jakemandell.com

Many creative musicians “hear” shapes when they listen to music. I’ve labeled the ability to do this logically as associative musical visual intelligence, or “amvi” for short. This flash-based test attempts to quantify one’s ability to represent musical phrases as shapes. It’s a challenging test to complete successfully, but the logic throughout the test is consistent. For instance, here are two example answer choices for a musical phrase:

The actual musical phrase consists of two short repeated elements: first played by one instrument (black), then a second instrument (red). There is also a third instrument whose pitch direction is going up throughout the phrase (blue arrow). Therefore, the symbol on the right would be correct. If the pitch direction of the third instrument were downwards, then the symbol on the left would be correct.
Give it a try yourself, and of course I welcome your feedback.

You can find the test here. 

Lesion Localizer is a flash-based interactive environment to integrate MRI anatomy with the clinical presentation of classic neurological syndromes. At the heart of the project is an MRI atlas in which structures are highlighted and labeled as the mouse over the image. The MRI images can be freely explored in all three orthogonal planes (axial, sagittal, and coronal). This tool allows one to become familiar with neuroanatomy on MRI, and realize the importance of anatomical localization in clinical thinking. It is designed to supplement learning neurology for second, third, and fourth year medical students, but can be useful for both neurology and radiology residents as well. Lesion localizer was created with Amar Dhand and Dr. Gillian Lieberman. You can find Lesion Localizer here.

This atlas was created during my radiology rotation. I think it is unique among the many head CT atlases out there, as regions are highlighted as you mouse over them. I was frustrated with the design of most atlases, which used many small lines to point to structures. With this atlas, you simply point to the structure in question: the entire structure visible is highlighted, and the name of the structure is given at the bottom.

You can find the head CT atlas here.

“But I’ve never heard of being rhythmdeaf,” you may ask. Someone who is “rhythmdeaf” has difficulty perceiving changes in a beat. This handicap would make it extremely difficult for such an indivual to succeed in a career of reality television cavorting with the well-toned, too-tanned B-list crowd.

If you think that you may have this problem, please take a new test I just made. It is very similar to the tonedeaf test that has so far had more than 100,000 submitted scores. Any comments you may have on this new test are very welcome.

You can find the test here.

This was my first release. I was living with Madison WI, learning from and arguing about music with my good friend Stewart Walker. I lived in an apartment with the best man in my wedding Jeffers Egan. Both are now much more successful as artists than I ever was. Before this record (which came out on my own “label”), I thought I would die happy if I could have just one track on vinyl. Well, I’m not dead yet, but I should have known that satisfaction would never be so simple.

Continue for full track downloads…

(more…)

If you enjoyed taking the tonedeaf test, then you will also have fun with this one. This is a completely new test designed to quickly measure how well you can tell two tones apart.

While working at the music and neuroimaging lab at Beth Israel in Boston, I developed a quick online way to screen for the tonedeafness. It actually turned out to be a pretty good test to check for overall pitch perception ability. The test is purposefully made very hard, so excellent musicians rarely score above 80% correct. Give it a try!

You will get instant results after taking the test. I recommend having a good sound system or headphones. Flashplayer 8 or 9 is required.

You can find the test here.

I love Puerto Rico. The exceedingly hospitable guys running this label invited me to PR twice - each time was fantastic. The first time was when I was living in Minneapolis, the second time was from Berlin. Talk about 180 degrees of culture difference, and about 90 degrees of temperature difference. I love eating fish for breakfast. Unfortunately, Etihad’s too-short life ended after just two releases. This is their first (ET-001). You gotta admire the two extra zeros - that’s the beauty of ambition.

Full EP download after the jump!

(more…)

Imagine what an empty subway tunnel would sound like in a thousand years.

Underling is my second ambient CD, released on my own Kodama label. I was working in Minneapolis at Yamamoto-Moss, a fancy design company that had catered lunches every day. They designed logos for Pillsbury and things like that - I worked in IT. I worked there for less than a year - just enough to get a PowerMac G4. Its 400 Mhz was a lot more impressive back then.

This is the first time this album has been available online.