Eric Clarke - Böcker

The study of music is always, to some extent, "empirical," in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kind of empirical approaches familiar in the social sciences have played a relatively marginal role, being generally restricted to inter-disciplinary areas such as psychology and sociology of music. Rather than advocating a new kind of musicology, Empirical Musicology provides a guideto empirical approaches that are ready for incorporation into the contemporary musicologist's toolkit. Its nine chapters cover perspectives from music theory, computational musicology, ethnomusicology, and thepsychology and sociology of music, as well as an introduction to musical data analysis and statistics. This book shows that such approaches could play an important role in the further development of the discipline as a whole, not only through the application of statistical and modeling methods to musical scores but also--and perhaps more importantly--in terms of understanding music as a complex social practice.

The study of music is always, to some extent, "empirical," in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kinds of empirical approaches familiar in the social sciences have played a relatively marginal role, being generally restricted to inter-disciplinary areas such as psychology and sociology of music. Rather than advocating a new kind of musicology, Empirical Musicology provides a guideto empirical approaches that are ready for incorporation into the contemporary musicologist's toolkit. Its nine chapters cover perspectives from music theory, computational musicology, ethnomusicology, and thepsychology and sociology of music, as well as an introduction to musical data analysis and statistics. This book shows that such approaches could play an important role in the further development of the discipline as a whole, not only through the application of statistical and modeling methods to musical scores but also--and perhaps more importantly--in terms of understanding music as a complex social practice.

Music pervades everyday life - in homes, on trains and planes, in cars and shops, at births and deaths, at weddings and war, in concert halls, clubs, stadiums, and fields. In so many ways, music marks and orchestrates the ways in which people experience the world together. What is it that makes people want to live their lives to the sound of music, and why do so many of our most private experiences and most public spectacles incorporate - or even depend on - music? 'Music and Mind in Everyday Life' uses psychology to understand musical behaviour and experience in a range of circumstances, including composing and performing, listening and persuading, and teaching and learning. Starting from 'real world' examples of musical experiences, it critically examines the ways in which psychology can explain people's diverse experience of, and engagement with music, focusing on how music is used, acquired, and made in a range of familiar musical contexts. Using a framework of real and imagined musical scenarios, the book draws on a wide range of research in the psychology of music and music education.The book is organized into three central sections. In Making Music it tackles the psychology of playing, improvising, and composing music, understood as closely related and integrated activities. In Using Music the authors address the ways in which people listen to music, manage their emotions, moods, and identities with music, and use music for therapy, persuasion and social control. In Acquiring Music they consider music in human development, and in a range of more formal and informal educational contexts. The final chapter provides an overview of the history and preoccupations of music psychology as a discipline, and concludes with some remarks on the wider significance of music psychology for an understanding of human subjectivity. Drawing on a wide range of research in music psychology and music education, the book will make fascinating reading for musicians and music scholars, as well as those in the fields of music psychology and music education.

Consciousness has been described as one of the most mysterious things in the universe. Scientists, philosophers, and commentators from a whole range of disciplines can't seem to agree on what it is, generating a sizeable field of contemporary research known as consciousness studies. Following its forebear Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological and Cultural Perspectives (OUP, 2011), this volume argues that music can provide a valuable route to understanding consciousness, and also that consciousness opens up new perspectives for the study of music. It argues that consciousness extends beyond the brain, and is fundamentally related to selves engaged in the world, culture, and society.The book brings together an interdisciplinary line up of authors covering topics as wide ranging as cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalysis, philosophy and phenomenology, aesthetics, sociology, ethnography, and performance studies and musical styles from classic to rock, trance to Daoism, jazz to tabla, and deep listening to free improvisation. Music and Consciousness 2 will be fasinating reading for those studying or working in the field of musicology, those researching consciousness as well as cultural theorists, psychologists, and philosophers.

What is consciousness? Why and when do we have it? Where does it come from, and how does it relate to the lump of squishy grey matter in our heads, or to our material and social worlds? While neuroscientists, philosophers, psychologists, historians, and cultural theorists offer widely different perspectives on these fundamental questions concerning what it is like to be human, most agree that consciousness represents a 'hard problem'.The emergence of consciousness studies as a multidisciplinary discourse addressing these issues has often been associated with rapid advances in neuroscience-perhaps giving the impression that the arts and humanities have arrived late at the debating table. The longer historical view suggests otherwise, but it is probably true that music has been under-represented in accounts of consciousness. Music and Consciousness aims to redress the balance: its twenty essays offer a timely and multi-faceted contribution to consciousness studies, critically examining some of the existing debates and raising new questions.The collection makes it clear that to understand consciousness we need to do much more than just look at brains: studying music demonstrates that consciousness is as much to do with minds, bodies, culture, and history. Incorporating several chapters that move outside Western philosophical traditions, Music and Consciousness corrects any perception that the study of consciousness is a purely occidental preoccupation. And in addition to what it says about consciousness the volume also presents a distinctive and thought-provoking configuration of new writings about music.

Where is the academic study of music today, and what paths should it take into the future? Should we be looking at how music relates to society and constructs meaning through it, rather than how it transcends the social? Can we ‘remix’ our discipline and attempt to address all musics on an equal basis, without splitting ourselves in advance into subgroups of ‘musicologists’, ‘theorists’, and ‘ethnomusicologists’? These are some of the crucial issues that Nicholas Cook has raised since he emerged in the 1990s as one of the UK’s leading and most widely-read voices in critical musicology. In this book, collaborators and former students of Cook pursue these questions, and others raised by his work––from notation, historiography, and performance to the place of music in multimedia forms such as virtual reality and video games, analysing both how it can bring people together and the ways in which it has failed to do so.

From the cylinder to the download, the practice of music has been radically transformed by the development of recording and playback technologies. This Companion provides a detailed overview of the transformation, encompassing both classical and popular music. Topics covered include the history of recording technology and the businesses built on it; the impact of recording on performance styles; studio practices, viewed from the perspectives of performer, producer and engineer; and approaches to the study of recordings. The main chapters are interspersed by 'short takes' - short contributions by different practitioners, ranging from classical or pop producers and performers to record collectors. Combining basic information with a variety of perspectives on records and recordings, this book will appeal not only to students in a range of subjects from music to the media, but also to general readers interested in a fundamental yet insufficiently understood dimension of musical culture.

From the cylinder to the download, the practice of music has been radically transformed by the development of recording and playback technologies. This Companion provides a detailed overview of the transformation, encompassing both classical and popular music. Topics covered include the history of recording technology and the businesses built on it; the impact of recording on performance styles; studio practices, viewed from the perspectives of performer, producer and engineer; and approaches to the study of recordings. The main chapters are interspersed by 'short takes' - short contributions by different practitioners, ranging from classical or pop producers and performers to record collectors. Combining basic information with a variety of perspectives on records and recordings, this book will appeal not only to students in a range of subjects from music to the media, but also to general readers interested in a fundamental yet insufficiently understood dimension of musical culture.