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The award-winning creator of the documentary The Music Instinct traces the efforts of visionary researchers and musicians to understand the biological foundations of music and its relationship to the brain and the physical world. 35,000 first printing.
Emotion is an integral aspect of musical experience; music has the power to take us on an emotional and intellectual journey, transforming the listener along the way. The aim of this book is to examine the nature of this journey, using a variety of perspectives. No one discipline can do justice to music's complexity if one is to have a sense of the whole musical experience, even if one has to break up the whole experience into various elements for the purposes of clarification. The issues raised have some relationship to psychoanalytic understanding and listening, as after all psychoanalysis is a listening discipline; its bedrock is listening to the patient's communications. While of course there are significant differences between understanding of, and listening to, a musical performance and a patient in a consulting room, the book explores common ground. Evidence from neuroscience indicates that music acts on a number of different brain sites, and that the brain is likely to be hard-wired for musical perception and appreciation, and this offers some kind of neurological substrate for musical experiences, or a parallel mode of explanation for music's multiple effects on individuals and groups. After various excursions into early mother/baby experiences, evolutionary speculations, and neuroscientific findings, the book's main emphasis is that it is the intensity of the artistic vision which is responsible for music's power. That intense vision invites the viewer or the listener into the orbit of the work, engaging us to respond to the particular vision in an essentially intersubjective relationship between the work and the observer or listener. This is the area of what we might call the human soul. Music can be described as having soul when it hits the emotional core of the listener. And, of course, there is 'soul music', whose basic rhythms reach deep into the body to create a powerful feeling of aliveness. One can truly say that music of all the arts is most able to give shape to the elusive human subject or soul.
There is accruing evidence which indicates that actively making music can contribute to the enhancement of a range of non-musical skills and lead to other beneficial outcomes. Research continues to explore the circumstances under which these benefits may occur. A recent review of the evidence from neuroscience suggests that early engagement may be important (before the age of seven), the length of musical engagement and commitment to it, the type of training, and the instrument learned. The quality of teaching is also crucial as to whether any benefits are realised. When teaching is poor there may be no benefits and negative outcomes. The common characteristics of musical programmes which are beneficial are emerging. They need to be highly interactive and enjoyable with opportunities for: developing new skills and performing; acquiring cultural capital; developing interpersonal bonds and solidarity in pursuing shared goals; on-going intensity and frequency of contact; developing mutual respect; and recognition and rewards for excellence. Receiving positive affirmation from others relating to musical activities, particularly performance is crucial in enhancing self-beliefs whatever the age of the participants. If performances are in high status cultural venues the impact is enhanced. The research undertaken to date suggests that: active engagement with making music should start early for the greatest benefits to be realised; engagement needs to be sustained over a long period of time to maximise the benefits; the activities need to include group work; opportunities need to be available for performance; the quality of teaching needs to be high; the curriculum needs to be broadly based including activities related to pitch and rhythm, singing, instrumental work, composition and improvisation, and the reading of notation; to have a positive impact on disaffected and at-risk young people, the musical activities need to be in a genre with which they can relate.
Customize your sound environment for a better quality of life • Shows how to use music and sound to reduce stress, enhance learning, and improve performance • Provides detailed guidelines for musicians and health care professionals • Includes a new 75-minute CD of psychoacoustically designed classical music What we hear, and how we process it, has a far greater impact on our daily living than we realize. From the womb to the moment we die we are surrounded by sound, and what we hear can either energize or deplete our nervous systems. It is no exaggeration to say that what goes into our ears can harm us or heal us. Joshua Leeds--a pioneer in the application of music for health, learning, and productivity--explains how sound can be a powerful ally. He explores chronic sensory overload and how auditory dysfunction often results in difficulties with learning and social interactions. He offers innovative techniques designed to invigorate auditory skills and provide balanced sonic environments. In this revised and updated edition of The Power of Sound, Leeds includes current research, extensive resources, analysis of the maturing field of soundwork and a look at the effect of sound on animals. He also provides a new 75-minute CD of psychoacoustically designed classical music for a direct experience of the effect of simplified sound on the nervous system. With new information on how to use music and sound for enhanced health and productivity, The Power of Sound provides readers with practical solutions for vital and sustained well-being.
Music has always been esteemed for its power to speak directly to our higher consciousness, a power founded in the purity of simple harmonic ratios. In this book, Alain Danielou traces the development of musical scales and tuning from their origins in both China and India, through their merging in ancient Greece, and on to the development of the Western traditions of modal and polyphonic music. Understanding these potent harmonic relationships offers a way for today's musicians to transcend the limitations of overly rationalistic music by drawing on its metaphysical roots.
Public Radio personality Tom Schnabel spotlights giants of the global genre like the late Sufi singer Nusrat Feteh Ali Kahn and this year's Grammy winner Milton Nascimiento, making "Rhythm Planet" both an antidote to the latest flavor of pop and an affirmation of music's power. 125 illustrations, 25 in color.
What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions. In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.
A pioneering music educator reveals how music can supercharge early childhood development--and how parents and educators can harness its power. Since opening her famed Parisian conservatory over three decades ago, Joan Koenig has led a global movement to improve children's lives and minds with the transformative power of music. With a curriculum and philosophy drawn from cutting-edge science, L'Ecole Koenig has educated and empowered even its youngest students, from baby Max, whose coordination and communication grow as he wiggles and coos along to targeted songs and dance, to five-year-old Constance, who nourishes her empathy, creativity, and memory while practicing music from other cultures. In The Musical Child, Koenig shares stories from her classrooms, along with tips about how to use the latest research during the critical years when children are most sensitive to musical exposure--and most receptive to its benefits. A gift for parents, caregivers, musicians, and educators, The Musical Child reveals the multiple ways music can help children thrive--and how, in the twenty-first century, its practice is more vital than ever.
