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This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.I love apps like Metronaut and Tomplay, which let me carry a collection of classical (sheet) music on my phone. They also provide piano or orchestral accompaniment for any violin piece I want to play. Todays post shares 10 other recommended tools for music lovers from my fellow writer and friend, Chris Dalla Riva, who writes Can’t Get Much Higher, a popular Substack focused on the intersection of music and data. I invited Chris to share with you his favorite resources for discovering, learning, and creating music. By day, Chris works at the music streaming service Audiomack. His debut book Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves comes out today, November 13, 2025, via Bloomsbury. He wrote it while listening to every single #1 hit in history. The rest of the post is by Chris. – Jeremy Caplan Learn about Music Genius Chris: If you are looking to understand the lyrics to your favorite songs, turn to Genius, a crowdsourced website of lyrical annotations. Sometimes youll even find artists annotating their own lyrics or breaking things down in a video. (FREE) WhoSampled Searching through WhoSampled is like looking at musical DNA. Based on crowdsourced information, the site allows you to see how songs are connected through samples, interpolations, and covers. This was an incredible resource for researching the decline of cover songs in my book. (FREE, but you can pay $3/month for additional features.) Discover new music Every Noise at Once Maintained by Spotifys former data alchemist Glenn McDonald, Every Noise maps all genres on Spotify. For any of the thousands of genres in Spotifys catalog, you can see four playlists. The Sound Of playlist will give you a wide taste of the genre. The Intro playlist is where beginners should start. The Pulse playlist is what fans are listening to right now. The Edge playlist spotlights more obscure tracks in the genre. (FREE, though more useful with a Spotify subscription.) Radiooooo The name looks fake, but this site is real and incredible. It allows you to listen to music not just from around the world, but across time, as curated by humans. Want to hear the music of Nicaragua in the 1980s? Canada in the 1940s? Thailand in the 1960s? Radiooooo is the place for you. (FREE) Radiooooo: listen to popular music anywhere in the world, from 1900 to now Radio Garden While Radiooooo curates recordings, Radio Garden actually lets you hear whats playing on thousands of radio stations around the globe right now. (FREE) Share Wonder Tools Learn an instrument Yousician Available on the web, Android, iOS or Mac/PC, Yousician is one of the most robust music education platforms. Learn guitar, bass, ukulele, piano, or voice, with thousands of interactive songs and lessons. Its helpful whether youve been playing for years or are picking up an instrument for the first time. (7-day free trial, then $30/month or $140/year; Black Friday 72% sale ends December 6). Chordify Chordify makes learning new songs easy, especially if you are a novice. Not only do they list chord progressions and give you the ability to transpose them, but those progressions will sync with the recording, so you can really get your timing right. Note: Chordify lacks the lessons youll find on Yousician. (Much of the platform is free, but you can access additional tools for between $2 and $3.50/onth, and theres a Black Friday sale for $1/month.) Ultimate-Guitar This long-running guitar tablature site helps you play any song you like. Its catalog may be bigger than any other learning platform. I recommend using Ultimate-Guitar on the web, as the app locks many features behind a paywall. (Most tabs on the site are free, with paid access to special features like interactive tabs, for $10/month or $40/year; 80% Black Friday sale.) Tools for artists Splice Do you need instrument plug-ins, sound effects, and royalty-free samples for your next creation? There is no better destination than Splice. ($13 to $40/month, depending on your plan.) Moises Packed with everything from smart metronomes to lyric transcription, Moises is my favorite tool for stem separation. It allows you to break an audio file into its component tracks, which can help with remixing, remastering, and reimagining recordings. ($6 to $30/month.) This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.
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On day one of Donald Trumps second term as president, he issued a wave of executive orders to radically expand the enforcement of immigration law. It was the first step toward Trumps promise to carry out mass deportationsthe largest, he pledged, in the countrys history. What followed, throughout 2025, was an aggressive campaign that included Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at workplaces such as farms; the deployment of National Guard units in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles; and a Supreme Court ruling that cleared the way for racial profiling during immigration enforcement. Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, New York City. July 16, 2025. [Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images] These actions played out in stark images that have come to define Trumps immigration agenda: scenes of federal agentsoften with masks covering their facestackling people inside courthouses, or protesters gathering en masse to face off against National Guard members. Los Angeles, California. June 08, 2025. [Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images] Getty Images photographers captured many of those scenes. And as they did, they witnessed the chaos of Trumps immigration enforcement firsthand. In one picture photographed in a New York City courthouse, photographer Michael M. Santiago saw a family exit their immigration hearing when Border Patrol agents approached the man, asking if he was a specific person. Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building, New York City. June 30, 2025. [Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images] He said he was not, but the agents did not believe him, Santiago says in a statement to Fast Company. The wife immediately began advocating for her husband, stepping between him and the agents and telling them they would have to take all of them. As agents attempted to detain the man, the daughter and older son began to cry. Eventually, the agent did verify that the man was not the person they were looking for. Charlotte, North Carolina. November 19, 2025. [Photo: Ryan Murphy/Getty Images] In another shot by photographer Ryan Murphy, two Border Patrol agents wrestle a man to the ground inside a fast-food restaurant under construction. Murphy had been following Border Patrol vehicles when they stopped at that construction site. After hearing a commotion inside, I ran into the building to find this scene unfolding in front of me, he says. This time it happened at a Panda Express construction site, but it could have been the parking lot of a department store, a hair salon, or a gas station. All places you and I would visit on a regular day. Photographer Scott Olson photographed residents of Chicagos Brighton Park neighborhood crowded against a door, watching as Border Patrol agents patrolled their street.
