FS 9 - books - Fall 2019 Below is a list of the books on Reserve in Sherman Fairchild Library for FS9. The first is our required reading. An e-book version is available free from the library (stream or download). Then there is a long list (in RANDOM [!] order) of other books I think you'd find interesting. Some of my own favorites are near the top, while two that I only recently read are at the end. This list can serve as a starting point for your choice of a second book to read. If you want to choose something not on this list, please discuss it with me in advance of October 25. Your book choice is due by 1:00pm Friday, October 25, and deliver to me a note to me with the title of your choice and 50 to 100 words on why you chose it. Several of the books listed are more than would be reasonable to read cover-to-cover in the allotted time this term. Roughly 250 pages worth is something I can reasonably ask you to do. I'll discuss in class in general (and with students individually if asked) what would be a valuable partial read and the basis for an appropriate report (which is part of your assignment). In making your choice, you can peruse the books on the SFL shelf. (After people make their selections, I'll arrange to change their borrowing status so that books can be taken out for a few weeks.) You can also find reviews on-line, e.g., at amazon.com or from a standard search. I will be asking you to do a term project. And I will be encouraging you to do something that involves research, e.g., measuring and analyzing something musical, and will suggest various possibilities along the way. However, if absolutely no inspiration strikes, you can read a third book and write a report on it. The Reserve list offers some possibilities, but it could be something of your own choosing -- if you discuss it with me first. Items in this collection may be of value in other ways, as well. Several are just interesting, course or no course. You might want to read them totally on your own. Others might serve as valuable references for doing your term project, either as inspiration or for technical information. 1. This Is Your Brain on Music Daniel Levitin Dutton Adult ISBN: 0-525-94969-0 (paper: Plume/Penguin ISBN-13: 978-0-452-28852-2) first required reading e-book available in library And, in RANDOM [!] order, the books on reserve: 2. Perfecting Sound Forever Greg Milner Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux ISBN-13: 978-0-86547-938-8 a lively, engaging, readable history of recorded sound, full of anecdotes, characters, and satisfying technical explanations, offering insight into what were people thinking, what did they want, and what did they get. It bogs down a bit in gossip from a particular era of rock-n-roll, but that could be skimmed. 3. Capturing Sound Mark Katz UC Press ISBN-13: 978-0-520-26105-1 addresses directly the question: What has been the impact of recording technology on music? The answers offered are largely anecdotal. So it does not argue for particular conclusions. E.g., with so much recorded music readily available, many people play less themselves than they might have; many other people play more. It offers a fine description and history of music actually created by the possibilities of recording technology (e.g., sampling, scratching, etc.) 4. Musicophilia (Expanded Edition) Oliver Sacks Knopf ISBN-13: 978-0-676-97978-7 (paper: Vintage ISBN-13: 978-1-4000-3553-9) Sacks was a practicing physician (a neurologist) and a best selling author, including "Awakenings," the source of a 1990 movie of the same name. In this book he discusses individual cases of people with serious mental issues related to music. 5. Harmonious Triads Myles Jackson MIT Press ISBN-13: 978-0-262-60075-0 Written as professional history of science, this book focuses on 19th Century (mostly German) interconnections of basic science and scientists, music and musicians, and instrument builders. Acoustics was then forefront physics. Great physicists were engaged and made significant contributions to the art. 6. Acoustics and Psychoacoustics David Howard and Jamie Angus Focal Press ISBN-13: 978-0-240-52175-6 a frequently updated college level textbook appropriate for a serious course that covers in detail the territory staked out by This Is Your Brain on Music. 'Acoustics' is the physics of sound, and 'psychoacoustics' is the study of human sensation of sound in its physical, neurological, and mental aspects. 