Listen like a president – day and night

@POTUS (The President Of The United States) President Obama announced today 14 August 2015 via Twitter his favorite summer songs, one for the day another one for the night.

President Obama announcing Playlist on Twitter

Here are the two playlist’s:

One for the day:

And one for the night:

The link between music taste and personality

To learn from music is one of the aspects of Music Thinking. Here are some learnings that could be used as input for some methods I am using for Brand development and Service Design like Persona Creation, or working with The Company Real Score. So with your next persona creation or service design project you maybe would like to ask your audience what kind (or maybe a combination) of music they prefer. This could help to understand your target group better.

Knowing whether a person prefers John Coltrane to Madonna, Dolly Parton to DJ Avicii, or Wagner to Prince allows for remarkably accurate personality predictions. 

Explore more infographics like this one on the web's largest information design community - Visually.

According to a study with 36.000 participants all over the world (conducted by Professor Adrin North of Heriot -Watt University, Edinburgh) there is a clear correlation between the musical taste of a person and their personality.

People could make accurate judgments about an individual’s levels of extraversion, creativity and open-mindedness after listening to ten of their favorite songs. Extraverts tend to seek out songs with heavy bass lines, while those who enjoy more complex styles such as jazz and classical music tend to be more creative and have higher IQ-scores.

Blues fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Jazz fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, and at ease

Classical music fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, introverts, and at ease

Rap fans
have high self-esteem and are outgoing

Opera fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, and gentle

Country and western fans
are hardworking and outgoing

Reggae fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, not hardworking, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Dance fans
are creative and outgoing but not gentle

Indie fans
have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard working, and not gentle

Bollywood fans
are creative and outgoing

Rock/heavy metal fans
have low self-esteem, are creative, not hard-working, not outgoing, gentle, and at ease

Chart pop fans
have high self-esteem, are hardworking, outgoing, and gentle, but are not creative and not at ease

Soul fans
have high self-esteem, are creative, outgoing, gentle, and at ease

 

References
North, A. C. and Hargreaves, D. J. (2008). The social and applied psychology of music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Collingwood, J. (2008). Preferred Music Style Is Tied to Personality. Psych Central. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/lib/2008/preferred-music-style-is-tied-to-personality/
North, A. C., Desborough, L., and Skarstein, L. (2005). Musical preference, deviance, and attitudes towards celebrities. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 1903-1914. 

 

More of this:
see the comments or go to www.musicthinking.com

 

Five examples from the soundtrack of my life

From the soundtrack of my life I picked out 5 records, all of them absolutely no easy listening. If you don’t take your time to listen carefully this music will be annoying. On the other hand this is music with a lot of emotion and music thinking. I get a lot of inspirations by only reading about it, by listening to an alternate version by another artist or just by looking at the album covers – that definitively gives me a ‘musical cue’.

Naked City by John Zorn and Naked City
Great players, great songs, great power and a great life performance.
Video (not original band, but a good start)
Listen to it!

 

 

Natural Black Inventions: Root Strata by Rhasaan Roland Kirk
this is a duo record of one saxophone player and one drummer, just listen.
Video about this virtuoso and great inspiration for a lot of musicians.
Listen to it!

 

Ascension by John Coltrane
End of the 70s I read a lot about John Coltrane and his innovative and game changing record Ascension. In that time there was no internet, so you really had to be lucky to find a record store that would sell it. It happened when I was on holiday with a friend in France, that we popped into a record store and by accident I found a copy of Ascension. I was so excited to hear this record that I decided to not listen to it in the store, but to buy it, wrap it into a plastic bag and fix it with tape on a plane wooden surface in our camper to assure that the record won’t bend or got destroyed on the sweaty summer in France. After 3 weeks of holiday I put the record on my record player and listened to it very carefully – and … I really didn’t get it. I thought this is one of the most overrated records ever. But I didn’t give up and listened to it two more times in a row. After the third time I began to understand and after that I listened to the record many times: as a background while learning or even on a long drive with my car.
Read more!
Listen to it!

 

Hymnen by Karlheinz Stockhausen
This is maybe the record I have spent the most time in my life in many different variations plus the original material that was used to make this concrete and electronic music. I worked in a two year research project at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, together with Prof. Frisius, we also made a copy of the original 1′ tapes on DAT in the WDR studio, which means that the original material IS the tape and not the score (that was done afterwards with the purpose to read while listening to the recording for a better understanding!).
Read more!
Listen to it!

 

Free Jazz by Ornette Coleman
a collective improvisation by Double Quartet (saxophone, trumpet, bass and drum ) with a picture of a Jackson Pollock painting
Read more!
Listen to it!

No time to listen to all this? Here is a time saver:

Free Jazz Ascension Mash-Up by Dick Whyte: Supercomposer: Free Jazz Ascension – Listen to it!