Where are all the STEM songs hiding?

[BWV]

Always wonder if people view 'songs' as synonymous with music, or really are just referring to songs

 

[symbolipoint]

Always wonder if people view 'songs' as synonymous with music, or really are just referring to songs

Person has the choice to specify when he wants to be more clear.

 

[PeroK]

STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

Why is STEM poetry so rare?

It fails to speak to the heart. It fails to move the will.

Not everyone is romatically inclined. Or, to put it more bluntly:

 

[BWV]

My favorite bit of M poetry

Love and Tensor Algebra
By S Lem

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Bools or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product o four scalars is defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!

 

[OCR]

STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

I agree. . . .✔I think this might be an exception, though not romantically. . . it moves me toward a place I like to be.

In other words, it makes me feel good, emotionally. . . .

.

 

[pinball1970]

My favorite bit of M poetry

Love and Tensor Algebra
By S Lem

Come, let us hasten to a higher plane
Where dyads tread the fairy fields of Venn,
Their indices bedecked from one to n
Commingled in an endless Markov chain!
Come, every frustrum longs to be a cone
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.

In Riemann, Hilbert or in Banach space
Let superscripts and subscripts go their ways.
Our asymptotes no longer out of phase,
We shall encounter, counting, face to face.

I'll grant thee random access to my heart,
Thou'lt tell me all the constants of thy love;
And so we two shall all love's lemmas prove,
And in our bound partition never part.

For what did Cauchy know, or Christoffel,
Or Fourier, or any Bools or Euler,
Wielding their compasses, their pens and rulers,
Of thy supernal sinusoidal spell?

Cancel me not - for what then shall remain?
Abscissas some mantissas, modules, modes,
A root or two, a torus and a node:
The inverse of my verse, a null domain.

Ellipse of bliss, converge, O lips divine!
the product o four scalars is defines!
Cyberiad draws nigh, and the skew mind
Cuts capers like a happy haversine.

I see the eigenvalue in thine eye,
I hear the tender tensor in thy sigh.
Bernoulli would have been content to die,
Had he but known such a^2 cos 2 phi!

A little shorter but this Limerick gets to the point.

'There was a young lady named Bright
Whose speed was faster than light
She set out one day
In a relative way
And returned on the previous night'

 

[Klystron]

Shorter still:

"Last night I met upon the stair
a little man who was not there.
He was not there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd go away!"

 

[WWGD]

Not to forget:

I recently read an account/argument that this song was about spaceships and time travel and not about the obvious-seeming beginning of ww2. But who knows, May was, after all, an astrophysicist ( I think he recently completed the phd thesis he had abandoned when he joined the band in the 60s).

 

[PeroK]

I recently read an account/argument that this song was about spaceships and not the obvious-seeming beginning of ww2. But who knows, May was, after all, an astrophysicist ( I think he recently completed the phd thesis he had abandoned when he joined the band in the 60s).

It's definitely about that. Here's a quote from Brian May:

Brian May – 1983, BBC Radio One:
It’s a science fiction story. It’s the story about someone who goes away and leaves his family and because of the time dilation effect, when you go away, the people on Earth have aged a lot more than he has when he comes home. He’s aged a year and they’ve aged 100 years so, instead of coming back to his wife, he comes back to his daughter and he can see his wife in his daughter, a strange story.

 

[WWGD]

I regret missing a chance a few years back to have a book signed by Brian May, stupidly because I did not want to buy his book, which was really not that expensive after all. Not many chances to come into contact with greatness.

 

[pinball1970]

Shorter still:

Yes shorter but not quite STEM

 

[OCR]

Shorter still:

Lol. . .That reminds me of Plato's beard . . .

"Historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor."Your "Shorter still" poem is "Antigonish" . . . authored by William Hughes Mearns .It IS a classic. . .

It's close enough. . . .

Yes shorter but not quite STEM

 

[WWGD]

I think ultimately the issue is that art, artistic experiences are supposed to be pre-rational; experienced initially through the senses, maybe rationally afterwards. A STEM song would require an initial rational assessment/evaluation and undetstanding before processing.

 

[gleem]

And fairly recently

 

[StatGuy2000]

STEM songs are rare because they don't move one's romantic interest toward the place you would like them to go.

Why is STEM poetry so rare?

It fails to speak to the heart. It fails to move the will.

