How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond » (Book and CD)

John Powell holds a PhD in physics from Imperial College at London University. He has taught physics at the University of Nottingham and the University of Lulea in Sweden. In 2003, he earned a master's degree in music composition from the University of Sheffield in Great Britain.

What makes a musical note different from any other sound? How can you tell if you have perfect pitch? Why do 10 violins sound only twice as loud as one? Do your Bob Dylan albums sound better on CD or vinyl? John Powell, a scientist and musician, answers these questions and many more in HOW MUSIC WORKS, an intriguing and original guide to acoustics. In a clear, accessible, and engaging voice, Powell fascinates the reader with his delightful descriptions of the science and psychology lurking beneath the surface of music. With lively discussions of the secrets behind harmony, timbre, keys, chords, loudness, musical composition, and more, HOW MUSIC WORKS will be treasured by music lovers everywhere.

Publishers Weekly

In this enlightening book, Powell, a British scholar and professor, sets out to explain how we experience music. He selects examples from all manner of disciplines--music composition, simple mathematics, physics, engineering, history--and offers his insights, such as how Bach’s Prelude in C Major is similar to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” In the first half, he defines the elements of music like pitch, frequency, harmony, rhythm, and decibel. Building on this foundation, Powell hits his stride in the book’s second half as he demonstrates, using both classical and pop music, how musicians create sound and how we listen to it. Some of the information can get scientific but Powell conveys the material with enough humor (“I think the decibel was invented in a bar, late one night, by a committee of drunken electrical engineers who wanted to take revenge on the world for their total lack of dancing partners”) and cocktail party facts (“when we listen to Mozart’s music nowadays, we are hearing it a semitone higher than he would have intended”) to keep the book light and fun. Included in the book is a 10-track CD. (Oct.)

1 So, What is Music, Anyway? 1

2 What is Perfect Pitch and Do I Have It? 11

3 Notes and Noises 20

4 Xylophones and Saxophones: Same Notes but Different Sounds 39

5 Instrumental Break 48

6 How Loud is Loud? 81

7 Harmony and Cacophony 101

8 Weighing Up Scales 118

9 The Self-Confident Major and the Emotional Minor 141

10 I Got Rhythm 182

11 Making Music 203

12 Listening to Music 230

Fiddly Details 244

A Naming and Identifying Intervals 244

B Using the Decibel System 246

C Tuning an Instrument to the Pentatonic Scale 248

D Calculating Equal Temperament 250

E The Notes of the Major Keys 253

Bibliography 255

Acknowledgments 259

Index 261