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How Music Works Publisher Little Brown and Company John Powell Books

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How Music Works Publisher Little Brown and Company John Powell Books

Did you know that not all instruments produce notes, or that 90% of the sounds produced by a band can be thrown away with no effect on your perception of the music? I didn’t.

How Music Works is a short and wide-ranging description of what music is, not just in terms of musical conventions (scales, keys, notation, terminology of western classical music) and traditions, but also what it is physically, how it differs from other sounds, how we respond to it physiologically, and how it’s recorded. The author John Powell is a British academic with a background in both physics and composition. The hardback includes a CD with Powell playing some short guitar tunes to illustrate his points, and the text includes the names of various pieces which are well-suited to illustrate other points.

Powell begins with the physics of music and then moves more into its conventions, playing, and recording. Notes differ from other sounds in that they have fairly simple cyclical variations in air pressure Some music instruments, such as most drums, don’t produce notes, but rather noises, which have a much more complicated variations in air pressure; as a result noises tend to die away quickly and thus are often useful for conveying aspects of rhythm. Although there is a primary note produced by most instruments, other notes at different pitches are produced simultaneously; these are the harmonics, which are related to the primary note by simple fractions. When one pitch is twice that of another, the interval is called an octave; we perceive notes separated by an octave as nearly identical. Even when two different instruments are playing the same primary, they have different harmonics and thus can be distinguished: a particular instrument’s harmonics are referred to as its timbre. Some of these harmonics are outside the range of human hearing; one reason an MP3 file takes up less computer memory than the original recording is that these unheard harmonics are removed.

The loudness of a sound can be measured in Decibels, which is a logarithmic scale of the amount of energy associated with a sound rather than loudness per se; Powell finds it unsatisfactory in that it doesn’t account for the fact that the pitch also influences how loud or soft a sound is perceived to be, and that it is difficult to use, and thus prefers a less commonly used unit called Sones. The relative loudness of different instruments playing as a means that we can’t always hear all of the instruments; MP3 files also remove these unheard sounds.
In western music, an octave is divided into twelve notes, but generally only seven notes are used at a time. This seven note system is a development of a much more widely used five note (pentatonic) system. Powell gives detailed instructions how to tune someone else’s guitar to the anhemitonic pentatonic scale, a phrase I hope to find an excuse to utter. Major and minor keys developed from and largely replaced several modes, which were earlier ways of using seven notes in an octave in western music. It appears that major and minor keys are universally perceived as bright/definitive/happy or dark/tentative/sad, though culture influences the depth of this perception. Powell provides helpful explanations of the differences between major and minor scales, and the equal temperament system usually used, which allows for pleasant harmonies and the ability to start a tune at any note, at the cost of not having simple numerical relationships between notes.

Rhythm turned out to be a more complicated subject than I realized, consisting of tempo, meter, and rhythm proper. Tempo is the number of beats per measure, and was the thing I clearly didn’t understand; it doesn’t follow the rhythm of the song, or the duration of the notes, but is very regular one-two-three-four, etc. Meter is which beat receives emphasis, and rhythm proper is how long and short notes are arranged in temporal sequence. Tempo and meter are the important parts of rhythm in dancing. Western music tends to have simpler rhythms than other musical traditions, and it is possible to have multiple rhythms in one piece, something more common in non-western music. Powell here explains and uses standard musical notation to illustrate the concepts.

I found Powell’s definition, or rather definitions, of harmony confusing. Harmony certainly involves more than one note being played at a time: but doesn’t require a chord to be played? On page 103 he seems to suggest that harmony requires a chord to be played, but that definition doesn’t make sense to me given that he devotes the rest of the chapter to arpeggios and counterpoint, with a mention of drones. Western music is more interested in harmonies than other musical traditions; to have harmonies that don’t drive off the listener, Western music tends to have simpler melodies in consequence.