It isn't so much that STEM songs don't speak to the heart or move the will -- any subject can be made to do this or elicit some other emotional reaction, depending on the skills of the artist -- as much as most poets or musicians do not have a strong enough knowledge or background in STEM to create meaningful or intelligent compositions on STEM subjects.

 

[WWGD]

But to clarify the question: do you mean the theme itself is STEM- based or that the lyrics themselves address technical points? Or something else?

 

[StatGuy2000]

Since we are on the topic of STEM songs, Neil deGrasse Tyson was asked on the popular YouTube show First We Feast by host Sean Evans on rap lyrics with references or comments on science.

(Note: Skip ahead on the video to 11:56.)

 

[StatGuy2000]

But to clarify the question: do you mean the theme itself is STEM- based or that the lyrics themselves address technical points? Or something else?

I can't speak to the OP, but I would say both (STEM-based themes in songs, lyrics addressing technical points).

 

[Asymptotic]

Mose bandies biological words about, but even if they aren't technically accurate (science has advanced since the early 1960s ;) his observations remain valid.


Coaxing Tesla coils to musicality has to count for something.


Not the group I was looking for (a quartet, if distant memory serves), but this fellow fits the bill, and has a dozen or so other tunes to choose from.

 

[BillTre]

Nice. The last guy does a lot of cleaver (auto-capella (with himself)) science songs.

 

[pinball1970]

And...

This is clever but I would have preferred them in order or at least by group or something. This version has alkali metals with halogens, inert gases with heavy metals. A bit of a Mish mash

 

[pinball1970]

Mose bandies biological words about, but even if they aren't technically accurate (science has advanced since the early 1960s ;) his observations remain valid.

Love the piano on this!

 

[pinball1970]

Nice. The last guy does a lot of cleaver (auto-capella (with himself)) science songs.

He does all the parts? A good range!

 

[pinball1970]

I have found another one about space travel

This is a time when players could play and singers could sing live.



Time travel and relativity (I think)

 

[BillTre]

He does all the parts? A good range!

Here's his YouTube channel.

 

[DennisN]

From the first time I listened a song with lyrics, almost all popular songs are about relationships between people (especially romantic relationships).
[...]
Why are “logical” songs so rare, and all of them are emotional? That makes no sense

It makes very much sense to me. We humans are (arguably fundamentally) an emotional and social species.

EDIT: And if I allow myself to have some fun and strech it, I could argue that all songs are part of STEM. Emotions, and thus social relations, are governed by biology (and chemistry etc.), and biology is a natural science and thus STEM.

 

[WWGD]

But art is esthetic, designed to elicit a sensory/emotional reaction, first experienced at an emotional level, through the senses. I don't see how a STEM song can elicit an esthetic , emotional, pre-rational reaction.

 

[pinball1970]

But art is esthetic, designed to elicit a sensory/emotional reaction, first experienced at an emotional level, through the senses. I don't see how a STEM song can elicit an esthetic , emotional, pre-rational reaction.

The thought of contact with another intelligent species or just finding strong evidence of life in the universe other than Earth makes me excited, fearful, emotional.
Bowie too.

 

[pinball1970]

The carpenters.

 

[pinball1970]

But to clarify the question: do you mean the theme itself is STEM- based or that the lyrics themselves address technical points? Or something else?

This is an important point no one is seriously going to try and address quantum notation or tensors in a song BUT the overall subjects and implications of things like time travel, the vastness of space ETs/contact, pollution and ecological issues and vivisection are all covered. Here is one on the importance of protecting intelligent species other than our own.

 

[Brian DAmato]

 

[WWGD]

This is an important point no one is seriously going to try and address quantum notation or tensors in a song

Who knows, it may just be the future of education!

 

[Brian DAmato]

 

[BillTre]

But art is esthetic, designed to elicit a sensory/emotional reaction, first experienced at an emotional level, through the senses. I don't see how a STEM song can elicit an esthetic , emotional, pre-rational reaction.

I think that you need a good story and presentation to make up for the fundamentally drier subject matter normally associated with STEM. This need not always be the case.
Good story telling and engaging presentation can drag along a bunch of STEM information in a variety of entertaining ways.

 

[Keith_McClary]

This is clever but I would have preferred them in order or at least by group or something. This version has alkali metals with halogens, inert gases with heavy metals. A bit of a Mish mash

You're just jealous 'cause Vanadium isn't first.