As we listen to music, we recognize the negative emotions but they are not strongly felt.

7. Improves our judgment

Listening to music for just fifteen seconds could change how we judge emotions on the faces of other people. Logeswaran et al. (2009) discovered that participants in a study perceived other faces as happier when they listened to a quick gust of happy music. The same applied to sad music. They got to see the biggest effect when the participants looked at faces of people with neutral expressions. People tend to project the mood of the type of music they are listening to onto other faces.

8. Music color

People tend to think of certain colors when listening to music. In fact, different cultures relate particular colors with particular music.  Palmer et al. (2013) in a study of Mexico and US people found that they connected duller, darker colors with sad music and vivid colors with happy music. In a follow-up study found that these associations of music to color were due to the music’s emotional content.

9. Could Music bring back vision?

The brain’s visual areas are the ones affected in 60% percent of those who get strokes. Patients lose awareness of the objects on the opposite side where damage to the brain has occurred. (Visual neglect). Studies have however found that when these patients listen to music they love, some of the visual attention gets restored (Tsai et al., 2013). Music can therefore be used to rehabilitate stroke patients.

10. Music For Babies

You’ve seen how infants respond rhythmically to music, even those as young as five months. In fact, it’s more interesting to them than speech! A study by Zentner and Eerola (2010), found that babies spontaneously dance to all genres of music and smile a lot while doing so.  

Maybe we should accept the fact that music is in our genes to stay!
[Source: www.spring.org.uk]

Close Your Eyes And Listen To This Mindblowing 3D Sound Haircut!

To get the best out of the haircut, you will need headphones. It’s also better if your eyes are closed shut. It’s incredible and a little creepy!

When listening to it, it feels like you are seated in a barber’s chair. The barber moves around while clipping your hair away. The illusion is a demonstration of our capability to locate sounds in space. We do this by comparing inputs to both our ears, then from there we work out the direction sound is coming from.

Tip: Use stereo headphones for the best experience.

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