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115th out of 332 books
—
148 voters
The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
by
Philip Ball
All human cultures seem to make music - today and through history. But why they do so, why music can excite deep passions, and how we make sense of musical sound at all are questions that have, until recently, remained profoundly mysterious. Now in The Music Instinct Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known - and what is still unknow...more
Hardcover
Published
February 4th 2010
by The Bodley Head
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Music ought to be one of the greatest human mysteries, the one kids say they're going to grow up and solve.
Why does it exist? Why do we love it?
You'd think we would have made some progress figuring out these questions, given the past two millennia of effort. In fact, if you read a "music theory" book, you might leave with the impression that we actually understand music. Music theory books are teeming with arcane mathematical nooks and crannies, from harmonics to timbre, and from diminished seve...more
Why does it exist? Why do we love it?
You'd think we would have made some progress figuring out these questions, given the past two millennia of effort. In fact, if you read a "music theory" book, you might leave with the impression that we actually understand music. Music theory books are teeming with arcane mathematical nooks and crannies, from harmonics to timbre, and from diminished seve...more
Much too technical and inconclusive for my expectations of a popular science book. It takes pains to explain almost every convention of technical musical language but all the while presumes that's what the reader wants to know! Before getting this book, I recommend watching this documentary and only pursuing this read if you find it vulgarly dumbed down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbOWi...
I did like the stuff about the interesting history of musical notation, and the amusing historical stor...more
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbOWi...
I did like the stuff about the interesting history of musical notation, and the amusing historical stor...more
In this offering, Ball digs into music - with his usual comprehensivity and apparent mastery of the matter (this time, he is also personally knowledgeable on the topic). Many aspects of the best of the arts are treated (temperament, harmony, rythm, psicoacoustics, syntax and semantics, emotions and meaning, styles and gestalt), and decent if not ample space is given to all details. This on the other hand makes the book very verbose at times: it could have been more compact and concise oftentimes...more
Wow, i'm super excited to review this book. Overall, it was a really gratifying experience to read about music in such a scientific yet emotional manner. I first started this book on a plane, and four hours later I didnt realize I had landed. The first part is really breathtaking. Around the middle, it becomes a little challenging because it defines the ease with which you can pusrue depending on your background. If you have received some training in music, the theoretical part is just a refresh...more
This is a very ambitious book. Perhaps too ambitious, since I feel that the book would have gained if it had more focus on two or three topics instead of ten. The author really tries to write THE comprehensive book of most aspects about music; its origin, its structure, its neurological foundation and so on.
Parts of The Music Instinct are really well written and investigated. Philip Ball actually manages to give a really good account of the foundations for counterpoint - perhaps thanks to his ba...more
Parts of The Music Instinct are really well written and investigated. Philip Ball actually manages to give a really good account of the foundations for counterpoint - perhaps thanks to his ba...more
Quite stunning tour de force about pretty much everything one needs to know about how music impacts on the human mind. Based on state of the art research, classic studies as well as the author's own theories, it gives a very convincing account of the power of music and the fact that it is often our musical preferences that determine its impact, rather than some inherent quality in the music itself (hereby rubbishing the 'Mozart effect').
But the book does much more than that. It points out that t...more
But the book does much more than that. It points out that t...more
Why does music stir our emotions? To what degree is our reaction to music innate, and to what degree is it learned? These are the basic questions discussed here, with lots of psychology experiments that shed some light on the subject. The book shows that even non-musicians, people who do not overtly give music much thought, are experts in music. Subconsciously, we learn about musical styles based on probabilities; given a certain set of notes, we can guess what the next note might be. We use the...more
Elissa Schappell (Editor at Large): The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can’t Do Without It by David Byrne, front man of the most successful art school band ever, The Talking Heads, has written a book that manages to be both personal and scholarly and altogether fascinating. The man is a genius. On one page he explains why he became a performer, “I couldn’t talk to people face to face so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.” Then playing musicologist, he j...more
We dont really understand the neurological basis of musical appreciation, so here comes another book on why we listen to music from the musical perspective.It's a well written study across the technical basis of music but falls down in its appreciation of the neurological interface.If you have a musical background this is a good book for you to read, however, if you dont, forget it.It will come out as gobbledeegook and will confuse you further....Hey, it is worth a try
It's testament to Philip Ball's readability that I got through this book without skipping bits too badly. But there's a lot of (for a non-musician) technical detail here, and really you need to reading the book at a piano, or I suppose listening to an audio version with musical examples, to properly understand it.
I do all my reading on the tube, where pianos are frowned upon.
I do all my reading on the tube, where pianos are frowned upon.
Marvelously constructed series of essays on music and perception of music, drawing on everything from musical historical tradition to the physics of sound, theoretical inter-relations of notes and keys and tuning systems,, ethnomusicology, western music theory as advanced by a variety of analysts, and current neuroscience - all pulled together in a fascinating discussion. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of music; each relates to what went before but also stands on its own (which is for...more
Impressive book about the technical and psychological sides of music. Explained things very well, although some questions still remained unclear. Interesting, all the same.
Feb 10, 2011
Rohan Mehta
is currently reading it
so far getting very exciting. the science, psychology, sociology, philosophy and anthropology of music and it's various uses in our life.
Great book. Well organized and an exceptional introduction to a number of theories regarding the phenomenon of music.
far to technical
I digged
52% confusing.
35% already heard it before.
13% interesting music information.
100% eh.
35% already heard it before.
13% interesting music information.
100% eh.
I couldn't work out who this was aimed at; the overview of music theory seemed to be too rushed to really be comprehensible to someone without a good background knowledge, but the substance of the book really offered little beyond interesting anecdotes.
explains why we are affected by music (A: Don't know), and a lot of music theory.
Book was a present from Beatrice.
Loved it, but found it difficult to finish - waiting for the revelation, and the reveal was that there is no reveal. A bit of a let down
Book was a present from Beatrice.
Loved it, but found it difficult to finish - waiting for the revelation, and the reveal was that there is no reveal. A bit of a let down
Very stimulating, if slightly tough going for the muscial layperson. Like most pop-sci books it became progressively woolly towards the end as author either became bored or the topics veered into territory without much supporting data.
This might be amazing to a scholar of musicology, but I had to give up. I'm too much of a layman. I tried. I really did. It made my feel like a complete idiot.
Hmmm. A bit dry. Besides, I disagreed with him about a few value judgements and I am never wrong!
Sep 07, 2011
Lucy
rated it
1 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
rejected-unfinished,
non-fiction
way too technical theory for me - not what I was looking for
May 18, 2013
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Philip Ball (born 1962) is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It e...more
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Dec 27, 2012 12:39am