After having spent my life in California, I’ve been living on the East Coast for the past year and a half. This week, walking home from work, the cold rain turned icy, producing small ice pellets that melted into wet globules on the pavement. Suddenly I was aware of an unusual sound I had never heard before. Not the gentle splashing of droplets of rain. And not the clamorous pelting of hail. No, this was a high-pitched hiss, glassy and cold, almost otherworldly. So what other kinds of frozen music does ice make?
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Tags: nature by Jon O
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Philip Ball’s recently published book, The Music Instinct, is the most comprehensive exploration of what makes music work that you’ll find out there. Drawing on all of the latest research, the best resources available, and music from numerous cultures, Ball covers every aspect of music. He shows that a capacity for music-making is an inevitable consequence of the way our brain works. 
GenJam (short for Genetic Jammer) is an interactive algorithm that learns to improvise jazz. Computer scientist John “Al” Biles of the Rochester Institute of Technology, who also plays trumpet, designed the algorithm in 1993-94. GenJam listens to what he plays on trumpet and responds. 
