The notion that musical training can have positive effects on cognitive functions other than music has long been a source of interest. Research first emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. Standardised assessments of IQ and musical ability suggested the two were correlated – and it was thought that participation in musical training could improve IQ.

Recently, research has shifted focus from effects on musical training on global intelligence and instead focuses on benefits to specific skills and tasks in individuals.

Musical training has shown to lead to improvements in a wide variety of different skills, including memory and spatial learning for example. In addition, language skills such as verbal memory, literacy and verbal intelligence have been shown to strongly benefit from musical training.

Musicians are also more adept at processing speech in environments where there are large amounts of background noise, possess a greater propensity for processing auditory signals that are in some way degraded and show an advantage over their musically naive counterparts when it comes to pitch detection in both music and language. Recent advances in technologies have also allowed researchers to probe into the neural (functional, structural and electrophysiological) underpinnings of these adaptations.

It's startling to think of the multitude of objects Leonardo da Vinci conceptualized, and it's a tad heartbreaking to realize he saw so few of them actualized.

But nearly 500 years after da Vinci sketched his plans for a musical instrument he dubbed the Viola Organista, Polish concert pianist Slawomir Zubrzycki spent more than 5,000 hours making da Vinci's idea a reality.

In 2013, Zubryzcki debuted the instrument at the Academy of Music in the southern Polish city of Krakow. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald, Zubryzcki said, "This instrument has the characteristics of three we know: the harpsichord, the organ and the viola da gamba."

Watch the performance in the YouTube video below; you'll recognize the pieces. And if you listen to the audio without watching Zubryzcki at the keyboard, you may think you're hearing a small chamber ensemble rather than one person playing a single instrument.

http://zelenaucionica.com/predlog-izmene-zosov-a

Autorsko delo grupe mladih autora iz Beograda daje dokumentaristički prikaz jednog od brojnih muzičkih festivala koje se svake godine dešavaju u Novom Sadu, ali i sasvim specifičnog po atmosferi uličnog spektakla u kojem ravnopravno učestvuju izvođači i publika. Obostrana ljubav kao proizvod neizbežne interakcije istovremeno je i glavni "junak" mini sage o lepoj ideji, određenom nivou umeća i znanja, i ogromnom entuzijazmu koji na kraju donosi zadovoljstvo rezultatom i kontinuitet od decenije i po neprestalnog razvoja.

Režija: Nemanja Babić

Ovogodišnji, 15. jubilarni, Festival uličnih svirača biće održan od 3. do 5. septembra 2015, u Novom Sadu, kada će kao i svake godine duhom ulične umetnosti i kulturom svojih sredina umetnici iz zemlje, regiona i sveta probuditi novu, svežu energiju Grada.