Music Brain (Ch1, Part 2)

So, I came back to this thinking that there wasn't very much left to the chapter, but actually there's quite a bit. Let's see what sort of trouble I can get into before my piano lessons start for the day, shall we? I believe we left off with the musicians at the back door.

Let's see. Semitones, Sharp & Flat as in A# and also playing sharp. Still defining what is music. A440. Relative vs. fixed pitch.

You know what I think my beef with this "defining" stuff is? He's says he's trying to explain music & it's jargon in layman's terms. But he can't seem to resist throwing every single name for every single thing in there, even when knowing that there are multiple names for stuff only creates confusion. For instance, on page 35 he's talking about the major scale. Gives the C-scale as an example. C D E F G A B C. Also mentions in passing that it's called "Ionian Mode." This adds nothing to the discussion, and in fact if I hadn't tagged along to one of my sister's college level theory classes once upon a time I'd have no idea what he was talking about. And he just mentions it. Nothing more. No "More on this in a later chapter." No explanation. Just randomly throws a term out there. High-level music jargon. For a guy that says that he's trying to demystify music's jargon, this seems like a sort of odd way to do it.

With that sort of crabbing out there, I think I'll just hush about how much that sort of jargon-y "demystification" irritates me. It's a good thing that the intro was good.

In-spii-rate-tion: Doing Chapter 1

OK. So now you posted and I commented and we're getting some momentum here! Gonna keep things rolling with a bit of a look at chapter 1.

I got a little bogged down in this chapter, actually. That's why I haven't posted in a while. Feeling like I should continue the way I started & wanting to do a post for the 1st chapter kept me from just moving on into the 2nd chapter which was a much more interesting read. Guess maybe it would have been better to just keep going rather than let it stop me altogether.

Anyway. The chapter's called "What is Music: from pitch to timbre." And he sets out to define, in layman's terms, what all the different elements of music are. I guess that you do sorta need to have a common language before you can talk about something, but this is Really Dry. And I was awfully glad to be already familiar with the words from working with music. Some were pretty straight forward:

"Tempo refers to the overall speed or pace of the piece." (Page 15)

Some were a little more difficult to pin down.

"A discrete musical sound is usually called a tone. The word note is also used, but scientists reserve that word to refer to something that is notated on a page or score of music. The two terms, tone and note, refer to the same entity in the abstract, where the word tone refers to what you hear, and the word note refers to what you see written on a musical score." (Pages 14-15)

Oh my. It's sooo much easier in real life! I don't think that ever usually have to even define this note-tone stuff with even the youngest of my piano kids: they just pick it up as we go along! But I suppose that a scientist would have to think about these things. But Levitin gets very into this defining stuff. Sometimes I think he gets a little carried away - for instance, the discussion of solfeg (is that how you spell it? the checker doesn't seem to know that word), adds just about nothing to his section on what is a scale, and considerably clutters that paragraph. (Did I mention that this chapter was hard for me?)

But! As he's finishing up his discussion of the scale, he hits on another interesting gem: every known culture uses the octave. Fascinating! There's a tidbit that I wish they'd mentioned in the World Music (Music Appreciation? I can't remember) class that I took in college. We looked at a Javanese Gamelon - now there is a cool instrument/orchestra/gizmo. They had one at UIUC, and our section got to go and try it out. Most cool. But I had no idea that hidden somewhere in the strange sounds that room full of gamelon made was an octave. I enjoy listening to world music and I'm going to have to start listening closely to see if I can find these octaves. To add further interest he talks about how some animals seem to respond to the octave as well. Weird, but cool.

His discussion of why the notes are named the way they are is also entertaining:

"After centuries of being forced to eat in the servants' quarters and to use the back entrance of the castle, this may just be an invention by musicians to make nonmusicians feel inadequate." (Page 31)

Ahhh. The sweet sound of my boy waking up from his nap. More later.

A Lot to Talk About: the Introduction

So, I'm munching my way through the introduction to our new Music book, and there's a lot to talk about here! Mr. Levitin starts with his own story - or rather, with the story of the book, how he came to mix science and music. Sounds like he's done some fascinating things in his time. But after he tells a little about his background, he begins drawing you into his vision. He points out the view that drew him in so compellingly that he wrote a book about it. And it is a fascinating view.

Americans spend more money on music than on sex or prescription drugs. Given this voracious consumption, I would say that most Americans qualify as expert music listeners. We have the cognitive capacity to detect wrong notes, to find music we enjoy, and to tap our feet in time with the music - an activity that involves a process of meter extraction so complected that most computers cannot do it. Why do we listen to music, and why are we willing to spend so much money on music listening? Two concert tickets can easily cost as much as a week's food allowance for a family of four, and one CD costs about the same as a work shirt, eight loaves of bread, or basic phone service for a month. (Page 7)

First of all, I find the fact that computers have such a hard time finding the beat to be fascinating! It's such an intuitive, second nature thing for me, I'd never really thought about it as a complected thing. I teach 5 year olds how to create their own beat in our piano lessons. They usually come to me more than able to bop along with the beat in our listening exercises. When I teach them about keeping a beat we talk about simple things - ticking clocks, heartbeats, that sort of thing. I've yet to come across a child who didn't pick it up quickly, although some do struggle more than others to internalize the ability to keep it consistently even and steady.

Andy and I haven't done so much concert attending lately - with regret, we've decided it's not in the budget right now. But some of our best, most memorable dates have been to either concerts, or music and dance performances such as Lord of the Dance. We counted the cost of tickets to see Kodo well spent when they came to town while we were at Purdue when we were poor college students. I'd not thought previously about the relative cost of music. Interesting.


Mr. Levitin goes on:

To ask questions about a basic, and omnipresent human ability is to implicitly ask questions about evolution. (page 7)

I think I'm going to have to disagree with the author here. I think it much more invites inquiry into the nature of God, as we are his offspring. The page and a half discussion of evolution and the emerging field of evolutionary psychology is simply irrelivant in my eyes. Fortunately it appears he doesn't linger long on the topic too much in the book.


This part I liked:

The power of music to evoke emotions is harnessed by advertising executives, filmmakers, military commanders, and mothers. ... Mothers throughout the world, as far back in time as we can imagine, have used soft singing to soothe their babies to sleep, or to distract them from something that has made him cry. (Page 9)

When so many people are running down Motherhood as an unworthy occupation, too trivial for a modern, educated woman, it pleased me to see Mothers listed in such company. I skipped some of the paragraph in which he talks about how various profession use music to tell us how to feel (because I'm typing one-handed while my baby sleeps on my lap), ending with how Moms use it to calm their children. It's probably a little off his topic, but I think Moms & other caregivers use it for much more than soothing an upset child. Music is used for learning (A, B, C, D.... Fifty nifty United States from thirteen original colonies...) and playing games (Ring around the rosie...) and providing motivation for work (say, cleaning a bathroom to William Tell or Bon Jovi) to name a few.

Your brain on music is a way to understand the deepest mysteries of human nature. That is why I wrote this book. (Page 11-12)

Big goal! I'm excited to see how he does!