After a long wait, Rogers announced they have an agreement with Apple to start selling the iPhone in Canada later this year. As you can tell, I’m eager to get my hands on one.
Only problem is according to rumours, sounds like the price of the phone itself and the plan will be ridiculously expensive. Making it still worth the trip to Buffalo (or other neighbouring US city) to buy and then simply unlock.
Wondering if the plan is to wait until the next generation iPhone is out before the Rogers release. Makes (business) sense. Apple also wouldn’t want to screw with their customers and release it in Canada, shortly before releasing the next gen iPhone and upsetting a bunch of new Canadian iPhoners. Well, us Canadians don’t get that upset. We’ll just limit our iTunes spending to 85% normal and won’t join the iPhone Facebook fan club. That’ll teach you Apple! Almost as affective as our protest to get a better Toronto Maple Leafs team by buying up all the season tickets for the next 8 years.
Reading the book called, “This Is Your Brain On Music” by Daniel J. Levitin.
The book dives into cognitive science to determine the effects of Music on the human brain, and why we are so obsessed with the art. It’s a wonderful read if you are a musician or a music lover. In the end its all about connections, both emotional and cognitive. Which turn out to be one in the same.
Music is pleasurable to us partly because of its predictability: e.g. rhythm. And our brain takes satisfaction in matching the assumed beat with the real one. But it also takes delights when the composer violates the pattern in an interesting way. “A sort of musical joke we’re all in on.”
Emotion is interestingly described as Motivation to Act + Memory.
“We see a body of water after wondering for hours and we feel elated. We drink and it fills us with a sense of well-being and contentment: emotions that cause us to remember where that body of water is for next time.”
So people enjoy certain songs because it reminds them of similar characteristics of other songs that stir up emotions from previous memories stored deep inside our brain. So our taste in music evolves, sometimes starting with songs like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star”.
Similarity in song is sometimes obvious to us. I recognized the similarities between aspects of “Creep” by Radiohead and “The Air That I Breathe” by the Hollies almost instantly.
Rihanna’s latest award winning album, “Good Girl Gone Bad” had at least a couple of hits based on remixes of previous hit songs by Michael Jackson and New Order. I’ll let you guess which ones.
But sometimes it’s not. I remember the first time being pleasantly surprised when I heard Hewey Lewis was suing Ray Parker Jr. because the song “Ghostbusters” sounded too much like “I Want a New Drug”. The songs were almost identical! But for some reason it didn’t click until that moment.
Some are skilled at recognizing these similarities (like VJ Brewskii, video below). So much so that a new art form called “Mashups” was created, where two or more songs that sound alike are mashed together. BTW, yes this is where the term Mashup originated.
Here’s another example that caught me by surprise… wonder if the similarity played a part in Snow Patrol’s big hit.
