How We Hear Music

The Relationship Between Music and the Hearing Mechanism

By: James Beament

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Paperback | 1 April 2003

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Paperback
192 Pages

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Dimensions(cm)
23.39 x 15.6 x 1.04

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Choice Outstanding Academic Title Informed by a broad expertise comprehending all of the disciplines for which human hearing is pertinent. Beament('s) model for the hearing of music...is not only the most speculative section of the book but also the most brilliant. Recommended warmly...it should find a niche in virtually every college, university and professional music library. CHOICE Hearing selected music. By surveying what it selected as western music, this book covers much of the acoustics a student needs, without mathematics or scientific background. It raises many questions about intervals, scales, tone, pitch, loudness and time, and throws doubt on the role conventionally ascribed to harmonics; an account of how musical sounds are coded by the ear and the brain's processing units, provides answers to most of the 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 should interest students, practising musicians and music psychologists. The late Professor Sir JAMES BEAMENT was a distinguished scientist and musician, who taught and examined music students at Cambridge University.

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Informed by a broad expertise comprehending all of the disciplines for which human hearing is pertinent. Beament['s] model for the hearing of music...is not only the most speculative section of the book but also the most brilliant. Recommended warmly... it should find a niche in virtually every college, university and professional music library. * CHOICE *

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List of figures	p. x
List of tables	p. xi
Preface and acknowledgements	p. xiii
Preliminaries	p. 1
Musical arithmetic	p. 1
Musical sensations	p. 1
Sound	p. 3
Pitch and frequency	p. 5
Transients	p. 6
Auralising	p. 7
Representing intervals	p. 8
About hearing	p. 8
Time in music	p. 10
Aural archaeology	p. 12
The origins of music: making noises	p. 12
Noise-making artefacts	p. 13
Sustained-pitch instruments	p. 14
Hearing selects intervals	p. 17
Introduction	p. 17
The pentatonic scale	p. 18
The pitch ratios	p. 18
Derivation of the pentatonic scale	p. 20
Using the scale	p. 22
The octave	p. 22
The extension of the pentatonic scale	p. 24
The heptatonic scales	p. 26
A visually determined scale	p. 26
Drones	p. 28
The historical puzzle	p. 28
Non-harmonic scales	p. 30
The beguiling harmonic theory	p. 32
Helmholtz resonators	p. 32
Instrument harmonics	p. 34
The flaw in the harmonic theory	p. 35
The real questions about harmonics	p. 38
Tone and timbre	p. 40
Identifying instrument sounds	p. 41
Defining tone	p. 41
Timbre and discriminating pitch	p. 43
Investigating tone	p. 44
The harmonic contribution to pitch	p. 45
Harmonicity and tone	p. 46
The selection of instrumental tone	p. 47
Timbre and the player	p. 48
Vibrato	p. 49
The susceptibility of hearing	p. 49
Harmonic noise and the seventh fairytale	p. 51
Conclusion	p. 52
The imitating voice	p. 54
Hearing simultaneous pitches	p. 58
The medieval situation	p. 58
The organ	p. 58
The discovery of a twelve-pitch scale	p. 59
The tuning problem	p. 60
The just scale	p. 62
Selecting intervals	p. 62
Harpsichord interval sensations	p. 63
Beats	p. 64
How do we judge intervals?	p. 67
Interval pitch patterns	p. 68
The reality of simultaneous intervals	p. 70
Equal-temperament	p. 71
The piano	p. 72
Consecutive intervals	p. 74
Intonation and pitch stability	p. 74
Patterns in harmony	p. 76
The basis of harmony	p. 76
The harmonic sensation	p. 79
Harmonic shorthands	p. 80
Learning harmony	p. 81
Other simultaneous-pitch phenomena	p. 81
The three-tones paradox	p. 83
Can we hear harmonics?	p. 83
Loudness	p. 85
The basic dynamic scale	p. 85
Loudness and frequency	p. 86
Loudness and tone	p. 87
Loudness and pitch	p. 87
Varying loudness	p. 88
Music through the hearing machine	p. 89
The questions	p. 89
The evolutionary background	p. 90
An overview of the hearing system	p. 92
The hearing range	p. 94
The sound receiver	p. 95
The travelling wave	p. 99
Signalling loudness	p. 100
The hair cell's limitation	p. 101
The discovery of the sound code	p. 102
Pitch discrimination	p. 105
Minimum duration for pitch	p. 106
Producing a pure-tone sensation	p. 106
Signalling sound with harmonics	p. 108
The generation of hiss and buzz	p. 111
Low and high frequencies	p. 112
The creation of the pitch sensation	p. 113
The creation of tone	p. 114
Simple simultaneous intervals	p. 115
Other simultaneous intervals	p. 116
Chords	p. 117
Harmonicity	p. 118
Conclusions about intervals	p. 118
Consecutive pitches	p. 119
Polyphonic music	p. 119
The general musical pitch phenomenon	p. 120
Anomalies in pitch perception	p. 121
A really aberrant hearing system	p. 122
Tracking and the three-tones paradox	p. 123
A sense of direction	p. 124
Introduction	p. 124
Signalling loudness	p. 125
The direction-finding system	p. 127
The timing system	p. 130
Sensing transients	p. 131
Noise amalgamation	p. 132
The general characteristcs of hearing	p. 133
Space sound	p. 135
Conclusions	p. 137
Time and rhythm	p. 139
Introduction	p. 139
The origin of time-patterned sound	p. 140
Time in pitched music	p. 141
Time and notation	p. 142
Obtaining the pulse	p. 142
The conductor	p. 142
Time and the beginner	p. 143
Variations on a pulse	p. 144
You can't write it down	p. 145
Metronomes and click tracks	p. 146
What is rhythm?	p. 146
Conclusions	p. 147
We all hear the same thing	p. 147
The origins of music	p. 148
Memory	p. 150
Other pitch systems	p. 153
Believing is hearing	p. 153
Pleasure and wonder	p. 154
Appendices	p. 155
Interval names
Selecting pentatonic pitches	p. 155
An alternative dodecaphonic route	p. 155
Pitch discrimination and intervals	p. 156
Tuning a keyboard by beats	p. 158
The abominable cent	p. 158
Repetition rates	p. 159
Anatomical evolution	p. 159
The primitive processor?	p. 162
The ear structures	p. 163
Hair cells	p. 164
Recording auditory nerve pulses	p. 164
The irregular distribution of pulses	p. 164
The length of resonant vibrations	p. 165
The place theory	p. 166
Loudness	p. 167
Memory storage and recovery of pitches	p. 168
Signalling direction	p. 169
Words and scents	p. 170
Bibliography	p. 171
Index	p. 173
Table of Contents provided by Rittenhouse. All Rights Reserved.

How We Hear Music

The Relationship Between Music and the Hearing Mechanism

At a Glance

Paperback

Industry Reviews

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How to return your order

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