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The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
Why have all human cultures - today and throughout history - made music? Why does music excite such rich emotion? And how do we make sense of musical sound? These are questions that have, until recently, remained mysterious. Now "The Music Instinct" explores how the latest research in music psychology and brain science is piecing together the puzzle of how our minds understand and respond to music. Ranging from Bach fugues to nursery rhymes to heavy rock, Philip Ball interweaves philosophy, mathematics, history and neurology to reveal why music moves us in so many ways. Without requiring any specialist knowledge, "The Music Instinct" will both deepen your appreciation of the music you love, and open doors to music that once seemed alien, dull or daunting, offering a passionate plea for the importance of music in education and in everyday life.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
138 people are currently reading
4162 people want to read
About the author
Philip Ball
54 books501 followersPhilip Ball (born 1962) is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma. The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
February 5, 2013
Wow, i'm super excited to review this book. Overall, it was a really gratifying experience to read about music in such a scientific yet emotional manner. I first started this book on a plane, and four hours later I didnt realize I had landed. The first part is really breathtaking. Around the middle, it becomes a little challenging because it defines the ease with which you can pusrue depending on your background. If you have received some training in music, the theoretical part is just a refreshment, if not, the book is so well-written that it will take you a little more time to grasp the initial concepts but keep you in the loop for the whole book without feeling overwhelemed. The author also adds that most of the pieces he discussses are available online with provided links so you would really feel what you are reading. This book is an argumentative one, many theories and points of view are exposed while the author keeps his in the background. The theme distribution and chronology is just perfect. For all the music enthusiats, this book is worth it! But I mean serious enthusiasts that are willing to persevere through a piece yo realize how rewarding it is in the end. Highly highly recommended!!!
March 31, 2011
Why does music stir our emotions? To what degree is our reaction to music innate, and to what degree is it learned? These are the basic questions discussed here, with lots of psychology experiments that shed some light on the subject. The book shows that even non-musicians, people who do not overtly give music much thought, are experts in music. Subconsciously, we learn about musical styles based on probabilities; given a certain set of notes, we can guess what the next note might be. We use these probabilities to base our expectations for what will come next in a piece of music. The power of music, the spine-tingling attraction, comes when the expectations are broken.
The book pays attention not just to Western music, but also to music from around the world. It is interesting to learn what aspects of musical styles are universal, and what aspects are particular to individual cultures.
I also found it very interesting, how timbre and pitch affect the concepts of consonance and dissonance. Dissonance is not an absolute given; A pitch interval that is dissonant in the lower registers may sound consonant in upper registers. And the degree of dissonance will depend on the timbre, that is to say, the set of overtones played by an instrument. The subjective degree of tension that a listener feels can be predicted objectively by analysis of the interference overtones among successive notes.
But what is most fascinating, is that music can be spine-tingling even after listening to the same piece, over and over again! How can music have this effect, when we know exactly what will happen next? This seems to me to be a fundamental quandary, one that the book asks, but is not quite able to answer.
If you are a musician, or if you can read music without too much difficulty, you will find special appeal to this book. It is full of short excerpts from scores, that help you to understand the concepts.
The book pays attention not just to Western music, but also to music from around the world. It is interesting to learn what aspects of musical styles are universal, and what aspects are particular to individual cultures.
I also found it very interesting, how timbre and pitch affect the concepts of consonance and dissonance. Dissonance is not an absolute given; A pitch interval that is dissonant in the lower registers may sound consonant in upper registers. And the degree of dissonance will depend on the timbre, that is to say, the set of overtones played by an instrument. The subjective degree of tension that a listener feels can be predicted objectively by analysis of the interference overtones among successive notes.
But what is most fascinating, is that music can be spine-tingling even after listening to the same piece, over and over again! How can music have this effect, when we know exactly what will happen next? This seems to me to be a fundamental quandary, one that the book asks, but is not quite able to answer.
If you are a musician, or if you can read music without too much difficulty, you will find special appeal to this book. It is full of short excerpts from scores, that help you to understand the concepts.
February 6, 2013
It's testament to Philip Ball's readability that I got through this book without skipping bits too badly. But there's a lot of (for a non-musician) technical detail here, and really you need to reading the book at a piano, or I suppose listening to an audio version with musical examples, to properly understand it.
I do all my reading on the tube, where pianos are frowned upon.
I do all my reading on the tube, where pianos are frowned upon.
February 6, 2016
Much more technical than I expected for a popular science book. It takes pains to explain detailed technical language but I found myself deeply confused at times, having no almost no practical experience making music.
Of what I understood, I did get pleasure from the less technical chapters such as the one about the history of notation, and the parts addressing the warring avant-gardists in the 20th century. But the main draw of the book, the cognitive questions that the musical capacity raises, seemed frustratingly inconclusive to me. Could it be linked to the capacity for number? The capacity for language? Could it have evolved? Ball seems a bit sheepish about putting his foot down when several experts disagree. He begins the book by slamming Pinker's claim that music is just a pleasurable simultaneous stimulation of our different sensory channels - "an auditory cheesecake" and a "spandrel." But from Ball's tepid overview of contradictory expert opinions, little seems to sink this hypothesis. At least no good argument is given to think that the cognitive processing of music is a distinct unit in the mind as is language, as the title of the book would lead you to anticipate.
I can reccommend this series for a more accessible rundown of musical theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbOWi...
