Josh McDermott is a University of Minnesota scientist who studies sound, music, and the brain. Last month McDermott treated a sold-out Bryant-Lake Bowl crowd to a fascinating presentation on “The ...

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — On the stage, he goes by Roy G. Biv. He says the “G” stands for Gary. But in “everyday life,” Walker Smith is a self-proclaimed musical chemist. The Knoxville native has combined ...

The Nature of Sound blends science, music, and storytelling to explore how sound works, where it comes from, and why it matters.

The scientific literature considers music either as an abstract stimulus, devoid of explicit meaning, or a universal language. Music listening rarely involves exclusive focus on the sounds themselves.

I have just replaced Albert Einstein (a.d. 1879–1955) with Pythagoras (570–490 b.c.) as the one person, living or dead, with whom I would like to have dinner. That is quite a turnaround for me, since ...

The iconic shower scene in Psycho was originally supposed to play out without music. Instead composer Bernard Herrmann created “The Murder”: as the killing transpires, violins shriek and scream along ...