7. The Physics of Sound, 3rd ed. Richard Berg & David Stork Pearson, Addison-Wesley ISBN: 978-0131457898 (paper) a reader-friendly elementary undergraduate textbook that goes light on math and physics 8. The Science of Sound, 3rd ed. Thomas Rossing, Richard Moore, & Paul Wheeler Addison-Wesley ISBN-13: 978-0-8053-8565-6 an introductory textbook for liberal arts undergraduates 9. The Physics of Musical Instruments, 2nd ed. Neville Fletcher & Thomas Rossing Springer ISBN-13: 978-1-4419-3120-7 a research-grade survey with concise explanations and references to the current (c. 1990) scientific literature 10. The Science of String Instruments Thomas Rossing, ed. Springer ISBN-13: 978-1-4419-7110-4 like #9 above but with a narrower focus and from 2010, with individual chapters contributed by experts on the particular instruments 11. A Geometry of Music Dmitri Tymoczko Oxford University Press ISBN-13: 978-0-19-533667-2 a composer and professor of composition at Princeton describes his theory of the structure of music composition, transcending genres and using some modern mathematics to get at underlying relationships. A write-up in the Princeton Alumni Weekly (http://paw.princeton.edu/issues/2011/02/09/pages/6550/) caught my eye. His initial ideas were published in Science: http://dmitri.tymoczko.com/sciencearticle.html. I found this book hard going -- and haven't been able to finish it. Perhaps it's most appropriate for someone interested in an academic approach to music composition. (Despite the intriguing descriptions in reviews, interviews, and magazine coverage, the book itself is way beyond the math and music theory of most undergraduates ( Ñ- and me!). 12. The Singer of Tales Albert Lord, Stephen Mitchell, and Gregory Nagy Harvard University Press ISBN: 0-674-00283-0 The discovery (in the Balkans in the early 20th Century) of illiterate bards who sang many-hours-long epic tales by heart led a cultural anthropologist to analyze the Greek classic works of Homer as products of a similar process. In my own education, this book ranks among the important classics for understanding civilization, but it is also significant on the scale of individual's capacities, values, interests, etc. 13. The Korean Singer of Tales Marshall Pihl Harvard University Asia Center ISBN: 978-0674012745 I haven't read this one yet. However, when the Korean musical genre called pansori was first described to me, I immediately thought of its similarity to the singers described in Albert Lord's book (#12). The title makes it clear that the author saw the connection, too. 14. On Intelligence Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee St. Martin's Griffin ISBN: 978-0805078534 not about music in particular but about mind and brain, with a very ambitious but (to my mind) compelling hypothesis about what thinking really is; a natural follow-on to the first required reading and potentially of stupendous importance 15. Sinful Tunes and Spirituals Dena Epstein U of Illinois Press ISBN: 978-0252071508 a pioneering work on the lives and culture of Africans brought to the New World as slaves and of their descendants, up to the Civil War, with its main focus on music but including, also, much about the realities of daily life 16. Science of Percussion Instruments Thomas Rossing World Scientific ISBN: 981-02-4158-5 a slim book focussing on drums, cymbals, bells, etc. 17. The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind Seth Horowitz Bloomsbury ISBN: 978-1-60819-090-4 another musician turned neurobiologist (he researches bats) offers a popular, easy, and entertaining-to-read account, focused more generally on hearing and sound. He offers a remarkable perspective on its significance. 18. Why You Hear What You Hear Eric Heller Princeton University Press ISBN: 978-0691148595 a college-level textbook and reference, containing more than any one course could cover. It is intended for the interested, general student but often requires serious effort to follow the details. The subject is sound, more generally than music, but it offers great insights on how particular instruments work and particular instances of the book's title. 19. Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics Arthur Benade Oxford University Press (1976), also Dover reprint An encyclopedic effort to describe the basic science and many of the author's own developments in the field of musical acoustics. The elementary material is generally quite clear and accessible to the non-scientist. 20. Physics of the Piano Nicholas Giordano Oxford University Press ISBN: 978-0-19-954602-2 All aspects of piano physics are described for the interested layman in a style both very readable and serious from a science perspective. 21. Musimathics, vol. 1 Gareth Loy MIT Press ISBN: 978-0-262-12282-5 A musician, interested in composing electronic music played on computer-driven instruments, gathered into systematic form all the things he had to learn about the math and physics of sound and music to achieve his goals. The target audience is people like himself with no technical background but strong motivation. The presentation is clear, systematic, and very readable. (Volume 2 and the end of volume 1 get into computer programming that he regards as essential.) 