Of what I understood, I did get pleasure from the less technical chapters such as the one about the history of notation, and the parts addressing the warring avant-gardists in the 20th century. But the main draw of the book, the cognitive questions that the musical capacity raises, seemed frustratingly inconclusive to me. Could it be linked to the capacity for number? The capacity for language? Could it have evolved? Ball seems a bit sheepish about putting his foot down when several experts disagree. He begins the book by slamming Pinker's claim that music is just a pleasurable simultaneous stimulation of our different sensory channels - "an auditory cheesecake" and a "spandrel." But from Ball's tepid overview of contradictory expert opinions, little seems to sink this hypothesis. At least no good argument is given to think that the cognitive processing of music is a distinct unit in the mind as is language, as the title of the book would lead you to anticipate.
I can reccommend this series for a more accessible rundown of musical theory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnbOWi...
July 8, 2012
explains why we are affected by music (A: Don't know), and a lot of music theory.
Book was a present from Beatrice.
Loved it, but found it difficult to finish - waiting for the revelation, and the reveal was that there is no reveal. A bit of a let down
Book was a present from Beatrice.
Loved it, but found it difficult to finish - waiting for the revelation, and the reveal was that there is no reveal. A bit of a let down
March 2, 2011
52% confusing.
35% already heard it before.
13% interesting music information.
100% eh.
35% already heard it before.
13% interesting music information.
100% eh.
Read
April 12, 2022A remarkable book exploring the nature of music, how it's written and how it affects us. It was published back in 2010, but I've only just come across it, and it hasn't aged at all.
I suspect I am in many ways the perfect audience - I have sung for many years and read music, but have no formal musical training. At the same time, I find the science behind it all fascinating. However, Philip Ball's analysis is of far more than how music works physically and how it influences the brain - though that's all in here. To an extent this is a love letter to music. It shows us why music is so important to our lives. How it fulfils far more than simply to act as auditory cheesecake (as Steven Pinker described it) both in terms of the mechanics of music itself and the ways that it insinuates itself into so many spheres of activity.
I challenge anyone with an interest in music to read this book and not come away with new and interesting insights. If you are a music expert, the science side will fill in some gaps in your knowledge, while if you like music but haven't much of a clue what's going on under the bonnet, there's an opportunity to get into the guts of what's happening, whether your preferences are Mozart or Stravinsky, Charlie Parker or Pink Floyd. (Or all the above.)
The only reason the book doesn't get five stars is that I suspect that Ball allowed his enthusiasm for the subject to carry him away a little. The Music Instinct is a tad too long, and gives too much detail on some of the more esoteric aspects of musical theory. Even so, this was a book I was eager to come back to every time I put it down (which is rarely the case with a book of this length or intensity).
There are many examples in the book, shown in musical notation, but accompanied by samples to listen to, though unfortunately at the time of writing they are not available. Although it's not always possible easily pinpoint the specific bit of the music referred to, though, the availability of streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music meant that I was able to listen to unfamiliar pieces like Berg's Lyric Suite to get a better feel for what Ball was addressing.
Neither a music theory nor a science of music book (but with enough science to count as a popular science book), The Music Instinct pulls together the importance of music and its impact on human beings in an impressive fashion. There is no musical snobbishness here - it's for any music lover.
I suspect I am in many ways the perfect audience - I have sung for many years and read music, but have no formal musical training. At the same time, I find the science behind it all fascinating. However, Philip Ball's analysis is of far more than how music works physically and how it influences the brain - though that's all in here. To an extent this is a love letter to music. It shows us why music is so important to our lives. How it fulfils far more than simply to act as auditory cheesecake (as Steven Pinker described it) both in terms of the mechanics of music itself and the ways that it insinuates itself into so many spheres of activity.
I challenge anyone with an interest in music to read this book and not come away with new and interesting insights. If you are a music expert, the science side will fill in some gaps in your knowledge, while if you like music but haven't much of a clue what's going on under the bonnet, there's an opportunity to get into the guts of what's happening, whether your preferences are Mozart or Stravinsky, Charlie Parker or Pink Floyd. (Or all the above.)
The only reason the book doesn't get five stars is that I suspect that Ball allowed his enthusiasm for the subject to carry him away a little. The Music Instinct is a tad too long, and gives too much detail on some of the more esoteric aspects of musical theory. Even so, this was a book I was eager to come back to every time I put it down (which is rarely the case with a book of this length or intensity).
There are many examples in the book, shown in musical notation, but accompanied by samples to listen to, though unfortunately at the time of writing they are not available. Although it's not always possible easily pinpoint the specific bit of the music referred to, though, the availability of streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music meant that I was able to listen to unfamiliar pieces like Berg's Lyric Suite to get a better feel for what Ball was addressing.
Neither a music theory nor a science of music book (but with enough science to count as a popular science book), The Music Instinct pulls together the importance of music and its impact on human beings in an impressive fashion. There is no musical snobbishness here - it's for any music lover.
September 17, 2015
This is a fabulous book. There is one main question it tries to answer: What does music mean?
This question is not an easy to answer question. The short answer is that we don't know. Because we don't know, it's also somewhat difficult to know where to start. Ball manages though, to get the ball rolling. Still, it's a wild ride, as what music means (to us) is also, what is it? How is it? What are the mechanics? How do various groups react to it? And how do we find, in all these loose structures, tons of opinions and endless variations, any kind of universal over-arching box for which we can place music in a sock drawer and be done with it?
Even given such a huge domain, one which touches us so intimately as music touches us, Ball manages to designate borders around this cloud of what "music" is. His main push lies in the classical music tradition... which has very much to do with an interplay of themes and melodies, harmonies of sonic form -- that
In a way, music was most natural when people were "expected to just know" even though music at that time was made of Baroque rhetorical devices. But when the medium of music became a thing in-itself, music detached from this naturalness of rhetoric and became lovely sounds. Eventually that became Romanticism, as the theme emerged from chaos, wrought from pain and angst in the medium, and so composers themselves were also hardpressed. The genius himself is the creation of genius... the genius is so beyond, that the conventions that are used, the rhetorical devices are blasted apart, but somehow loosely held enough together in our contemporary era.