Aside from the confusion over the definition of harmony, I greatly enjoyed the book and found it remarkable that the author had managed to cover so many topics at enough depth to provide satisfying explanations. Powell makes good use of figures and little math in his explanations. I first posted an almost identical review at goodreads.com

Product details Hardcover ASIN B004NTK5CC

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How Music Works Publisher Little Brown and Company John Powell Books Reviews

Did you know that not all instruments produce notes, or that 90% of the sounds produced by a band can be thrown away with no effect on your perception of the music? I didn’t.

How Music Works is a short and wide-ranging description of what music is, not just in terms of musical conventions (scales, keys, notation, terminology of western classical music) and traditions, but also what it is physically, how it differs from other sounds, how we respond to it physiologically, and how it’s recorded. The author John Powell is a British academic with a background in both physics and composition. The hardback includes a CD with Powell playing some short guitar tunes to illustrate his points, and the text includes the names of various pieces which are well-suited to illustrate other points.

Powell begins with the physics of music and then moves more into its conventions, playing, and recording. Notes differ from other sounds in that they have fairly simple cyclical variations in air pressure Some music instruments, such as most drums, don’t produce notes, but rather noises, which have a much more complicated variations in air pressure; as a result noises tend to die away quickly and thus are often useful for conveying aspects of rhythm. Although there is a primary note produced by most instruments, other notes at different pitches are produced simultaneously; these are the harmonics, which are related to the primary note by simple fractions. When one pitch is twice that of another, the interval is called an octave; we perceive notes separated by an octave as nearly identical. Even when two different instruments are playing the same primary, they have different harmonics and thus can be distinguished a particular instrument’s harmonics are referred to as its timbre. Some of these harmonics are outside the range of human hearing; one reason an MP3 file takes up less computer memory than the original recording is that these unheard harmonics are removed.

The loudness of a sound can be measured in Decibels, which is a logarithmic scale of the amount of energy associated with a sound rather than loudness per se; Powell finds it unsatisfactory in that it doesn’t account for the fact that the pitch also influences how loud or soft a sound is perceived to be, and that it is difficult to use, and thus prefers a less commonly used unit called Sones. The relative loudness of different instruments playing as a means that we can’t always hear all of the instruments; MP3 files also remove these unheard sounds.
In western music, an octave is divided into twelve notes, but generally only seven notes are used at a time. This seven note system is a development of a much more widely used five note (pentatonic) system. Powell gives detailed instructions how to tune someone else’s guitar to the anhemitonic pentatonic scale, a phrase I hope to find an excuse to utter. Major and minor keys developed from and largely replaced several modes, which were earlier ways of using seven notes in an octave in western music. It appears that major and minor keys are universally perceived as bright/definitive/happy or dark/tentative/sad, though culture influences the depth of this perception. Powell provides helpful explanations of the differences between major and minor scales, and the equal temperament system usually used, which allows for pleasant harmonies and the ability to start a tune at any note, at the cost of not having simple numerical relationships between notes.

Rhythm turned out to be a more complicated subject than I realized, consisting of tempo, meter, and rhythm proper. Tempo is the number of beats per measure, and was the thing I clearly didn’t understand; it doesn’t follow the rhythm of the song, or the duration of the notes, but is very regular one-two-three-four, etc. Meter is which beat receives emphasis, and rhythm proper is how long and short notes are arranged in temporal sequence. Tempo and meter are the important parts of rhythm in dancing. Western music tends to have simpler rhythms than other musical traditions, and it is possible to have multiple rhythms in one piece, something more common in non-western music. Powell here explains and uses standard musical notation to illustrate the concepts.

I found Powell’s definition, or rather definitions, of harmony confusing. Harmony certainly involves more than one note being played at a time but doesn’t require a chord to be played? On page 103 he seems to suggest that harmony requires a chord to be played, but that definition doesn’t make sense to me given that he devotes the rest of the chapter to arpeggios and counterpoint, with a mention of drones. Western music is more interested in harmonies than other musical traditions; to have harmonies that don’t drive off the listener, Western music tends to have simpler melodies in consequence.

Aside from the confusion over the definition of harmony, I greatly enjoyed the book and found it remarkable that the author had managed to cover so many topics at enough depth to provide satisfying explanations. Powell makes good use of figures and little math in his explanations. I first posted an almost identical review at goodreads.com