How We Hear Music

The Relationship between Music and the Hearing Mechanism

By (author) James Beament

Ebook (VitalSource) - £19.99

Publication date:

17 May 2001

Length of book:

188 pages

Publisher

Boydell Press

ISBN-13: 9781846154416

Covers much of the acoustics a student needs, without mathematics or scientific background.

Choice Outstanding Academic Title

A survey of intervals and scales, tone pitch, loudness and time in Western music raises many questions about the hearing mechanism and throws doubt on the conventional role of harmonics. James Beament's account of how musical sounds are coded by the ear and the brain's processing units, provides answers to most of these questions. It concludes that music started with simple instruments which voices imitated, and that the need to know sound direction determined the characteristics of hearing. This book will interest students, practising musicians and music psychologists, and assumes no scientific knowledge. The late ProfessorSir JAMES BEAMENT was a distinguished scientist and musician, who taught and examined music students at Cambridge University.