Ball also writes that the best music shows us how to hear, but it has no linguistic equivalent as if language is the true language of reality. Instead, Ball says music is simply itself, it has no deeper meaning in language (although we may think it does) in that others can hardly verify that meaning in its specificity. This is another way of saying that Ball means that meaning can only be verified as being "out there" if "enough" people can independently find that meaning in its object. Because music cannot be verified this way, music becomes "a little bit of the Real" that we can directly apprehend.
This is his meaning too when he points out that music cannot have developed for our evolutionary advantage because processing music is not assigned to a specific part of the brain like other functions (such as speech or movement or counting). Instead, music lights up the entire part of the brain, including areas as "basic" as our motor skills in processing rhythm... or rather, does rhythm excite our motor skills? Either way, inasmuch as anyone wants to see meaning in music, a meaning which they most likely could just as easily find anywhere else in the universe because of how they specifically are, we also see ourselves in music... struggling, finding brief happiness, being gloomy, running naked in a field, flying through the air, laughing with friends, having sexy time... music can tell us of how we each individually are just as it can remind us to be appropriately happy or sad as we have learned to listen to it as being those emotions.
Just as over time, music has changed its meaning, or its ability to speak to us, so our expectations of ourselves have changed too. When music becomes the work of geniuses, we need to find geniuses out there who can write such music. When music was natural, obvious and everything good, so was our idea of society, our progress as a species, our ideas of God and universe. Music has served historically, as a mirror to us. Many non-Western cultures use music differently, but in each, they are moved by it, place it appropriately in their social setting, and enjoy it as a group activity. Music is the glue that binds us in as much as it reminds us of who we need to be, who we are already and who we think we should be.
Ball's book is not that thick. But it is a moving, touching piece, that reaches the range of what we think are our ways of knowing reality (logic, science, history, math, art) and applies each in turn to music, to find out how it is music is able to show us what we are, to be our partner in time and reality. But despite all these approaches, Ball succeeds not only in exciting us but also showing us how each area is somehow adequate and inadequate... for each aspect of music is always simply what it is, each study may serve to show patterns, assignations, but these qualities quickly dissolve into the body of music again as if music resists being anything other than completely itself. If this book does anything, it at least reminds us of the different ways we can enjoy and participate in music.
In other words, by trying to tell us what music is, Ball manages to tell us what it is not. Rather than dampening our spirit, this rejection of the limits of music only heightens our wonder at the wide variation of music, the huge range of effect it has on us, personally and collectively. In a self reflexive way, not knowing what music is allows us to not only enjoy it (which is great), but also see ourselves reflected in it. Music falls through the cracks in languaged meaning to be only what it is, outside of language. In this way, literally, through music, we can reach ourselves just as we reach the world totality as knowing the world and knowing ourself is two sides of the same coin.
This question is not an easy to answer question. The short answer is that we don't know. Because we don't know, it's also somewhat difficult to know where to start. Ball manages though, to get the ball rolling. Still, it's a wild ride, as what music means (to us) is also, what is it? How is it? What are the mechanics? How do various groups react to it? And how do we find, in all these loose structures, tons of opinions and endless variations, any kind of universal over-arching box for which we can place music in a sock drawer and be done with it?
Even given such a huge domain, one which touches us so intimately as music touches us, Ball manages to designate borders around this cloud of what "music" is. His main push lies in the classical music tradition... which has very much to do with an interplay of themes and melodies, harmonies of sonic form -- that
in the Baroque period, when composers aimed to portray the states of the soul, such as rage, excitement, grandeur or wonder. They were not trying to tell us how they felt, but were offering something like symbols of ideas and feelings in a systematic language that their audiences understood. They employed stock figures and devices, often drawn from the principles of classical rhetoric, such as the inventio (finding a musical subject) and its elaboratio or exposition. No one believed that the music had some intrinsic, mystic power to evoke these things; they simply expected the audience to know the language. During the Classical era and the Age of Enlightenment, in contrast, the objective was to make music that was 'natural', that moved and entertained with its grace and lyricism -- as music historian Charles Burney wrote, this made music 'the art of pleasing by succession and combination of agreeable sounds.'
It was in the nineteenth century, when composers started to believe music had an intrinsic potential to express raw emotion without the mediation of agreed conventions, that they and their audiences lost sight of the strictly conventional assignation of meaning and started to think that music produced immediate imaginative suggestion. [In this same time period] composers were less likely to produce works commissioned for particular patrons, audiences or events, but instead felt they were writing for eternity. [...] The composer, like the painter, was no longer a craftsperson but a priest, prophet and genius.
In a way, music was most natural when people were "expected to just know" even though music at that time was made of Baroque rhetorical devices. But when the medium of music became a thing in-itself, music detached from this naturalness of rhetoric and became lovely sounds. Eventually that became Romanticism, as the theme emerged from chaos, wrought from pain and angst in the medium, and so composers themselves were also hardpressed. The genius himself is the creation of genius... the genius is so beyond, that the conventions that are used, the rhetorical devices are blasted apart, but somehow loosely held enough together in our contemporary era.
Ball also writes that the best music shows us how to hear, but it has no linguistic equivalent as if language is the true language of reality. Instead, Ball says music is simply itself, it has no deeper meaning in language (although we may think it does) in that others can hardly verify that meaning in its specificity. This is another way of saying that Ball means that meaning can only be verified as being "out there" if "enough" people can independently find that meaning in its object. Because music cannot be verified this way, music becomes "a little bit of the Real" that we can directly apprehend.
