The photo above is Mark Ronson on a Thursday night at TED, in the midst of teaching a four-hour seminar in pop music history. Working backward and forward in time, he proved to a sweaty crowd how everything with a beat is connected to everything else. Old heads in the audience broke into horrible, grimacing dances when he dropped Diana Ross’ 198...

What's it like to have a song inside your head, itching to get out? A neuroscientist and a songwriter compare notes from the frontier of music and science. Music is the most complicated sound the brain can process. But why did our brains evolve such advanced tools to create and enjoy it? Neuroscientist and jazz musician Charles Limb (TED Talk: ...

Far too many of us still have flashbacks to piano lessons, when an uber-serious teacher would rap our knuckles after every wrong note. If only we had taken bass lessons from Victor Wooten of the band Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. In the video above -- the first ever live-action TED-Ed lesson -- five-time Grammy winner Wooten explains that mu...

It sounds like music that could be pumping from the sound system of a packed nightclub. But these electronic-tinged sounds actually come from the mouth of one man, Wang Li, a master mouth harp musician, as he plays the kouxiang. In session 7 of TED2013, Li gives the audience a taste of his sonic stylings. Raised in Northeastern China, Wan...

Barreling through the high-visibility, high-tech exhibits on the TED2019 circuit, you’d be forgiven for mistaking The Data Garden for just another chillout zone, with its oasis of potted houseplants and people lying draped, spaced out, across bean bags. Yet an arresting sound beckons from this unassuming island – a soothing patter of gently ...

Our friends at Found Sound Nation made this great 3-minute video to show us what's going on at TED2017 this week -- a collaborative music-making experience. If you're here, stop by, and if you're watching online ... check back in on Friday to hear what people created together. Credits: Found Sound Nation: Jeremy Thal Christopher M...

Many people simply listen to music. Not David Byrne, the solo artist and former frontman of the Talking Heads. Even beyond making music, Byrne thinks deeply about how music functions on a perceptual level. At TED2010, Byrne spoke about how the nature of a space effects what kind of music is played there, from a gritty club like New York’s CBG...

Jim Crupi is a management consultant with a long, brilliant resume. (Heard of CNN? He helped set the strategic stage that led to its creation.) Here, he distills some of his best leadership advice into one memorable metaphor. Music is all-consuming. Our reaction to a great song can be so visceral that we are forever connected to it. Hearing tha...

We are thoroughly impressed with contortionist Anudari, who performed last week at TEDxUlaanbaatar in Mongolia. She has been studying contortion since she was 6-years-old. But it’s not just her outrageous flexibility and ability to fold in impossible ways that makes her so fascinating to watch. It’s the fact that she can play a musical instru...

Devonté Hynes is a producer, singer, composer, author, and more. He's spent a lot of his career helping other musicians produce their work, or writing for others. But he also has an amazing solo career as Blood Orange. At TED, he plays the piano and explains how he sees music. And he really sees music -- he's a synesthete. He says, "Every so...

When Cole Plante starts to DJ, you'd never guess he's only 17. His hands move over the mixing board with the confidence of someone older, purposefully weaving over the knobs that adjust the sounds and beats. On some of the adjustments, his grip holds a few beats, while others are so fleeting his reflex gives the impression that the controls are ...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Opening Session 6 of TED2012: Cameron Carpenter, one of the world's top organists -- he's brought the "king of instruments" out of the church and into concert halls. He starts with "Slaughter on 10th Avenue," by Richard Rodgers. The organ sounds are first out of place, then mesmerizing. He then moves into C...

Aboard the Lennon Bus, a crew of TEDActive musicians created this lovely song -- and a video! -- in one week. Feel the vibe of TEDActive ... Musicians on this track include Jill Sobule, Wendy Melvoin, Annie Clark, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Lisa Coleman and Aaron Sterling. Video created by Hiro Murai / Isaac Hagy. Lennon Bus crew: Brian...

Amanda Fucking Palmer wants us to re-think how we think about paying for music. She is known for her music, first as half of the Dresden Dolls, now as a solo artist. But for 5 years after graduating, Palmer made her living as a living statue called the Eight Foot Bride. ("Everyone always wanted to know, 'Who are these people in real life?...

Deaf artist Christine Sun Kim describes how she combines American Sign Language and musical notation systems in her drawings. Several writing systems “code” American Sign Language (ASL) on paper, and some of them function very much like the staffs, symbols and notes of musical notation systems. Both ASL and music are somewhat “closed” -- unless...