22. The psychology of music (3rd ed.) ed. by Diana Deutsch Academic Press ISBN: 978-0-123-81460-9 A collection of up-to-date (as of 2013, which in this field is like yesterday) reviews of frontier topics in psychoacoustics. If you choose according to your interests (and abandon trying to read chapters that seem hopeless), it can be a very interesting read. 23. Physics and Music: the science of musical sound Harvey E. White & Donald H. White Dover ISBN: 978-0-486-77934-8 A college level textbook (i.e., assuming no science or math beyond high school) on musical acoustics. It covers the basics of sound, music, and musical instruments. It's actually both comprehensive and quite intelligible. I can across it recently and personally rate it higher than others of the genre. 24. Experiencing the Impossible Gustav Kuhn MIT Press ISBN: 978-0-262-03946-8 A lively, popular-style discussion of perception, mind, and the brain. There's no music here. Rather, the focus is on the connection of physical stimuli to our detectors and the processing that gives rise to perception. Magic plays on this process. This discussion by a professional neuroscientist and cognitive psychologist who is also an accomplished amateur magician describers the insights that can be gleaned from cases where perception goes awry. 25. Musical Illusions and Phantom Words Diana Deutsch Oxford U. Press ISBN: 978-0-190-20683-3 A really fine book for the interested layman by one of the pioneers of using digitally synthesized sound to unveil the subconscious mental processing of sound to produce perceptions. Again, "illusions" produce some of the most astounding and revealing examples. (You can point your cell phone at the page and hear for yourself examples she has recorded.) She also discusses very extensive and convincing work (done since "This Is Your BrainÉ") on the relation of speech to music. (Her own work is featured, but she graciously surveys the field.) *************************************** The following three books are for inspiration/help if you want to build something. They do not count as second (or third) "reading" books. Of course, there're tons of do-it-yourself info on-line. 26. The Harmonigraph Anthony Ashton Walker & Co. ISBN: 0-8027-1409-9 a tiny book describing a charming little machine for visualizing relationships between different frequencies. The author encourages you to build one of your own. On our short time scale, digital simulations would actually be feasible. 27. Musical Instrument Design Bart Hopkin See Sharp Press ISBN: 978-1-884365-08-9 a cheerful "how-to" book. Many others exist, and, of course, the Internet has an unlimited supply of do-it-yourself instrument construction. This one is not a bad place to start. 28. Handmade Music Factory Mike Orr Fox Chapel Publishing ISBN: 978-1-56523-559-5 great photos and a lot of do-it-yourself tips and details for (mostly) homemade stringed instruments *************************************** If you play guitar, are interested in learning, or are anywhere in-between, the following two books are highly recommended. They may even be the basis of or a start on a possible term project. IÕd be eager to discuss them. 29. The Liberty Guitar Method Harvey Reid Woodpecker Multimedia ISBN: 978-1630290160 Harvey Reid, for decades the champion of the partial capo, stumbled on a tuning and partial capo that allow a huge repertoire of chording using just two fingers, with simple patterns and easy reaches. The sounds are lush and sometimes amazingly novel. It puts sophisticated sounds within easy reach of the absolute beginner and opens dramatic possibilities to an experienced player. The math of possible tunings, capos, and fingering is totally unexplored and unknown. 30. The Liberty Tuning Chord Book Harvey Reid Woodpecker Multimedia ISBN: 978-1630290160 a reference book related to #22 *************************************** The following book was not well-received by students in the past. So I removed it from the suggested reading list and would rather it not be considered for a second (or third) reading book. (It wouldn't still be here if I hadn't liked it, but, if you pick it up, you're on your own.) 31. The Music Lesson (on an SFL Kindle, and, in principle, on SFL Reserve in paper) Victor Wooten Berkeley Trade ISBN: 978-0425220931 A jazz musician and master teacher encodes his view on playing music in a fanciful fantasy tale; not for the narrow-minded. Probably, people who'd have a hard time reading it are those who'd need it most. I enjoyed it, despite its occasional silliness. This one was deemed too elementary and too out-of-date by previous FS 9 students: 32. Science and Music James Jeans Dover Publications ISBN-13: 978-0-486-61964-4 A great physicist's attempt (generally considered successful) to explain the science of music to a lay audience; from the 1930's.