This is his meaning too when he points out that music cannot have developed for our evolutionary advantage because processing music is not assigned to a specific part of the brain like other functions (such as speech or movement or counting). Instead, music lights up the entire part of the brain, including areas as "basic" as our motor skills in processing rhythm... or rather, does rhythm excite our motor skills? Either way, inasmuch as anyone wants to see meaning in music, a meaning which they most likely could just as easily find anywhere else in the universe because of how they specifically are, we also see ourselves in music... struggling, finding brief happiness, being gloomy, running naked in a field, flying through the air, laughing with friends, having sexy time... music can tell us of how we each individually are just as it can remind us to be appropriately happy or sad as we have learned to listen to it as being those emotions.
Just as over time, music has changed its meaning, or its ability to speak to us, so our expectations of ourselves have changed too. When music becomes the work of geniuses, we need to find geniuses out there who can write such music. When music was natural, obvious and everything good, so was our idea of society, our progress as a species, our ideas of God and universe. Music has served historically, as a mirror to us. Many non-Western cultures use music differently, but in each, they are moved by it, place it appropriately in their social setting, and enjoy it as a group activity. Music is the glue that binds us in as much as it reminds us of who we need to be, who we are already and who we think we should be.
Ball's book is not that thick. But it is a moving, touching piece, that reaches the range of what we think are our ways of knowing reality (logic, science, history, math, art) and applies each in turn to music, to find out how it is music is able to show us what we are, to be our partner in time and reality. But despite all these approaches, Ball succeeds not only in exciting us but also showing us how each area is somehow adequate and inadequate... for each aspect of music is always simply what it is, each study may serve to show patterns, assignations, but these qualities quickly dissolve into the body of music again as if music resists being anything other than completely itself. If this book does anything, it at least reminds us of the different ways we can enjoy and participate in music.
In other words, by trying to tell us what music is, Ball manages to tell us what it is not. Rather than dampening our spirit, this rejection of the limits of music only heightens our wonder at the wide variation of music, the huge range of effect it has on us, personally and collectively. In a self reflexive way, not knowing what music is allows us to not only enjoy it (which is great), but also see ourselves reflected in it. Music falls through the cracks in languaged meaning to be only what it is, outside of language. In this way, literally, through music, we can reach ourselves just as we reach the world totality as knowing the world and knowing ourself is two sides of the same coin.
February 23, 2015
Very dense and thorough, but not an easy read and often a little frustrating.
One of the difficulties, I suppose, comes with reading about music (you need to hear the music, right). I often found myself clamoring for more examples and illustrations of points that he was making (you'd be in trouble if you couldn't read a bit of music with this, actually). Amusingly too, way too many of the pop/rock citations were dusty museum pieces. Think: "This can be heard in the final cadence of Pink Floyd's 1972 'Curing My Insomnia' but is also vividly echoed in Joe Cocker's 1971 number 'Christ Nobody Listens to That (It's Not On Spotify I've Checked)'".
I know it's about how music works, but I found that you could tell this was a 'science man' and chemistry buff talking, sometimes losing the 'bigger picture' and obsessively dissecting scales and tones for the sake of it. It took me back to electron pair clouds. At a certain point I found myself lost as to why we were taking so long to explain why the scale looked like it does and why we were now assigning chords roman numerals. I guess a more populist book would stick to A-B-C-D-etc. For me in fact the most thrilling point in the book came where he suggests that blues come from an attempt to marry an African (slave-imported) scale to a Western one - coming out with something fused. Which is a wonderful idea, but isn't especially dwelt on.
This goes too for the neuroscience, which - as ever - comes with a giant asterisk saying 'Look, we don't really know yet'. Whenever I read about neuroscience it seems to mostly amount to 'some interesting observations, but, look, this is all guesswork'. To the extent where I'd rather it just be whacked in to the postscript.
On the plus side, I like its anti-elitism: especially the knocking down of claims that (instrumental) music 'tells a (semantic) story' and the deflating of absurd claims that certain Tchaikovsky symphonies reveal his latent homosexuality, etc etc. Amazing that that nonsense is tolerated.
I also like its optimistic conclusion that we're all naturally musical (to the extent that we can all spot patterns, feel rewarded by expectations met and jolted by expectations thwarted).
So, interesting, but a bit too 'micro' for the lay reader. There are a few titles (I can think of three others) out there at the moment ('How Music Works'; 'The Rest is Noise', etc) that I suspect might deliver better on the brief.
One of the difficulties, I suppose, comes with reading about music (you need to hear the music, right). I often found myself clamoring for more examples and illustrations of points that he was making (you'd be in trouble if you couldn't read a bit of music with this, actually). Amusingly too, way too many of the pop/rock citations were dusty museum pieces. Think: "This can be heard in the final cadence of Pink Floyd's 1972 'Curing My Insomnia' but is also vividly echoed in Joe Cocker's 1971 number 'Christ Nobody Listens to That (It's Not On Spotify I've Checked)'".
I know it's about how music works, but I found that you could tell this was a 'science man' and chemistry buff talking, sometimes losing the 'bigger picture' and obsessively dissecting scales and tones for the sake of it. It took me back to electron pair clouds. At a certain point I found myself lost as to why we were taking so long to explain why the scale looked like it does and why we were now assigning chords roman numerals. I guess a more populist book would stick to A-B-C-D-etc. For me in fact the most thrilling point in the book came where he suggests that blues come from an attempt to marry an African (slave-imported) scale to a Western one - coming out with something fused. Which is a wonderful idea, but isn't especially dwelt on.
