The Daily Improvisation

I gave a talk on “The Rhythmic Brain” at the Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination about a month ago. It was a combination of lecture and lively discussion, and is the best elucidation currently available of the ideas and theories behind my Cognitive Eurhythmics work, in roughly the form they will take in my upcoming book. You can watch at:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fxgnp1dvHEI

The jukebox is freshly updated up to the most recent improvisations. Unfortunately without adding titles into the playlist, it just reads “undefined” in the display. The actual number of the improvisation is down in the left hand corner, though, if you look. Enjoy the last 150 or so improvisations in jukebox form!

Talk about an auspicious start to the new year - you can now, finally, get a successful random-playing jukebox at http://cognitive-eurhythmics.com/jukebox. It will play you shuffled tracks from the Daily Improvsation archives back to track 38 (before 38 I had a sample rate that doesn’t work with this player).

And the accursed parrot, that taunted me from inside a malfunctioning jukebox for months, only shows his face for a moment before dissolving into ominous black. Rather than banish him entirely, I leave him in this little limbo-purgatory.

Be warned about one thing - this thing is cache-sticky. If you find it going back to the same track a lot, empty your browser cache and you should be fine.

Nothing this week, I’ve got too much else going on. Should get back in the saddle middle of next week. Sorry I haven’t responded yet to recent comments but I will.

On Thursday, October 26, I will be giving my first public talk in Manhattan on the ideas and method of Cognitive Eurhythmics, the method of music and movement therapy I designed to address balance, attention, coordination and cognition in developmentally disordered children. The talk will discuss how the brain creates an internal model of the world through action and movement-based experience, then synchronizes this model rhythmically with the present moment in order to act. I will also demonstrate activities from Cognitive Eurhythmics that develop the brain’s internal self-image and its rhythmic deployement.

 If you know of anyone in New York who might be interested in this talk, they can go to musicofthespheres.org to get more information and buy tickets. The talk will be at:

Fall is here and I can see it will be a struggle to keep the Daily Improvisation afloat. With any luck, I’ll be able to get a few improvisations out each week, but less than before. Do check in and thanks for your continued listening.

I’ll be away on a camping trip for the next ten days, in my last prolonged summer absence. I’ll resume improvising around the beginning of August and plan on regular daily improvising for the forseeable future after that. Bye again.

I will be in Pittsburgh for the International Dalcroze Conference, and will resume improvising next week.

For anyone interested, the radio show I did is now upoloaded to my website as a wma.

I am going out to the woods for a couple of weeks so I won't be posting. Though I will be improvising under very different circumstances, there are no digital pianos nor internet connections on this retreat. So I will see you all again around July 4. Thanks to all the blogs who have put me in their blogrolls or who have posted nice things about the site. It's very meaningful to be creating something of value for you.

I recently gave an interview on Autism One radio, an internet radio station devoted to the Autism spectrum community. I was interviewed by Dr. Seth Pearl for his “Health and Wellness” segment about my Cognitive Eurhythmics therapy method which I have been developing for the last several years. I think the interview was a success and a good introduction to my therapy work, especially when I get into specific techniques and cases. You might enjoy it and anyone you know interested in autism or other developmental problems might enjoy listening to it too.

You can hear it by pasting this link into your browser:

http://www.autismone.org/radio/mediafiles/061406SethPearl.wma

I will also put up a link at my website, cognitive-eurhythmics.com, link in the bar to the right.