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Like many retirement communities, The Terraces serves as a tranquil refuge for a nucleus of older people who no longer can travel to faraway places or engage in bold adventures.But they can still be thrust back to their days of wanderlust and thrill-seeking whenever caretakers at the community in Los Gatos, California, schedule a date for residents many of whom are in their 80s and 90s to take turns donning virtual reality headsets.Within a matter of minutes, the headsets can transport them to Europe, immerse them in the ocean depths or send them soaring on breathtaking hang-gliding expeditions while they sit by each other. The selection of VR programming was curated by Rendever, a company that has turned a sometimes isolating form of technology into a catalyst for better cognition and social connections in 800 retirement communities in the United States and Canada.A group of The Terraces residents who participated in a VR session earlier this year found themselves paddling their arms alongside their chairs as they swam with a pod of dolphins while watching one of Rendever’s 3D programs. “We got to go underwater and didn’t even have to hold our breath!” exclaimed 81-year-old Ginny Baird following the virtual submersion.During a session featuring a virtual ride in a hot-air balloon, one resident gasped, “Oh my God!” Another shuddered, “It’s hard to watch!”The Rendever technology can also be used to virtually take older adults back to the places where they grew up as children. For some, it will be the first time they’ve seen their hometowns in decades.A virtual trip to her childhood neighborhood in New York City’s Queens borough helped sell Sue Livingstone, 84, on the merits of the VR technology even though she still is able to get out more often than many residents of The Terraces, which is located in Silicon Valley about 55 miles south of San Francisco.“It isn’t just about being able to see it again, it’s about all the memories that it brings back,” Livingstone said. “There are a few people living here who never really leave their comfort zones. But if you could entice them to come down to try out a headset, they might find that they really enjoy it.”Adrian Marshall, The Terraces’ community life director, said that once word about a VR experience spreads from one resident to another, more of the uninitiated typically become curious enough to try it out even if it means missing out on playing Mexican Train, a dominoes-like board game that’s popular in the community.“It turns into a conversation starter for them. It really does connect people,” Marshall said of Rendever’s VR programming. “It helps create a human bridge that makes them realize they share certain similarities and interests. It turns the artificial world into reality.”Rendever, a privately owned company based in Somerville, Massachusetts, hopes to build upon its senior living platform with a recent grant from the National Institutes of Health that will provide nearly $4.5 million to study ways to reduce social isolation among seniors living at home and their caregivers.Some studies have found VR programming presented in a limited viewing format can help older people maintain and improve cognitive functions, burnish memories and foster social connections with their families and fellow residents of care facilities. Experts say the technology may be useful as an addition to and not a replacement for other activities.“There is always a risk of too much screen time,” Katherine “Kate” Dupuis, a neuropsychologist and professor who studies aging issues at Sheridan College in Canada, said. “But if you use it cautiously, with meaning and purpose, it can be very helpful. It can be an opportunity for the elderly to engage with someone and share a sense of wonder.”VR headsets may be an easier way for older people to interact with technology instead of fumbling around with a smartphone or another device that requires navigating buttons or other mechanisms, said Pallabi Bhowmick, a researcher at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who is examining the use of VR with older adults.“The stereotypes that older adults aren’t willing to try new technology needs to change because they are willing and want to adapt to technologies that are meaningful to them,” Bhowmick said. “Besides helping them to relieve stress, be entertained and connect with other people, there is an intergenerational aspect that might help them build their relationships with younger people who find out they use VR and say, ‘Grandpa is cool!'”Rendever CEO Kyle Rand’s interest in helping his own grandmother deal with the emotional and mental challenges of aging pushed him down a path that led him to cofound the company in 2016 after studying neuroengineering at Duke University.“What really fascinates me about humans is just how much our brain depends on social connection and how much we learn from others,” Rand said. “A group of elderly residents who don’t really know each other that well can come together, spend 30 minutes in a VR experience together and then find themselves sitting down to have lunch together while continuing a conversation about the experience.”It’s a large enough market that another VR specialist, Dallas-based Mynd Immersive, competes against Rendever with services tailored for senior living communities.Besides helping create social connections, the VR programming from both Rendever and Mynd has been employed as a possible tool for potentially slowing down the deleterious effects of dementia. That’s how another Silicon Valley retirement village, the Forum, sometimes uses the technology.Bob Rogallo, a Forum resident with dementia that has rendered him speechless, seemed to be enjoying taking a virtual hike through Glacier National Park in Montana as he nodded and smiled while celebrating his 83rd birthday with his wife of 61 years.Sallie Rogallo, who doesn’t have dementia, said the experience brought back fond memories of the couple’s visits to the same park during the more than 30 years they spent cruising around the U.S. in their recreational vehicle.“It made me wish I was 30 years younger so I could do it again,” she said of the virtual visit to Glacier. “This lets you get out of the same environment and either go to a new place or visit places where you have been.”In another session at the Forum, 93-year-old Almut Schultz laughed with delight while viewing a virtual classical music performance at the Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and later seemed to want to play with a puppy frolicking around in her VR headset.“That was quite a session we had there,” Schultz said with a big grin after she took off her headset and returned to reality. Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
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