How We Hear Music: The Relationship between Music and the Hearing Mechanism

A survey of intervals and scales, tone pitch, loudness and time in Western music raises many questions about the hearing mechanism and throws doubt on the conventional role of harmonics. James Beament's account of how musical sounds are coded by the ear and the brain's processing units, provides answers to most of these questions. It concludes that music started with simple instruments which voices imitated, and that the need to know sound direction determined the characteristics of hearing. This book will interest students, practising musicians and music psychologists, and assumes no scientific knowledge.

CONTENIDO

-List of figures
-List of tables
-Preface
1. Preliminaries
2. Aural archaeology
3. Hearing selects intervals
4. The beguiling harmonic theory
5. The imitating voice
6. Hearing simultaneous pitches
7. Patterns in harmony
8. Loudness
9. Music through the hearing machine
10. A sense of direction
11. Time and rhythm
12. Conclusions
-Appendices
-Bibliography
-Index