This goes too for the neuroscience, which - as ever - comes with a giant asterisk saying 'Look, we don't really know yet'. Whenever I read about neuroscience it seems to mostly amount to 'some interesting observations, but, look, this is all guesswork'. To the extent where I'd rather it just be whacked in to the postscript.
On the plus side, I like its anti-elitism: especially the knocking down of claims that (instrumental) music 'tells a (semantic) story' and the deflating of absurd claims that certain Tchaikovsky symphonies reveal his latent homosexuality, etc etc. Amazing that that nonsense is tolerated.
I also like its optimistic conclusion that we're all naturally musical (to the extent that we can all spot patterns, feel rewarded by expectations met and jolted by expectations thwarted).
So, interesting, but a bit too 'micro' for the lay reader. There are a few titles (I can think of three others) out there at the moment ('How Music Works'; 'The Rest is Noise', etc) that I suspect might deliver better on the brief.
January 11, 2011
In this offering, Ball digs into music - with his usual comprehensivity and apparent mastery of the matter (this time, he is also personally knowledgeable on the topic). Many aspects of the best of the arts are treated (temperament, harmony, rythm, psicoacoustics, syntax and semantics, emotions and meaning, styles and gestalt), and decent if not ample space is given to all details. This on the other hand makes the book very verbose at times: it could have been more compact and concise oftentimes. Nonetheless, all concepts are well explained to laymen and there is also a lot for experts. Musical excerpts, examples, graphs and maps illustrate the text throughout.
Recommended to all music lovers, particularly (but not only) to beginners.
Recommended to all music lovers, particularly (but not only) to beginners.
June 25, 2011
We dont really understand the neurological basis of musical appreciation, so here comes another book on why we listen to music from the musical perspective.It's a well written study across the technical basis of music but falls down in its appreciation of the neurological interface.If you have a musical background this is a good book for you to read, however, if you dont, forget it.It will come out as gobbledeegook and will confuse you further....Hey, it is worth a try
April 18, 2018
It was a tough to finish. Has a fascinating premise, little pockets of trivia, and a gruelling thorough investigation from the premise.
May 13, 2025
Dancing about architecture
I've read a couple of works by this author (whom I knew of whilst he was a research student and we were briefly working in the same field) and found them to be well-written and stimulating. This book fits in with both those adjectives, but he's selected a difficult topic, highlighted on the back cover as a set of questions:
* Why have all human cultures made music?
* How do we make sense of musical sound?
* Why does music excite such rich emotion?
These are good questions, but finding answers to them isn't easy, even in the pages of this hefty (450 pp) volume. Beginning with Edgar Varese's definition of music as "organized sound", the author quickly goes beyond that, contending that music is not "acoustic at all" [p34], being something that emerges from a collaboration between the composer, performer and listener.
He then goes into a lot of technical detail about the physics of sound and hearing, how the frequency of the discrete notes in a scale are related to each other, and the pitfalls of the Pythagorean scale, predicated on pitches having simple frequency ratios. This leads to a mismatch between enharmonically equivalent notes (B# and C, for example) by an interval known as the Pythagorean comma; the adjustment of these intervals is known as tempering (as in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier). In the course of this exposition Ball notes, in an aside, that Newton postulated the seven colours of the rainbow by analogy to the seven notes of the musical scale, while the contraction of gamma and ut - respectively the medieval name for a low G and the first note on the scale - gives rise to our word gamut.
Along with physics, there's a lot of psychology in this book: how we recognize and remember tunes and how they make us feel. This leads to more exposition - for example, he points out how the octave leap in "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" ends on a longer note, as if "the melody waits at the top for the brain to catch up" [p112]. He also notes that most of these big jumps upward (in all of music, not just this song) are followed by a reversal in direction for the melody, but acknowledges that this is because there are more lower notes to choose from, particularly if the singer's range is being considered. We're on less sure ground when trying to work out why music moves us as it does, which can feel like trying to nail jelly to a wall: the best label for "the excitement that you feel when listening to music" on p320 is - well, just that phrase.
He also explores musical trends such as serialism, chromaticism and atonalism, noting however that "good art works not because some theory says it should but because it is embedded in a web of reference and allusion, as well as convention - it takes what we know, and changes it" [p135]. Although his main field of reference is Western Classical music, he takes in more exotic genres (including pop and rock) but, surprisingly, doesn't make much of the distinction between (roughly) songs and tunes. The former can be viewed as the latter plus lyrics, which are - according to a quote I've seen elsewhere but can't find - "a trick to get you to listen to music". Instead, he tries to find "meaning" in music, which leads to suggestions about the emotions of keys - Eb major is said to be "heroic", F major "pastoral", etc - which only served to remind me of that scene in "Spinal Tap" where the hapless keyboard player refers to D minor as "the saddest of all keys".
There's a lot in this stimulating book; if trying to answer those questions ultimately turns out to be a wild goose chase, at least the author has made the journey an interesting one.
Originally reviewed 10 May 2024
I've read a couple of works by this author (whom I knew of whilst he was a research student and we were briefly working in the same field) and found them to be well-written and stimulating. This book fits in with both those adjectives, but he's selected a difficult topic, highlighted on the back cover as a set of questions:
* Why have all human cultures made music?
* How do we make sense of musical sound?
* Why does music excite such rich emotion?
These are good questions, but finding answers to them isn't easy, even in the pages of this hefty (450 pp) volume. Beginning with Edgar Varese's definition of music as "organized sound", the author quickly goes beyond that, contending that music is not "acoustic at all" [p34], being something that emerges from a collaboration between the composer, performer and listener.
