I just noticed that YouTube now offers auto-transcription of many videos. Could this help us harvest previously unavailable lyrics?

Well … yes and no. YouTube does attempt to auto-transcribe lyrics from some music videos. However, its interpretations of those lyrics are reminiscent of the autocompletion guesses of a so-called “smartphone.”

As an example, let’s take Glenn Wolkenfeld’s Electron Transport Chain song, released last month. Here are the first two verses, according to Glenn.

Welcome to this story about cell energy
The goal is explaining how cells make ATP
It happens in the mitochondria which you can think of
As the cell’s energy factory

Mitochondria are double-membraned organelles,
An inner membrane and an outer one as well
The mitochondrial matrix is the fluid inside
It’s where reactions like Krebs cycle reside

And here they are according to YouTube’s auto-transcription.

welcome to the story about self-energy
called with explaining how cells make ATP
it happens in the bayou country which pick it
as a self going to back to work

by the country are couple members organelles
any demand plane however one as well
the mitochondrial matrix is the food inside
three reactors like Rip Micheals

I love that ATP production is said to occur “in the Bayou country.” It’s also interesting that comedian/actor Rip Micheals is involved somehow.

There are several reasons why I enjoy these events. First, they enable in-person interactions with live people (as opposed to Internet-based interactions enabled by this website, which are worthwhile too, but not the same). Second, they allow collection of potentially publishable data. (This spring we are measuring whether kids can learn science from music videos, and the results so far have been interesting — more on that later.) Third, they constitute valuable field-testing of SingAboutScience.org’s usability.

A striking example of the latter occurred during the 2011 Paws-On Science weekend, which revealed widespread confusion regarding the database search results page, prompting important improvements.

More recently, this spring’s outreach events showed the new Quizzes section of the site to be less user-friendly than intended.

The specific source of users’ problems was that, when they clicked on a song title on the main Quizzes page, a new browser window opened.

I had various reasons for setting up the Quizzes page that way. One was that having a quiz pop up in a separate “box” gave it a more video game-like look and feel, which I liked. Related to this, the appearance of the new window could be tightly controlled; for example, the “back” button was omitted to prevent users from returning to the pre-video quiz after having watched the video.

Such rationales aside, the fact was that the new window often became hidden behind the other window, and users lost track of it. Some of them clicked over and over on the song title, which reloaded the pre-video quiz in the window that they couldn’t see, thus making the site seem unresponsive and increasing their frustration. Those who didn’t lose the new window spent a fair bit of time resizing it to make it bigger.

Once it became obvious that the opening of new windows was causing lots of confusion, I altered the HTML code so that clicking on a song title would now open a new browser TAB within the same window. A subtle change, perhaps … yet the percentage of people completing the quizzes they started immediately rose from 50% to 75%.

That’s a win for our data collection efforts as well as the site’s usability per se. I just hope that, now that the “back” button is back, people won’t abuse it.

I’ll start by admitting that the quizzes posted so far are not that special in and of themselves. They consist of four multiple-choice questions plus a bonus question. They cover basic factual information presented in the videos, and do not require students to think deeply about the material. But they do provide a quick, convenient way of assessing whether a given video improves a given class’s knowledge.

I see great potential here for collaborations with teachers. Let’s say you are a teacher with a favorite music video that seems to align with your learning objectives, but you don’t know whether your students actually absorb anything from the video. We can do a little experiment to find out, plugging your video and questions into my online interface (which can be adapted to specific teachers’ needs) and seeing whether/how students’ answers change after watching the video.

If you are interested in trying something like this, please let me know! Email (crowther@uw.edu) remains the best way to reach me.

QUESTION: How can the database help engage your students in STEM?

A. You can use the database to find high-quality curriculum-related songs to share and discuss with your students, either during class or outside of class or both.

B. Students can use the database to find, say, three songs covering a central concept. Ask them to rate each song for its clarity and accuracy in representing this concept. Are the lyrics precise yet concise? Are helpful examples or analogies provided? Would the song help a student who didn’t understand the concept, or would it only be useful to someone who already “got it”?

C. Students can use the database to find a STEM song that is of good quality according to their assessment. Then they can design a content-rich music video (using photographs, drawings, and/or live-action videography) or a dance routine (using moves that closely relate to the lyrics) to accompany the song.

D. Students can use the database to find a STEM song that is of good quality according to their assessment. Then they can learn the song and perform it live for their classmates (or for another class, or for a school assembly), along with a mini-presentation about the meaning of the lyrics.

E. Students can use the database to identify a gap — i.e., a topic for which there are no good content-rich songs. Then they can fill the void!

F. Students can improve their understanding of databases — an increasingly important STEM topic — by exploring this one. Is it set up for Boolean AND or Boolean OR searches, or both? Which fields of the database need to be curated? What causes searches to return more or fewer “hits” than expected? What can be deduced about the storage of information in the database? Do some areas of STEM seem to be under- or overrepresented? What might improve the user-friendliness of the interface?

G. ALL OF THE ABOVE.

If you have any comments about teaching and learning with the database, please leave a comment here or send an email to crowther @ u.washington.edu.

I’m always happy to receive suggestions for additional songs to be added.

For more information on how the database is maintained, please see the FAQ page.

Among other possible means of support, one promising option is that of crowdfunding. In essence, projects are proposed directly to the general public rather than to a particular funding agency; anyone who wants to support a project may do so, and supporters are often rewarded for their contributions with small gifts (analogous to NPR tote bags, for example).

There is at least one precedent for crowdfunding of science music. Monty Harper financed production of his Songs From The Science Frontier album via a Kickstarter campaign in 2010.

I’m no expert on fundraising, either from “crowds” or from targeted individuals, but I’ve entered a proposal into Round 2 of the SciFund Challenge. In short, I propose (1) to systematically collect extensive feedback on SingAboutScience.org from teachers and (2) to use that feedback to guide additional improvements to the website. You can check out my proposal, and even make a contribution if so inclined, at RocketHub.com. The fundraising window is open from May 1 to May 31.

My proposal is the only SciFund Challenge one focused on music per se, but a few others concern analyses of sound: The Lakes Are Alive With The Sound Of Data, Fish Sounds Of The Amazon River, and Plants Can Talk – With Help From Technology. Other education-focused projects include STEMulate Learning Using Personalized Robots and Recipe For Scientists.

When I first compiled a list of related blogs, I had to give it a title of “Art-Science Blogs” because I wasn’t aware of any others that specifically focused on science music per se. But as it turns out, they’re out there. For example, there’s Nicola Jones’ Songs About Science, which is essentially a continuation of a 30-part series from the Nature News blog. SAS&M friend David Newman has his Science Songbook to tell the stories behind some of his songs. And there’s the Genetic Music Project blog, which archives music written according to DNA sequences.

Finally, there’s the Science Ditty Friday section of RealScience.us. In some ways this is my favorite because it really delves into what all the lyrics actually mean, and what their scientific context is. See, for example, the post Symphony of Science takes on the quantum world.