This is Your Brain on Music
This is Your Brain on Music

Author: Daniel Levitin

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2019-07-04

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0241987369

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From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review

Josephine Lang
Josephine Lang

Author: Harald Krebs

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-01-04

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 0190291648

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Josephine Lang (1815-80) was one of the most gifted, respected, prolific, and widely published song composers of the nineteenth century, yet her life and works have remained virtually unknown. Now, this carefully researched, compelling, and poignant study recognizes the composer for her remarkable accomplishments. Based on years of study of unpublished letters, musical autographs, reviews, and the autobiographical poetry of Lang's husband, Reinhold Köstlin, the biographical portions of the book offer a stunning portrait of the composer as a woman and an artist. In-depth musical analyses interwoven with the biography will be illuminating to scholars and to musicians of all skill levels. The analyses reveal Lang's sensitivity to her chosen poetic texts, as well as the validity of her claim that her songs were her diary; the authors demonstrate that many of the songs are directly connected to the events of Lang's life. The analyses are illustrated by an abundance of musical examples, including a number of complete songs. A companion website, featuring 30 songs by Lang recorded by the authors, complements the text.

Music as Biology
Music as Biology

Author: Dale Purves

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-02-01

Total Pages: 115

ISBN-13: 0674972961

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The universality of musical tones has long fascinated philosophers, scientists, musicians, and ordinary listeners. Why do human beings worldwide find some tone combinations consonant and others dissonant? Why do we make music using only a small number of scales out of the billions that are possible? Why do differently organized scales elicit different emotions? Why are there so few notes in scales? In Music as Biology, Dale Purves argues that biology offers answers to these and other questions on which conventional music theory is silent. When people and animals vocalize, they generate tonal sounds—periodic pressure changes at the ear which, when combined, can be heard as melodies and harmonies. Human beings have evolved a sense of tonality, Purves explains, because of the behavioral advantages that arise from recognizing and attending to human voices. The result is subjective responses to tone combinations that are best understood in terms of their contribution to biological success over evolutionary and individual history. Purves summarizes evidence that the intervals defining Western and other scales are those with the greatest collective similarity to the human voice; that major and minor scales are heard as happy or sad because they mimic the subdued and excited speech of these emotional states; and that the character of a culture’s speech influences the tonal palette of its traditional music. Rethinking music theory in biological terms offers a new approach to centuries-long debates about the organization and impact of music.

The Poetics of Rock
The Poetics of Rock

Author: Albin Zak

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2001-11-20

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0520232240

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This title provides a fascinating exploration of recording consciousness and compositional process from the perspective of those who make records.

The Canadian Style
The Canadian Style

Author: Public Works and Government Services Canada Translation Bureau

Publisher: Dundurn

Published: 1997-09-01

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1554883172

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The revised edition of The Canadian Style is an indispensable language guide for editors, copywriters, students, teachers, lawyers, journalists, secretaries and business people – in fact, anyone writing in the English language in Canada today. It provides concise, up-to-date answers to a host of questions on abbreviations, hyphenation, spelling, the use of capital letters, punctuation and frequently misused or confused words. It deals with letter, memo and report formats, notes, indexes and bibliographies, and geographical names. It also gives techniques for writing clearly and concisely, editing documents and avoiding stereotyping in communications. There is even an appendix on how to present French words in an English text.

Sound FX
Sound FX

Author: Alex Case

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2012-07-26

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 113612358X

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FX introduces today's up and coming musician to the fantastic creative potential of the most popular instrument today- the home studio. Explaining the basic and advanced signal processing techniques used in professional music production (EQ, compression, delay, reverb etc), using real world popular music examples and an emphasis on the perceptual results and musical value of these effects, FX teaches the Recording Musician how to achieve professional production standards and maximise their creative potential. The accompanying website www.soundfx-companion.com includes audio exaples of FX featured in the book. Features: A chapter dedicated to each key effect: Distortion Equalization Compression and Limiting Delay Expansion and Gating Pitch Shift Reverb Volume More than 100 line drawings and illustrations. Accompanying website featuring examples of all FX covered in the book. Discography of FX at the end of each relevant chapter. From the Sound FX Intro: The most important music of our time is recorded music. The recording studio is its principle musical instrument. The recording engineers and music producers who create the music we love know how to use signal processing equipment to capture the work of artists, preserving realism or altering things wildly, as appropriate. While the talented, persistent, self-taught engineer can create sound recordings of artistic merit, more productive use of the studio is achieved through study, experience and collaboration. This book defines the technical basis of the most important signal processing effects used in the modern recording studio, highlights the key drivers of sound quality associated with each, shares common production techniques used by recording engineers with significant experience in the field, references many of the touchstone recordings of our time, and equips the reader with the knowledge needed to comfortably use effects devices correctly, and, more importantly, to apply these tools creatively.

Global Voices
Global Voices

Author: Joseph O'Beirne Milner

Publisher:

Published: 1994

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13:

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This book presents essays that reflect the dialogue and the spirit of conversation of the 1990 International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) Conference in Auckland, New Zealand. The book begins with some of the impressions of the IFTE conference held by the classroom teachers, school administrators, writers, and scholars who attended it. Language diversity in the classroom is the focus of several essays in the second part of the book. Each essay in the second part of the book is followed by a response. The pairing of essays continues in the third section of the book, where issues such as who controls curricula and who sets the standards for curricula are addressed. The third part of the book also discuses national curriculum movements in New Zealand and the United Kingdom; English as a Second Language pedagogies; and international underpinnings of the whole language movement. The initial essay in each set is a response to a paper presented at the conference; the second is the original presenter's reply to the author of the first essay. The fourth part of the book presents essays about the history and future of IFTE conferences, looking forward especially to the 1995 conference to be held in New York City. (RS)

Power, Conflict and Criminalisation
Power, Conflict and Criminalisation

Author: Phil Scraton

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-10-22

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 1134101120

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A unique, accessible text that introduces a broad readership to critical research into 'crime', 'deviance' and conflict through contemporary, in-depth case studies. Tracing the authoritarian legacy of policing civil disturbances, harsh regimes of punishment, deaths in custody and prison protest, diverse issues such as the demonisation of children, the imprisonment of women and the 'war on terror' are explored and analysed.