On his book Music, Math, and Mind: The Physics and Neuroscience of Music
Cover Interview of April 21, 2021
In a nutshell
Music, Math, and Mind is written for musicians and
music lovers, and will take them through a journey that uncovers the science of
music and sound. Because artists and art lovers rarely have a good familiarity
in math beyond multiplication, and even less in physics and biology, the book
finds ways to make even difficult concepts in physics completely understandable
with only grade school level math. Indeed, by the end of the first chapter,
readers can derive their own musical scale. This is not meant to be a typical
popular science book of short anecdotes to read in an afternoon at the beach,
but a book that readers come back to for a long time, each time understanding
more.
The book tackles some basic questions on math, physics, and
the nervous system that are not discussed in music theory classes: Which sounds
are in-and out-of-tune? Is it true that scales are really never in tune? What
are overtones and harmonic sounds? Sound is formed from air waves that move in
space and time. What shapes are these sounds, how big, fast, and heavy? How are
sound waves different in air, under water or in the earth? Why do voices and
instruments sound different from each other? Why do larger instruments play
lower pitches? We have only two eardrums and two ears, how can we identify many
simultaneous sounds in a band or in conversations (the “cocktail party
problem”)? Are there mathematical definitions of noise and consonance? How does
the brain understand what it is listening to? How are emotions carried by
music? How do other animals hear and make sound differently than us?
If these issues are not taught to musicians and music
lovers, it is not from lack of curiosity. Artists have of plenty of that, and
this book is for them.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
Music, Math, and Mind is written for musicians and music lovers, and will take them through a journey that uncovers the science of music and sound. Because artists and art lovers rarely have a good familiarity in math beyond multiplication, and even less in physics and biology, the book finds ways to make even difficult concepts in physics completely understandable with only grade school level math. Indeed, by the end of the first chapter, readers can derive their own musical scale. This is not meant to be a typical popular science book of short anecdotes to read in an afternoon at the beach, but a book that readers come back to for a long time, each time understanding more.
The book tackles some basic questions on math, physics, and the nervous system that are not discussed in music theory classes: Which sounds are in-and out-of-tune? Is it true that scales are really never in tune? What are overtones and harmonic sounds? Sound is formed from air waves that move in space and time. What shapes are these sounds, how big, fast, and heavy? How are sound waves different in air, under water or in the earth? Why do voices and instruments sound different from each other? Why do larger instruments play lower pitches? We have only two eardrums and two ears, how can we identify many simultaneous sounds in a band or in conversations (the “cocktail party problem”)? Are there mathematical definitions of noise and consonance? How does the brain understand what it is listening to? How are emotions carried by music? How do other animals hear and make sound differently than us?
If these issues are not taught to musicians and music lovers, it is not from lack of curiosity. Artists have of plenty of that, and this book is for them.