Ted Talks

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only annual event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration.

What does TED have to do with music, or music have to do with TED? Quite a bit, actually.

Last year, Thomas Dolby described his TED experience on his blog. He mentioned that playing music between the TED sessions was important to providing a means for these leading thinkers and doers to relax.

Thomas Dolby also talked about James Horner's experience as a speaker at TED. If you don't recognize James Horner's name, he was the composer behind the movie music scores for 'Titanic, 'Apollo 13' and 'Braveheart'. It's interesting to read how a music composer could contribute to and inspire a room full of the world's leading thinkers.

This year, one particular TED Talk caught my attention. It was the talk about Siftables - toy blocks that think. Besides presenting a very interesting new way to interact with a computer application with exciting implications for learning, there was an example of using Siftables for music sequencing. Check out this TED Talk video about Siftables - the music sequencing example starts at 4:42, but you'll want to watch the whole thing from the start so you understand the basic idea and see the other nifty examples of how they can be used.