He then goes into a lot of technical detail about the physics of sound and hearing, how the frequency of the discrete notes in a scale are related to each other, and the pitfalls of the Pythagorean scale, predicated on pitches having simple frequency ratios. This leads to a mismatch between enharmonically equivalent notes (B# and C, for example) by an interval known as the Pythagorean comma; the adjustment of these intervals is known as tempering (as in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier). In the course of this exposition Ball notes, in an aside, that Newton postulated the seven colours of the rainbow by analogy to the seven notes of the musical scale, while the contraction of gamma and ut - respectively the medieval name for a low G and the first note on the scale - gives rise to our word gamut.
Along with physics, there's a lot of psychology in this book: how we recognize and remember tunes and how they make us feel. This leads to more exposition - for example, he points out how the octave leap in "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" ends on a longer note, as if "the melody waits at the top for the brain to catch up" [p112]. He also notes that most of these big jumps upward (in all of music, not just this song) are followed by a reversal in direction for the melody, but acknowledges that this is because there are more lower notes to choose from, particularly if the singer's range is being considered. We're on less sure ground when trying to work out why music moves us as it does, which can feel like trying to nail jelly to a wall: the best label for "the excitement that you feel when listening to music" on p320 is - well, just that phrase.
He also explores musical trends such as serialism, chromaticism and atonalism, noting however that "good art works not because some theory says it should but because it is embedded in a web of reference and allusion, as well as convention - it takes what we know, and changes it" [p135]. Although his main field of reference is Western Classical music, he takes in more exotic genres (including pop and rock) but, surprisingly, doesn't make much of the distinction between (roughly) songs and tunes. The former can be viewed as the latter plus lyrics, which are - according to a quote I've seen elsewhere but can't find - "a trick to get you to listen to music". Instead, he tries to find "meaning" in music, which leads to suggestions about the emotions of keys - Eb major is said to be "heroic", F major "pastoral", etc - which only served to remind me of that scene in "Spinal Tap" where the hapless keyboard player refers to D minor as "the saddest of all keys".
There's a lot in this stimulating book; if trying to answer those questions ultimately turns out to be a wild goose chase, at least the author has made the journey an interesting one.
Originally reviewed 10 May 2024
April 10, 2024
Music is a universal phenomenon which can be found right across the globe. It is also an ancient one, as archaeologists have found flutes dating back 40,000 years. This raises the question whether there is a fundamental relationship between humanity and music making, or whether music is just ‘auditory Cheesecake’ (as Steven Pinker famously put it).
The author takes issue with Cheesecake analogies, suggesting that there are adaptive benefits which music may have provided, in bringing ancient communities together. What did ancient people’s do on an evening when they sat around their camp fires? They probably told stories and made music, and perhaps it is no coincidence that some of the most ancient epics combine both stories and music.
The book’s greatest strength is that it an extremely detailed account of the mathematics involved in notes, and the logic involved in linking notes to produce music. In places, the technical detail may even feel overwhelming. However, interweaved throughout the book are some interesting facts about music and human voices. For example, men speak on average at a frequency of about 110Hz, and women’s voices are on average about 220Hz, meaning that they are effectively an octave apart.
The exploration of National music was also interesting. We can think of classic British composers and classic French composers, but is there really anything essentially British or French to their music? Surprisingly the answer turns out to be a yes. British and French music both include elements which mimic the patterns of their respective languages, and so there really is (to some extent) music that is genuinely English or French.
Many authors in the ancient world thought that music had an intrinsic power to elevate or to corrupt minds and morals. The author suggests that that is implausible when considering music itself, but of course genres of music is often contextualised with social meanings and implications which can and do influence people.
When the book focused on meaning, it became less clear. It contrasted music with language, suggesting that Language has a clear meaning, but music doesn’t. Yes social conventions can provide meanings, but, suggests the author, if a person hears a piece of ‘sad’ music (in everyone else’s opinion) as happy, then the person can be described as eccentric, but not as right or wrong (Chp.13).
This contrast between language and music was odd, and ultimately a little confusing. Language does not have intrinsic meanings. The meanings of words are settled by social conventions. If the sadness of a piece of music is also settled by social conventions, then how can it be that there are right and wrong meanings of language, and not right and wrong meanings of music? This was disappointingly unclear in the book.
Overall this is a very thorough analysis of the technical aspects of what constitutes music, and how it has the effects that it does, but it was weaker on the philosophical implications of its analysis. There is so much detail in the book that it begs the question: who is the target audience for this book? I suspect that it is those with a professional or specifically musical interest that will get the most out of this book, rather than general readers. It is not inaccessible to general readers, but the sheer quantity of detail is going to require a very attentive and careful reading.
The author takes issue with Cheesecake analogies, suggesting that there are adaptive benefits which music may have provided, in bringing ancient communities together. What did ancient people’s do on an evening when they sat around their camp fires? They probably told stories and made music, and perhaps it is no coincidence that some of the most ancient epics combine both stories and music.
The book’s greatest strength is that it an extremely detailed account of the mathematics involved in notes, and the logic involved in linking notes to produce music. In places, the technical detail may even feel overwhelming. However, interweaved throughout the book are some interesting facts about music and human voices. For example, men speak on average at a frequency of about 110Hz, and women’s voices are on average about 220Hz, meaning that they are effectively an octave apart.
The exploration of National music was also interesting. We can think of classic British composers and classic French composers, but is there really anything essentially British or French to their music? Surprisingly the answer turns out to be a yes. British and French music both include elements which mimic the patterns of their respective languages, and so there really is (to some extent) music that is genuinely English or French.
Many authors in the ancient world thought that music had an intrinsic power to elevate or to corrupt minds and morals. The author suggests that that is implausible when considering music itself, but of course genres of music is often contextualised with social meanings and implications which can and do influence people.
