11 comments

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  Manny Maher

  1 year ago

  Nice review, Kathleen (not that I am biased or anything). However, I must quibble with that silly list at the end. How could he choose "Roll Over Beethoven" as the Beatles song, when it is essentially a Little Richard cover? I would substitute "Can't Buy Me Love" or possibly "Helter Skelter".
  And "Wonderful Tonight"?? That's not rock and roll. How about "Layla"? (the electric version of course).
  "Little Red Corvette"? Great song, but I would suggest "Kiss".
  And the Sex Pistols? Come on. Kick those no-talents off the list altogether, and add the Rolling Stones: "Bitch".
  That would be a much stronger list, though Lord knows why he didn't make it seven songs (a more symbolically potent number). Then you could add "Come as You Are" by Nirvana.
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  Kathleen Maher

  1 year ago

  The writer said that Pierce, the lecturer, who was an august inventor at AT&T and an authority at Stanford was especially impressed by the timbre in "Little Red Corvette," where the instruments, including the singer's voice, created a unified sound.
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  Brutus

  1 year ago

  I read a slightly older book by Robert Jourdain called Music, the Brain and Ecstasy: How Music Captures Our Imagination. Based on your review of This is Your Brain on Music, they sound very similar. While the neuroscience underlying our sensual and emotional response to music may be interesting to some, I'm left thinking "well, duh, just about anyone could tell you that intuitively." Also, the inevitability of assembling lists of any sort invites so much nitpicking over the choices that the point of the list tends to be lost. However, the lists are not intended to be prescriptive; they're merely illustrative. So nitpick is you want, but I daresay you're missing the point.
  
  The overall thrust, that musical organization stimulates and enhances organized thinking, runs somewhat counter to the commonly held intuition that music first and foremost evokes emotion. It's a case where the end results don't fully agree or correlate with the underlying perceptual apparatus as revealed by the science. But no matter. The pleasures derived from music need little scientific explanation to be compelling. The real payoff, of course, is getting to know the music on its own terms and understanding the connections between things, which even among listeners may require those 10,000 hours mentioned in the book.
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  M.A. Peel

  1 year ago

  Not to be reductive, but somehow it all goes back to Bach, the most towering of music's towering geniuses.
  
  I am learning Bach's Mass in B Minor with a small semi-professional group, and believe me, my gray matter is firing on all sides.
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  Dan Leo

  1 year ago

  But what does it say about your brain when you're middle-aged and still like to listen to the absurd crap you listened to when you were eighteen? Right now I'm listening to Technicolor Web of Sound 60s Psychedelic Web Radio (www.techwebsound.com)
  and lovin' it. With what's left of my brain.
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  Kathleen Maher

  1 year ago

  Brutus, hello! Some people take real pleasure in seeing their intuitions confirmed by MIRs. The author finds that interesting but never stops asking why some music evokes greater emotion and sensation in some people than others. Some people care about music to the point of obsession. The mystery remains locked inside the mind/body quandary.
  He offers lists and examples and knows so many famous people that the book veers from pop history, musicology, and neuroscience. Having participated in some of the 10,000 hour studies, he suspects 10,000 as being convenient but not arbitrary. An expert listener does need to listen approximately that long to know the music.
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  Kathleen Maher

  1 year ago

  MA Peel, you're an inspiration. Do you sing the Mass? I've heard people play versions or pieces on the flute.
  
  Dan, If you're listening to it, those early cues can take you back to when you didn't care if it was absurd. Music plays with time so well it even alters it, if temporarily.
  His point about middle-age, I think, was that it's not the best time to take up the violin. You learned to listen to music in childhood, though, and can continue to listen and learn to love and hate all kinds of music whenever you want.
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  M.A. Peel

  1 year ago

  Kathleen, yes, I'm singing the alto part. Bach wrote some wildly difficult lines for the alto and basses in that Mass, considered the summation of his musical life.
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  Kathleen Maher

  1 year ago

  Altos are my favorite. To be truthful, I'm not that familiar with Bach's Mass in B minor. I'm familiar with the Mass and have heard choirs sing some selections from Bach on special occasions. It was always for once glorious.
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  OutOfContext

  1 year ago

  A lot of people seem to be critical of looking at things like music from a scientific angle, as though it will ruin the romance of the thing (a fundamentally religious reaction, in a way). I love the subject and find the more I know, the deeper and more fantastic the mystery. Looks like a worthwhile read. Thanks for letting us know about it.
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  Kathleen Maher

  1 year ago

  OutOfContext, That concern or myth is one of the strongest arguments throughout the book. It's why the writer entered academia in the first place: the more we know, the greater the beauty, the deeper the mystery.
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