Above: Reggie Watts demonstrates the littleBits SynthKit For the last week, the internet has been grooving to the video above of Reggie Watts making some funky noise with the newly launched SynthKit -- the latest offering from TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir’s littleBits electronic building block company, and the product of a three-way partnership b...

Music comes in all shapes and sizes, as these talks illustrate. From an electric drum suit called "thunderwear" to an ancient stringed wheel to an arresting rare organ, the instruments featured in these talks reshape our soundscape and offer inspiration in the cacophonous world around us. David Holt plays mountain music In this amiable t...

In the early ‘80s, before MTV turned its attention to reality TV, David Bowie, Madonna and the Pretenders lit up small screens, using a new medium to showcase their songs: the music video. Recently, we’ve seen a resurgence of this art form as cinematographers, musicians and artists join together to supersize their visual creativity. But now, ins...

Photo: James Duncan Davidson Michael Tilson Thomas is the music director of the San Francisco Symphony, founder and artistic director of the New World Symphony and principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra. Now he's up to round off this session in style, seated at a grand piano that's been wheeled onto the stage just for ...

"The TED Salon in Seoul was lit up by this performer, by her extraordinary passion for her music," says TED curator Chris Anderson by way of introduction. He's referring to the Talent Search auditions held in 14 cities around the world that provided the conference with 33 speakers this year. And in particular, he's talking about Ji-Hae Park,...

Imogen Heap bounds onto the stage wearing black, a glittering, cosmically ruffled jacket and some musical gloves. You know, as you do. The gloves are the way that she activates the music around her, while where she stands on the stage also impacts the treatments on her voice. "I have music in my hands," she says, "and the playground of the s...

Can music be a medical instrument? In a moving talk from TEDMed, Robert Gupta reveals that it certainly can be. He gives as an example the work of neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug, one of the pioneers of melodic intonation therapy. Schlaug noticed that, while stroke victims with aphasia could not utter a sentence, they could still sing the l...

Meklit Hadero's voice is earthy and soulful, sinuous and untethered, and she's about to unleash a new album on the world. She has just launched  a crowdfunding campaign for her second solo recording, We Are Alive, and is currently touring the East Coast of the United States.We caught up with her between shows to ask about her musical vision an...

This week, East African singer Somi releases her first major-label album, The Lagos Music Salon, in the United States. Already, it is #1 on the iTunes Jazz Chart, #1 on the Amazon Jazz Vocal Chart, and #1 on the Amazon Pop Vocal Chart. The TED Blog caught up with the jazz-soul vocalist and songwriter—who was was born in Illinois to Rwandan and...

Raise your hand if you’ve ever sung to your pets or turned on Spotify for them. Well, cellist David Teie has carried that impulse a few steps -- OK, many steps -- further and written music for specific species of animals. David Teie (TEDxTowsonU Talk: Music for cats) is on a mission to bring music to the masses -- not just to all of humanity bu...

Percussionist and composer Susie Ibarra is creating virtual sanctuaries for real cities. Working in collaboration with local artists, historians, architects, city planners and musicians, Ibarra and her partner Roberto Rodriguez -- who together form Electric Kulintang -- have created a musical pilgrimage that takes the public on a sound walk ...

On a drizzly spring day in Boston earlier this month, three dozen musicians mingled in the President’s Library of the New England Conservatory (NEC), one of the most prestigious music institutions in the country. The weather did not dampen the infectious enthusiasm in the room. After all, 10 of these musicians were about to mark a milestone:...

Gil Weinberg creates musically included robots so good they can improvise. The founder of the Music Technology program at Georgia Tech, he also creates innovative music apps and has contributed his technologies to many a band and ensemble. Sam Roth, an 11th grader in New York City, was excited to interview Weinberg about his experience sp...

TED Fellow Lucy McRae (watch her TED Talk) is a body architect -- an artist who explores how technology and the body may someday meet and merge. Her latest project is a fantastical and frothy music video for "Dream a Little Crazy” by Australian band Architecture in Helsinki. Watch the mouth-watering video above, and then read all about how Mc...

Beyoncé must love surprises. Because late last night, she unexpectedly dropped her fifth studio album, Beyoncé, on iTunes. It's what she's calling a "visual album," and it features 14 songs and 17 music videos -- including a song about her daughter, Blue Ivy, and guest appearances from husband Jay-Z, pals Justin Timberlake and Frank Ocean and...