When the book focused on meaning, it became less clear. It contrasted music with language, suggesting that Language has a clear meaning, but music doesn’t. Yes social conventions can provide meanings, but, suggests the author, if a person hears a piece of ‘sad’ music (in everyone else’s opinion) as happy, then the person can be described as eccentric, but not as right or wrong (Chp.13).
This contrast between language and music was odd, and ultimately a little confusing. Language does not have intrinsic meanings. The meanings of words are settled by social conventions. If the sadness of a piece of music is also settled by social conventions, then how can it be that there are right and wrong meanings of language, and not right and wrong meanings of music? This was disappointingly unclear in the book.
Overall this is a very thorough analysis of the technical aspects of what constitutes music, and how it has the effects that it does, but it was weaker on the philosophical implications of its analysis. There is so much detail in the book that it begs the question: who is the target audience for this book? I suspect that it is those with a professional or specifically musical interest that will get the most out of this book, rather than general readers. It is not inaccessible to general readers, but the sheer quantity of detail is going to require a very attentive and careful reading.
August 19, 2019
Phillp Ball’s ‘The Music Instinct’ is an extensive excursion into a variety of musical aspects, exploring them deeply, scientifically and philosophically. This includes the social and cultural importance of music, the physical science of sound, cognition, music theory, emotion and meaning, to just name a few.
I took away several learnings on the matters of social, emotional and philosophical aspects of music, while brushing up on the basics of acoustics and music theory, including harmony and rhythm. The insights into these aspects are surprising and not always conclusive. This inconclusiveness however doesn’t come from any shortfall of the author, it rather seems to be one of music’s eternal mysteries and highly subjective as well as individual, that we can’t agree on music in regards of emotions or meaning.
It is a fairly demanding read, but also rewarding. The vast amount of references and examples contribute to a good overview of music as a phenomenon. The terminology is complex and sometimes require slow and attentive reading, as well as some research. The detail and accuracy of the author’s questioning of the matter is outstanding, but leaves the reader somewhat behind at times.
It really helps to listen to the mentioned pieces of music throughout the book, to experience what is being described in scientific terms. It also widens your repertoire of composers, traditions and styles of music available to you.
I would recommend this book to someone with an existing understanding of music and its aspects, to widen the horizon on what music does with and for us outside of pure pleasure or mood manipulation. If you enjoy the idea of wanting to understand music, and are an avid fan of deep inquiry and philosophy, this book is for you.
I took away several learnings on the matters of social, emotional and philosophical aspects of music, while brushing up on the basics of acoustics and music theory, including harmony and rhythm. The insights into these aspects are surprising and not always conclusive. This inconclusiveness however doesn’t come from any shortfall of the author, it rather seems to be one of music’s eternal mysteries and highly subjective as well as individual, that we can’t agree on music in regards of emotions or meaning.
It is a fairly demanding read, but also rewarding. The vast amount of references and examples contribute to a good overview of music as a phenomenon. The terminology is complex and sometimes require slow and attentive reading, as well as some research. The detail and accuracy of the author’s questioning of the matter is outstanding, but leaves the reader somewhat behind at times.
It really helps to listen to the mentioned pieces of music throughout the book, to experience what is being described in scientific terms. It also widens your repertoire of composers, traditions and styles of music available to you.
I would recommend this book to someone with an existing understanding of music and its aspects, to widen the horizon on what music does with and for us outside of pure pleasure or mood manipulation. If you enjoy the idea of wanting to understand music, and are an avid fan of deep inquiry and philosophy, this book is for you.
December 28, 2019
If there was ever a book I was supposed to like it was this one. I'm a big music fan with a good understanding of theory and the essential question "Why does music affect us?" is fascinating. The short answer "Despite many studies, we don't really know" was perhaps to have been expected, given the social science nature of the work. This in itself would have been fine - after all it's the journey that counts, not the destination. Unfortunately the journey is underwhelming.
Philip Ball is obviously knowledgeable, yet the book grates throughout in its attempts to forcibly close the gaps in our understanding and to cover all bases, from the basic building blocks like frequencies, notes, scales, rhythm, to summarizing relevant scientific studies in the area. Like so much in social science, it comes down to "maybe *this*, but then maybe that's wrong because of *that*".
I forced myself to finish the book because the subject matter is so dear to my heart, but it took ages as I searched for some illuminating insight that never came. Even my confirmation bias and ego weren't assuaged by various passages of "things that I had thought of by myself before".
I wanted to give it two stars because... music, but I had to be honest. Music is there to be analyzed by serious musicians who want to understand the "language" in order to improve their own knowledge and ability. Other than that, over and above letting it flood into our brains and enjoying the effect, there's not much worth talking about.
Philip Ball is obviously knowledgeable, yet the book grates throughout in its attempts to forcibly close the gaps in our understanding and to cover all bases, from the basic building blocks like frequencies, notes, scales, rhythm, to summarizing relevant scientific studies in the area. Like so much in social science, it comes down to "maybe *this*, but then maybe that's wrong because of *that*".
I forced myself to finish the book because the subject matter is so dear to my heart, but it took ages as I searched for some illuminating insight that never came. Even my confirmation bias and ego weren't assuaged by various passages of "things that I had thought of by myself before".
I wanted to give it two stars because... music, but I had to be honest. Music is there to be analyzed by serious musicians who want to understand the "language" in order to improve their own knowledge and ability. Other than that, over and above letting it flood into our brains and enjoying the effect, there's not much worth talking about.
