Science Song of the Week #9: Journey to the sun ... without accompaniment!

Recent SSotW posts have had a general theme of "pushing the limits," including featured songs about medicine (a profession based on science but encompassing much more than that) and in Spanish. This week's featured song explores a different sort of science/music frontier, i.e., the minimalist approach to instrumentation. To my knowledge, only one full-length CD of a cappella science music has ever been made: AstroCappella by The Chromatics. The Chromatics' recording of "The Sun Song" has been paired with some striking footage from orbiting space observatories in the video below.

Science Song of the Week #8 ... en Espanol!

This week, your faithful correspondent happens to be in Tres Cantos (literally, "Three Songs"), making him wonder about the existence and prevalence of science songs in Spanish. Not being the most worldly sort, he is currently aware of only a handful: a few tracks from La Tierra y el Mar by the Banana Slug String Band, and the following piece from Carl Winter:
Mantenga Bien La Comida

I once saw Carl perform this live, and he sort of apologized for the fact that, unlike most of his other songs, it isn't particularly humorous. "I don't know how to be funny in Spanish," he explained. Personally, though, I crack up at the lines "Yo no soy descuidado, yo no soy descuidado, soy profesor." I'm not careless, no sir -- I'm a PROFESSOR!

Science Song of the Week #7 ... and what exactly is a "science song," anyway?

Is this a science song?



Your answer may depend on whether you think of medicine as a science, or whether science songs should by definition include scientific content (as opposed to commentary on the lives of scientists and so forth). I really like the "Anaesthetists' Hymn," but have yet to include it in our list of YouTube's greatest science song hits. What do you think? Does this song inspire curiosity about the science of anaesthesia, or is it simply a funny monologue set to music?

Science Song of the Week #6

Well, let's get right to it. This week's song comes to us from medical students at the University of Alberta in Canada. It's a parody of Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback." The new version is called "Diagnosis Wenckebach," Wenckebach being a type of cardiac arrhythmia.



Thanks to Twitter user @WesleyWilson for alerting me to the existence of this song, which now joins our list of YouTube's most popular science songs.

Introducing the "Virtual Studio"

For the past three years, Wendy has taught a class at UC-Davis that combines science with music-making. In its current incarnation, the class is known as SAS 42: Earth Water Science Song. Its unique format consists of two one-hour lectures per week along with a two-hour "studio" session, in which students learn various aspects of songwriting and performance and apply those to the scientific material they're learning. One example of the students' output, a song about plant transpiration called "Breathe," has been uploaded to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IsMMmqbR28

While this class is undeniably innovative and well-liked by students, its execution requires personnel with dual expertise in science and music, as well as institutional support that may that be available elsewhere. To facilitate scientific songwriting in situations where participants aren't able to meet regularly in person, we have created a site that we call Virtual Studio. In brief, it allows collaborators to post and critique musical works in progress. For more information, please visit SingAboutScience.org and follow the links under the Virtual Studio heading. This project is still in its infancy, and feedback would be very helpful!