The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without ItFrom Bach fugues to Indonesian gamelan, from nursery rhymes to rock, music has cast its light into every corner of human culture. But why music excites such deep passions, and how we make sense of musical sound at all, are questions that have until recently remained unanswered. Now in The Music Instinct, award-winning writer Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known--and still unknown--about how music works its magic, and why, as much as eating and sleeping, it seems indispensable to humanity. Deftly weaving together the latest findings in brain science with history, mathematics, and philosophy, The Music Instinct not only deepens our appreciation of the music we love, but shows that we would not be ourselves without it. The Sunday Times hailed it as "a wonderful account of why music matters," with Ball's "passion for music evident on every page." |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 9 | |
The Atoms of Music What are musical notes and how do we decide which to use? | 32 |
Whats In a Tune? Do melodies follow rules and if so which? | 91 |
Keeping It Together How do we decode the sound? | 137 |
All Together Now How do we use more than one note at a time? | 163 |
Slave to the Rhythm What gives music its pulse? | 207 |
The Colour of Music Why do instruments sound different and how does that affect the music? | 228 |
Going In and Out of Style What are musical styles? Is music about notes or patterns or textures? | 322 |
Why Music Talks to Us Is music a language? Or is it closer to the nonverbal arts? | 355 |
The Meaning of Music What are composers and musicians trying to say? Can music in itself say anything at all? | 381 |
The Condition of Music | 409 |
Credits | 413 |
Notes | 415 |
| 425 | |
| 443 | |
All In the Mind Which bits of the brain do we use for music? | 240 |
Light My Fire How does music convey and elicit emotion? | 254 |
Other editions - View all
The Music Instinct: How Music Works and why We Can't Do Without it Philip Ball No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
absolute pitch acoustic aesthetic auditory Bach Bach’s beat Beatles Beethoven’s brain cadence called century chord chromatic classical music cognitive complex composers composition consonant context contour create cultures cycle of fifths diatonic scales dissonance emotion example expectations experience feel Figure Fred Lerdahl frequency gamelan groups Hanslick harmonic space hear heard instruments interval jazz kind language listeners major scale major third meaning melody mental metre Meyer minor modes modulation Mozart music psychologists music theorists musicians musicologist notes octave overtones patterns perceived perception perfect fifth performance phrase piano piece of music pitch class pitch space pitch steps play polyphonic Pythagorean ratio response rhythm rhythmic rock music Schoenberg seems semitone sense sequence simply singing Sloboda Sonata song sound Stravinsky string structure Symphony syntax tend tension theme there’s thing timbre tion tonal hierarchy tonal music tone row tonic tradition triad tune voices Well-Tempered Clavier Western music words