February 2, 2019
Ampio, approfondito e ambizioso. Ball riesce molto bene a informare, analizzare e ipotizzare, in modo diverso - e con difficoltà e astrazione crescente - procedendo dai primi capitoli basati sulla comprensione del linguaggio musicale e della sua armonia verso gli ultimi, dove il cosiddetto linguaggio musicale è esposto in quanto tale a una comparazione con linguaggi più propriamente intesi - in primis quello verbale - che apre a una raccolta di riflessioni illustri che risultano interessanti spesso proprio perché ardite e arbitrarie. In tutto ciò, il filo rosso della musica come istinto attraversa l'intero libro, ponendosi come ulteriore spunto ambizioso che, con tutte le difficoltà interpretative che presenta, non può che affascinare e far apprezzare l'impresa di ricerca e scrittura di Ball.
July 25, 2023
I bought this book because it was mentioned in Frank Turner’s ‘Try this at Home - Adventures in Songwriting’. As a lifelong music fan and aspiring producer I’m always looking to develop my understanding of its impact and mystique. This book satisfied my musical curiosity, however, it was not an easy read. I often returned to the dictionary to check the meanings of words that were critical in understanding the points put forth by the author. Despite the extra work, I persevered with the book because the academic exploration into music fascinated me and was worth the effort. I liked the topics that were explored by the book because they caused me to think about music in new and exciting ways. Furthermore, this book led me to explore music at a deeper level than I had ever gone before. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in music at a personal or professional level.
August 3, 2017
I have long been puzzled why music seems to be so important to so many of us, since almost everything else about us seems readily explained in terms of either natural or sexual selection. I was hoping for a simple answer. I did not get a simple answer, but I now have a much clearer idea of how music works. I particularly enjoyed Mr Ball's takedown of the pretentiousness of serialism, and of providing context by looking at the nature of sophisticated music such as gamelan in other cultures in addition to classical, jazz and other musics in our own. You may or may not find it worthwhile to understand music better, because you can enjoy it without reading this book, but if you want to understand it better, this book is a good place to start.
July 24, 2023
Whoa! This is absolutely stuffed with analysis and content. Written by a physicist with a strong musical background, the mechanics of how music creates human response has rarely been so thoroughly explored in a what's really a popular science book. Be prepared for a slow read and have a computer by your side to play the musical excerpts and a virtual keyboard to listen to the scales and intervals for yourself. The human impulse to make music, rhythm, harmony, timbre, emotion, the physiology of the brain's music receptors all get a thorough exploration. There were parts I had to skip because I mostly read at the end of a long day of work and domestic minutiae but I will return to this if I make it to retirement!
August 17, 2025
This very much fulfilled my expectations. A highly informative (albeit occasionally too dense) scientific dive into the how (theory) and the why (psychology) of music. Scales, timbre, harmonic spaces, all that magic. When a chord sequence raises the hairs on our arms, is that nature or nurture? A melody returning to its origin at the end, does it simply satisfy our inner OCD pattern seeker? Every time there were little music notations demonstrating principles, I played them on the piano.
I think it petered out a bit towards the end, with the focus on music's similarities to language, and music's attempt at communicating meaning. But everything that came before, had me at full attention.
I think it petered out a bit towards the end, with the focus on music's similarities to language, and music's attempt at communicating meaning. But everything that came before, had me at full attention.
December 8, 2025
Un libro sumamente interesante, me abrió la mente en el mundo de la música, previamente ya tenía conocimiento musicales, pero, este libro me hizo conocer una variedad inmensa de conceptos nuevos para mi. Recomendable para todo músico y melómano.
Mi única queja es que menciona muchos conceptos y no todos los profundiza a detalle, igual es comprensible, ya que, de lo contrario, el libro sería demasiado largo, por eso, recomiendo que a medida que lean el libro investiguen a fondo algunos conceptos que les interesen.
Mi única queja es que menciona muchos conceptos y no todos los profundiza a detalle, igual es comprensible, ya que, de lo contrario, el libro sería demasiado largo, por eso, recomiendo que a medida que lean el libro investiguen a fondo algunos conceptos que les interesen.
September 13, 2018
This is a very comprehensive and well written book about many aspects of music. I really enjoyed it, however it was very dense and some of the information was admittedly over my head. Phillip Ball did an amazing job researching and writing on this topic, the amount of musical examples, research, and other narrative references was superb. I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in music, however it would greatly help to have a foundation knowledge of music theory.
August 2, 2017
An excellent overview of history, psychology, and sociology of music--and a little bit of history. The final chapters, with devastating and funny critiques of both formalism and narrativism in musicology are quite awesome. Anyone who cares about music should read this, and those who do not--try caring, you don't know what you are missing.
September 17, 2019
Unbelievably good book. What is music? How does it work? How is music theory built? Fascinating, thought-provoking, even inspiring. Well-written and very well thought out. I wished it had been on kindle so I could keep my highlights! Packed with brief music references from a broad repertoire (non-western, classical, modern). Delicious.
February 27, 2026
Han er en perfekt faglitteratur-forfatter, som ligger lige midt i sporet. Metoderne er musikteori - med stort overblik - spekulationer, empiri af folks oplevelser af musik.
Det går galt i det lange kapitel om hvorfor vi kan lide musik. Det er for langt, men tesen er vel ok: vi kan lide at blive skuffet i vores forventninger og få dem indfriet.
Det går galt i det lange kapitel om hvorfor vi kan lide musik. Det er for langt, men tesen er vel ok: vi kan lide at blive skuffet i vores forventninger og få dem indfriet.
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July 5, 2021Lots of references to classical music - will need to go back and read again while listening. Got a bit boring at times but really enjoyed the stuff about how the music of a group reflects the features of their language.
September 27, 2020
El vademécum de la música, investigación musicológica imprescindible en todas las estanterías.
November 26, 2020
It was such a joy to read. Wish I had read this before starting my studies in music - then I would have known how little I actually know. Real eye-opener...
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